Enjoyed it enough to play through it but a hard sale on the "better than some say" front because I still agreed with some reservations and there are some that don't even necessarily reward your patience to get its best elements. Just to start it off: it's not that badly written, it just starts off on absolutely the worst foot for the first two hours with constant quips to a bewildering setting and a slow pace, and a framing device that admittedly barely coheres even in the end. When you get past it though, there are elements of actual minor character development and some serious turns that are "fine" if not height of game writing even now. Feels like a first draft to its lead's development that finds itself as it goes along, when it should've just cut some of the treacle and filled in the world you spend most of your time in moreso.

The biggest problem is an engine that only sporadically knows what its best elements are, and mostly there for the gamer to pick and choose in a spread-out open world, and in such a way that it's not necessarily a preference to any given newer Assassin's Creed game outside of being shorter. The battle system varies on a whim (even within its own magical sections) from snappy and satisfying loops to just feeling like throwing snowballs at sponges, and even its biggest success in the parkour movement system takes longer to get some of its best elements and takes most of the game to get to areas that use it well. And by then? You're almost done and there's very little reason to max out or explore more. As fair as the game warns you enough that it's not much beyond a time-waster, it still could've presented that better.