The first 10 hours or so of Valhalla are great too. Learning the new systems and making your first parts of the settlement are pretty engaging. It's the other 60+ hours that become a slog. You quickly realise that the main quest chain that was kinda outstaying its welcome is what you can expect for every single kingdom. Yeah, there's some variety, but they're really a slog to get through. The settlement upgrades were pretty good, but your mainly unlock things that would have been 'free' in other games. As the gear system leans towards microtransactions nothing you unlock is really mind-blowing. Especially as you'll have to raid yet a other generic copy-and-paste monastery for the materials to upgrade.

If we look back to a game like ACII's Villa upgrades, they provided access to things that would be behind a perk point today. I remember grinding out my capacity upgrades etc. There was direct tie from my effort to the upgrade. With Valhalla, and the other recent games, I feel like I've got to gring out the lootbox/heka chest(or whatever the premium currency is in a particular game)

That's not to say Mirage is perfect. I really hate the token system and it feels so tacked on. I am enjoying being stealthy again though. I used a cheat trainer to add in one hit kills to Odyssey a while back and it improved the game so much.