So I've been "playing" Assassins Creed Odyssey. But it's more in the vein of something to do with my hands while I listen to podcasts, streams and records, because I already played it and I just want the satisfying cheap thrills of Ubisoft map clearing games.
What is interesting though is that I have to admit being sort of wrong about an opinion I had adamantly. I played the game before with a sort of "completionist" attitude, where I'd do story-based side quests as I came across them in each area, and completed location objectives when I could, so that I was leveling up along with the plot and never felt any level-gating or grind. Meanwhile one of the common criticisms was the level-gating and grind, and I just assumed people were trying to race through the story.
My opinion is that "I should be able to race through the main campaign" is kind of silly- why are you playing a big open world game if you don't want to do most of the game? And since I found myself over-leveled early on, I just figured it was people who did no side content.
But in this careless play-through, I'm skipping stuff I did before while also doing some side stuff I feel like, and yeah, I'm level-gated!
Since I don't mind some "level-gating" I was still shocked at some of the level jumps and when they occur. Sometimes it doesn't make sense narratively or even mechanically.
For example now I am at the last main mission of the "family" quest. But I decided I'd like to kill all the Cultists in that same branch first. The main quest matches my level, which also matches the Cultist branch quest. However, one of the targets is a way higher level! So that means it is "harder" and "grindier" to kill a subordinate of the enemy Cult then to kill their leader and eliminate the immediate major threat of that whole group to the Greek world. So stupid.
Even dumber earlier when you hit a major story point, you have the "option" of starting one of the other key quest lines by visiting someone else, or just continue with the regular one. But the latter is way higher quest level, so there's no "choice." You only get that "choice" like I did in earlier play-throughs when I did so much other side stuff first that I overleveled everything and it didn't matter anyway.
If I hadn't played this game before, was super-invested and not focusing more attention on listening to Yahtzee be bored by Dying Light 2 or whatever, I'd be really pissed off and I now understand some of the frustration others had in this regard.