Assassin's Creed - Valhalla

In the latest Assassin's Creed game, Valhalla - you play as the viking Eivor during the conquests of England.

The engine of this game is such a great vehicle for storytelling, and the bar has been set so high recently with some A+ titles out there that I was really looking forward to this.  

There are elements of it that are fantastic.  The feeling when you are crouch running with some pounding drums and chanting as background while raiding a monastery with your war party are incredible.   The story is fairly well done and you have a sense of uniting the kingdoms that you have aided as allies to come to your aid in the final mission (ala Mass Effect).

Where it falls short is in two areas in my opinion.  First - like all AC games, there is a point of "over-powered" you can reach that really replaces excitement with a bunch of button mashing.  I could have soloed the final fort, and would have preferred it to risking any of my companions.

Second, it lacks that bit of spit and polish that we've come to expect on A+ titles: shopkeeper inventory that makes sense, a ton of minor frustrating bugs like treasure items showing on the map that have already been retrieved, or NPCs with bizarre behaviors.

The one other point of interesting note was that you can choose to play either as Male or Female, and they left all of the potential "romantic interests" in for either gender you choose.  There were two options presented to me in the form of a quest that ended up being some sort of ride out to check on the livestock or something, and I remember being a little disappointed - like I was tricked into a mission.  I never pursued any of the romantic choices with either partner so I'm wondering if the game assessed my sexuality - as 5(!?) males came onto me on subsequent missions in not-so-subtle ways.  Typically the response options were very blunt too -- "Aww yeah" vs. "I just think of you as a friend", so when I was finally presented with a third option that was effectively ignoring the awkward situation - I chose it.  When I finished that mission, he pulled me aside and kissed me.  

Uhhh ... awkward.  Okay.  

I'm not sure why every RPG game feels like they need to put in a little bow-chicka-bow-bow ... and the way they did it was just weird and uncomfortable.  Stuff like this if included at all should be hidden deep in dialogue trees with at least some specific navigation, sought after instead rather than trying to be avoided.