I really wanted to like this game, but Ubisoft literally made it impossible. This is a lesson in not releasing your games before they are done. I'm sure in a year this game will be a lot of fun, but that's not the game that was released and that thousands of people have been trying to play.
And it's too bad because the main character is interesting and aggressive. She really acts like a Viking and you get to go around raiding camps and rowing your boat around and exploring a massive world. Even the story is fairly interesting if you are willing to spend 100 hours on it. I enjoyed that they split up the world into beatable sections, where each plot is like a mini story. That ended up being my favorite part of the game. The main quest is interesting and expansive, and I grew to really care about the characters I met along the way (for the most part).
However, this game is absolutely riddled with bugs. There is no excuse for this from a massive game company like Ubisoft. They continue to think that they need to make an unnecessarily large map that takes people 100 hours to complete instead of just making a game that actually works and it fun the entire way through. You go through the same motions over and over; row your boat here, climb a tall place to unlock some items of interest, go to the next plot point, raid a village, talk to some NPCs, have a big battle, rinse and repeat. It's fun for maybe 20 hours, but why would I want to do that for 80 more hours just to complete the game? If anything, make that side content that isn't required instead of requiring it to see the story. There was just no reason for the game to be as big as it was; it doesn't add anything and just feels like padding for no reason. And while you're at it, this game crashed on me more than any other game I've ever played in my life. I was lucky if I went an hour without the game crashing. If it wasn't crashing, it was giving me game-breaking bugs like NPCs not working properly, freezing, getting stuck somewhere you can't get out, or the many, many times where I had to open a big chest, which requires 2 people to open, and no NPCs ever came to help me even though they would be standing literally right next to me. It was endlessly frustrating to me and it just never got better.
The only other redeeming part of this game were the optional things you can do in each town. They were awesome. One is a drinking game where you have to chug beer out of a horn faster than the NPC. Great mini-game. Another is a words-battle where you have to come up with an insult that rhymes and has the right cadence. Also great. The last one is a dice game which was actually the best in-game mini-game I think I've played. It requires luck, skill, and you actually get better the more you play it. It's way better than just throwing another crappy card game in a game and calling it done. I give credit where it's due, and that part of the game is great.
I wish this would be a wake up call to developers that they need to finish their freaking games before they release them. I guess in the end it's really a wake up call to me, to never play a game when it's first released anymore. It feels like they are destroying the fun of anticipating a game and enjoying it with thousands of other people on release day, since games now come out half-finished and almost unplayable.
6/10