So what's the problem with this franchise I love so much now ??
It's a mix of different things but the biggest one is the size of the sandbox maps themselves. While Ancient Greece (Assassin's Creed Odyssey) and Ancient Egypt (Assassin's Creed Origins) are two time periods that I honestly couldn't wait for them to do; with the only others being Feudal Japan and Viking time which Assassin's Creed Valhalla will take care of. While those two are time periods I couldn't wait for to happen now that they have, they are two of the series that I'm honestly still not finished despite having got them on launch. And the sandbox thing is a big part of it. AC (I'm going to shorten it now) games have always had wide open spaces and it was always part of their appeal, big worlds of these time periods to explore; explore the city of Rome, Venice, Jerusalem, Victorian London, Paris, etc. it was all fun to run around. YET, these spaces always had a limit, you knew the world was big but never had to worry about it to an extent as they might have walled some off due to "memory sequences not syncing" or they were "big worlds" but never anything so massive that you felt intimidated by it. That's were Origins and ESPECIALLY Odyssey are, the maps are so big that you become intimidated by them. I said it in a stream I did of Odyssey while standing on a mountain, I said, "see that island wayyyyyyy out in the distance I could go there if I want right now, it would take awhile but I could"; while to most people that seems awesome it honestly isn't to an extent, the world is so big that all your quests and all the things you do can get tied up and lost, you feel overwhelmed by it all. I started to notice that in Unity, even the city of Paris itself was so massive that you HAD to unlock synch points quick so you could fast travel so you didn't have to constantly walk across the entire city, that continued in London in Syndicate, and Origins and Odyssey just went overboard. Do I still love the games, yes, they are still great but the scope of them is so grand that I feel it will take eons to finish them.
Another thing both Origins and Odyssey suffer from is picking up so many missions at once that it clouds what your objective is. You always had your main quest in the AC games and there were always cool little side stories and things to keep you interested and then there was usually cool DLC side quests too. This go around you have your main quest but then you get like 18 other quests right around that same time and you start to again feel overwhelmed. Why though, why so many quests ?? Well because they changed them into "RPG games" but not real RPG games. Basically a game were different parts of the world are walled off by levels and that you pick up a thousand different pieces of weapons and armor throughout the game each with just better stats. You need all the quests I mentioned above to continue to grind out levels to get better gear or you'll be destroyed by enemies as soon as you even accidentally enter a new area. It seems like a neat idea and good way to go direction wise in a franchise and while I think more weapons and armor were always cool I preferred saving up my florins, francs, or pounds to buy them and upgrade as I go instead of constantly discarding something every few moments. Well it leads into my last point about Assassin's Creed current issue.
The microstransactions. "Oh you want a constant XP boost, a constant money boost, maps to places in the worlds treasure, better armor with better stats, pretty neat looking gear ?" Buy our shit. And honestly, I sound like a hypocritical shill for pointing that out when I did buy that XP and money boost for Odyssey but without it, I think it's next to impossible to reach high levels in that game. These new microtransactions are basically Ubisoft's way of making hella easy money after the fact, "if we make the game super hard and grindy they'll have no choice but to buy our shit". It works, to a degree, like I'm salty about it but not at the same time.
So I feel that a mixture of the maps that are too massive, the RPG but not real RPG mechanics, the overabundance of quests, the microtransactions, all of it is what makes these current interations of the franchise and what I see is the current "state of the franchise" so rough compared to what I loved. I still love the worlds in these newer games but they've become so massive that they are tedious to a degree now and I definitely don't want that to be the case with the upcoming Assassin's Creed Valhalla but I know it will be. But we can only hope they iron out some of that before the next-gen console release of the new game. Let's hope everyone cuz this world is going to be just as cool as Egypt and Greece, I love Vikings and Norse mythology.