It looked that way from early on and I've heard similar stuff.  Definitely a bummer, Assassins Creed games can be fun but Valhalla looked worse than Odyssey early on.  Hell I'd rather play Black Flag Remastered than Valhalla and I really dug the idea of fighting the Templar Knights and just Brits in general.  1776 in like 800 yehhh buddy.

If you enjoy it then hell yes enjoy the hell out of it but I would personally really like the series to return to the Altair/Ezio style or at least the Unity one.