The landscape is impossibly gorgeous, I haven't played a game this pretty in a long time. Finding the shrines, petting the foxes, and writing haiku are all so much fun. The combat is dynamic and exciting. The duels are breathless and cinematic. The moments after completing a mission when you chill with your horse are cute and fun.
HOWEVER, the story is bog-standard open-world storytelling, and the tropes of an open world are shoehorned in kind of painfully. Getting a poison that makes your enemies fight each other? Yawn, except now the game tries to make you feel guilty for using poisons after forcing you to use poison. Being the rebel reclaiming the land and building up a resistance? Yep, you're going to do it again. The only open-world trope that's missing is climbing a tall tower to open up the map.
It's worth it to explore the landscape and the world, and to find the beauty in the world around you. But if you get annoyed by the generic parts of an open-world game, you will probably get really annoyed by those impossible-to-ignore aspects.
