Assassin's Creed Odyssey was my game of the year last year. I spent over a hundred hours in it and I loved it.
Here I am an hour and a half into the last episode of the First Blade DLC and I just turned off the game because I don't care. I just don't care. Maybe I'll burn through it when Atlantis drops, or when more of the free quest updates drop, but right now I don't care.
The gap in quality between the main game and First Blade is astounding. It's not even the forced romance to the whiny-ass cardboard cutout (I hear Alexios' companion is better(?), but Kassandra's is TERRIBLE). It's not even the removal of your freedom of choice to tell your character's story. It's not even the problematic aspects of the story they're forcing on you.
First Blade has nothing to offer. There's no new areas, very few new assets, and one of the blandest stories with the blandest characters in a game BRIMMING with amazing quests and people. I get through a grueling hour-long intro to this episode complete with one of the biggest bullshit fights imaginable only to be told I need to clear three forts I already cleared back in the base game. And I just don't care.
That's all this DLC is. It's replaying the base game. It's replaying stuff I've already done. Maybe if the story grabbed me at all the lack of new material wouldn't matter--certainly, I've enjoyed all of the Lost Tales so far. But right now I just don't care.
God, I hope to hell Atlantis is better than this, because First Blade has actually hurt my feelings on Odyssey as a whole.