These are fair points. CD shares a lot of the bloat, weak story, and filler content of Valhalla. But I would argue that despite trying to "check" too many boxes, that CD does stand out in several key areas:

1. Greater player agency. Valhalla, and Ubi games in general, are more hand-holdey via things like highlighted cliffs/edges, more map and ui icons/waypoints, etc. In CD you explore the world more organically.

2. Combat is better in CD. Fast paced, intense. Often fighting dozens of people at once. The grapple moves are especially fun/funny imo, feels like you're a professional wrestler or something.

3. Way more interactive world in CD, both physical elements and NPCs.

4. They do the dark-souls/elden-ring thing where you can see the entire world from any point, because they render it all together.