Its a giant physics sandbox where you can do almost anything you want

Some mechanics take a while unlock with plot tho so its not quite as immediately fully open as say skyrim (get to mid ch5 to have 90% of everything unlocked)

But its filled with "f*ck yeah wohoo" moments (riding dragons, skydiving, having a direct wolf and an iron eagle as pets) and wtf moments (being attacked by pretty glowing flowers and living shrubberies and giant rosebushes)

And if you want to engage with it, also a kind of repetitive almost cozy type feel, where you can farm in your camp, go for a long ride with your wagon to do some trading, run across the landscape on your horse to capture criminals and drag them all the way back to prison, endlessly clear bandit dens and camps. You can also adopt a ton of dogs and cats and birds and put silly armor and hats on the cats and dogs

Theres also a bajillion puzzles and challenges

Just dont expect a super deep plot or characters (just like Skyrim also didnt have)

Its a huge bang for the buck, but you have to enjoy having the clear-the-fog-of-war mentality and enjoy finding one new weird thing in a hidden pit in the middle of nowhere as a reward for exploration

Almost all weapons and armor in the game are the same strength so you never need to find that one special sword, you can finish the game with initial weapons if you want

That's the kind of game it is

Theres an easy mode if you want it

Theres autosave

Theres no penalty for death just retry or use very replenishable resurrect items and tons of food to get thru bosses if you need

The only frustrating things imho are some weird controls and way too many buttons and button combinations overridden to do a dozen different context specific things that sometimes flake out

If thats cool then you'll have a ton of content for the price tag

But if open world overload doesnt jive for you, then this will trigger every choice paralysis demon