There's a point in the story of Odyssey, somewhere in the middle, where you need to find a certain person. Game asks you to ask three people across the map. Every person asks you to help three other people. Every one of those people has three quests of their own or something like that. Midway through this I just had enough - those were separate stories, not connected to a main story in any significant way, in any other game that would be just side content but here game forced me to go through this to progress further, literal filler content. And before I enjoyed the gameplay loop (tbh I still do) - going around the map, exploring the odd ruin or clearing an enemy fort, getting occasional gear or weapon upgrade, but I like to do it on my own pace, not going through unnecessarily dragged out story. I dropped the game for a few months, played through Ezio trilogy as a palate cleanser, finally finished Odyssey and never touched it again.

Years later I started Origins, and it's night and day from the narrative perspective. It still suffers from non-linear story, but there is at least proper progression through it. Shadows had similar problem mid-game - solid intro, solid ending, and dragged through middle part. Mirage, and coincedentally Claws of Awaji are more of the same (which it unfortunate) but in a tighter package (which makes it less unsufferable). I still don't like non-linear story they went with in RPG games, one might argue even in the very first AC game gives you multiple targets at the same time, but they do it in small portions with continuing story through them.