Recent reviews by Cosmopolitan Gopnik

It may be difficult to see how I couldn't recommend such a massive, beautiful, and masterfully made game like Elden Ring, but it displays a menagerie of all the worst parts of modern Fromsoft games: one-hit-kills, combos-that-come-so-fast-they-may-as-well-be-one-hit-kills, deadly combos that last for an eternity and have no good window for punishing, continuations for combos that leave you unable to punish the combo for fear of triggering the continuation, a bad camera that routinely fails to capture large bosses (i.e. most bosses, looking at you Radahn) and makes you unable to react to their attacks, lack of clarity over which attacks can be parried, etc.
And then also some fun new stuff that Fromsoft didn't have before or you actively had to provoke to experience, like bad balancing (you will be over- or under-leveled for most bosses, this is something Sekiro and DS3 were fantastic at) and an open world that puts traversal and horse combat at its forefront (which isn't very fun in DS style games). Be prepared to hold that B button a lot.
Again, a lot of the game is absolutely stunning and there are tons of bosses that are just plain great fun, hell, even some I have large gripes with are a ton of fun if you know well how to fight them. But the amount of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you have trudge through to be able to enjoy this game really puts a massive damper on my experience. If you're going to play it, don't torture yourself like I do and use what tools are actually the strongest, not what you think would be the most fun.
Fromsoft used to accommodate playstyles that center around melee and avoiding damage, but they apparently don't want to do that anymore.

For some reason they decided to add an entirely unexplained, dumbass, byzantine politics system to the perfectly fine gameplay of Shogun 2

The unpolished predecessor of shogun 2 with AI so awful it defies explanation. Play FotS or Napoleon if you want a TW game with guns.

The game is a realistic representation of first world warfare in the sense that it's not very fun.

I struggle to find anything 'good' about the game besides the story. Mediocre to bad gunplay, enemies slide around like they're on ice, cars feel eh, graphics also aren't that great but it's very demanding, missions make the variety in AssCreed look good, at least up until the point I've played, you can't buy anything at all, barely customise your character, can't save cars.
If you didn't play mafia 2, play it instead, if you did, consider skipping this one unless you really want to see the story.

It's a pretty fun game, actually. I'm really just mad that it completely reset my progress at the end of a mission after I dropped off a cliff that wasn't even that high.

Please, for the love of god, don't buy this game.

There's two core gameplay loops: Combat and moving around on the overworld (mostly for trade and missions).

Combat is extremely fun, ships steer and accelerate slowly, so you have to be very tactical with your movement.
Moving around on the overworld, on the other hand, is maybe the most boring and worst experience I have ever had with a videogame. I'm serious, if you want to complete an average transport mission it'll probably take you one hour. One hour of doing nothing but making minor adjustments to your course every few minutes so you don't lie dead in the wind and cut corners as closely as possible.
Half the game is essentially a naval-themed screen-saver you can't leave alone for more than 5 minutes.

It's puzzling, it's like someone made a really good game and then some troll came along and tried to make an addition that would make it as unplayable as possible. If you value your time even slightly, don't touch this thing with a 10 nautical mile pole.

(Plus the behaviour of the devs other reviewers mentioned.)

I dunno what brainlet decided that you shouldn't be able to, but you can't save and load in mission. Enjoy spending most of your time flying in a straight line for 5 minutes because someone shot you down again and you had to restart the whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mission.

Also, you can't ALTF4 the game.

infuriating/10 wouldn't buy again

Game displays a blackscreen on startup and crashes.