finally playing this one, and it's awesome! And thus, editing the review after my first playthrough-and on my way to 100% completion.
The game is an open world masterpiece, The world feels very organic in its storytelling and exploration, quests are more about discovering the story of the lands between-and less about an endless checklist of markers, handholding and endless content padding for the sake of content- a trope that the current state of AAA open world games suffers greatly from.
All in all, a masterpiece of a game, with difficulty sliders hidden inside game mechanics, an engaging world with tons of exploration to be made, and challenging yet epic bossfights to learn and eventually beat. It's the best open-world game i have ever played, and an ode to storytelling, game design, and mechanical demand towards the player.