The gameplay was decidedly meh with only a couple of fights really standing out.

Unfortunately this applies to most open world games. I'd describe its main rival (BotW) similarly, though that one has great writing and characters to make up for it. What it comes down to usually is if those fights are good enough to justify everything in between, travel, prep, grinding to get to and beat them.

Which, based on the words of people I know who don't get into the political side of these things, the game did succeed at.