I've watched a bit of the reviews from Fextralife and Skill Up and it really just sounds like more of what you'd expect from Ubisoft and Assassin's Creed. At least, relative to the shinobi character. The samurai path sounds like a dud, since it drops all the things that people typically like about Assassin's Creed games.

Interesting decision from Ubisoft to have a main character route where you play the game from the standpoint of a warrior. They probably wanted to cash in on the Souls trend but trying to expand your audience often lowers the quality when you mash everything together. Reviews would probably have been more positive if they'd concentrated on the shinobi, both from a gameplay and a story perspective.

Honestly, the game sounds like a chore to get through, with the story seemingly trudging along in typical Ubisoft fashion where nothing interesting actually happens until it reaches the final chapter. They really need to look at how their open world games are structured and try something new.

I don't get it. It's just not getting a boost at all on Steam at this time in the evening. Does Ubisoft have a launcher or what perhaps with incentives?

no, no launcher required this time for the game on Steam, but they do require you to login to their account system within the game itself. All they've done is take away the launcher requirement, but the account system rule remains in place, which isn't much of a change for a singleplayer game...