My favorite MCU films have been the ones where the personal stakes for the characters are strong, more compelling than whatever global/galactic jeopardy the heroes are up against. This new movie does feature the right kind of personal stakes... but interestingly, for the villain far more than hero. And while those stakes are articulated within this movie, their full weight can't be felt unless you've done the "required reading" of earlier entries in the franchise. I'm not just talking the typical "see the original before you watch the sequel"; watching the first Doctor Strange is arguably not even the most important MCU precursor to this film.
Assuming you do have the right background, then the most important elements of this story do mostly work. The ultimate showdown is ultimately as much about the personal as it is "another big fight." You do get plenty of fights before that, though, of varying degrees of success. Some are clear and clever, others are noisy, chaotic, and hard to follow. In a break from expectations, the amount of CG isn't necessarily the determining factor in which category a given sequence will fall into. (In fact, CG plays a major role in my favorite conflict of the movie, a neat set piece in which music is also front and center.)
I have to say, though, that for me, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness didn't really live up to the title. I was primed for wild reality hopping at least on the order of Into the Spider-Verse. Instead, we get a quick 30-second sequence before the movie settles into one particular reality for most of its run time. Perhaps more chaos would have meant losing some of the grounded character elements that actually worked? But I couldn't help but feel the "Madness" was all hype.
Unless, that is, they were referring to the rules of how magic works. I can imagine you might be saying, "it's magic, there aren't any rules." I say, as a reader of lots of fantasy over the years, that you need good rules for magic to mean anything at all. And in this movie, the rules didn't seem clear to me at all. Magic had consequences for this person but not for that person. Things expressed early on as limitations became fuzzy "guidelines" later in the story.
Though at least through it all, I enjoyed the clear directorial hand of Sam Raimi. MCU films have a largely consistent style, and only a few directors (James Gunn and Taika Waititi) have truly been able to inject theirs with a personal touch. Edgar Wright was famously fired for not bending his personal style enough to the MCU format, so you might expect a Sam Raimi MCU movie to not be especially "Raimi-esque." Yet Raimi's signature horror-comedy runs all throughout the background of this movie -- and steps very much into the foreground for multiple moments that seem clearly inspired by Evil Dead.
Ultimately, through any ups and downs, Benedict Cumberbatch remains pretty fun to watch as Doctor Strange. He built his career on playing brilliant assholes and making you like them anyway, and he does it well here. But he's also been in better movies filling that particular niche.
I'd give Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness a B-. It's "essential" to the degree that all MCU films might now be in order to get the full context of something to come later. If not for that, I'd say it's a movie you could take or leave, depending on your love of Sam Raimi or Benedict Cumberbatch.
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