Anime

I looked it up, this episode covered about 1.3 manga chapters. (too lazy to lookup the LN/WN, though that's what I was originally going to compare) The previous episodes averaged about 2.2 manga chapters per episode (I'm assuming there was no significant divergence in content), possibly even higher if we ignore the previous episode which also had a ton of recap.

Elymas seems to be unable to use his common sense or any knowledge that he gained from living in that world for his entire life, and he purely makes his choices based on his knowledge of the game

It seems that Elymas has a realization in nearly every episode that this world does not work quite like the game works.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about this anime is the way that Elymas seems to be unable to use his common sense or any knowledge that he gained from living in that world for his entire life

I don't know if it's because I recently read the manga just to see how badly the anime adaptation was trainwrecking the pacing, but the impression I got was that the world's "common sense" about the game mechanics is often absurdly wrong.

Heavy Knights are considered a useless class when they're actually completely busted, for example. So Elymas seems perfectly capable of navigating the non-game aspects of the world using the knowledge he gained growing up as a noble. But when it comes to classes, skills, and game mechanics, he trusts his past-life knowledge instead. Because the people of this world clearly have no idea how to properly optimize any of it.

And now he's finally starting to realize, "Oh, wait, I'm not necessarily the only person who can be good at this." Honestly, that's pretty refreshing.

there is absolutely no way any studio is this shit to spend 8 whole minutes recapping four episodes

Maybe they just felt we needed a reminder because of how forgettable the story is.