Ever since the reinvention of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, with Origins bringing it to becoming a full-fledged RPG, the series has struggled. Whilst I did enjoy most of my time in Valhalla, my opinion has soured over the years, with its overwhelming game world and RPG focus taking away from the identity of Assassin’s Creed.  I’ve been yearning for the days of Unity to return (with fewer bugs of course), and Feudal Japan seems like a perfect chance to get the series back on track. Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is finally here, but is it worth playing or are you better off loading up Ghost of Tsushima?

Story

Set in 1500s Japan towards the end of Oda Nobunaga’s reign, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows follows the path of two characters on their journey of revenge and justice. Naoe, a young Shinobi, witnesses her own people slaughtered by a group known as the Shinbakufu and seeks to make true to her father’s promise and get revenge on this group. Then there’s Yasuke, a loyal warrior to Nobunaga, who seeks to find his place in the world and atone for the sins of his past.

Both Yasuke and Naoe have their own personal path to follow, but join forces in key moments of the story. As they build up a new league of assassins, recruit allies who will assist them in battle and challenge the mysterious Shinbakufu, uncovering a much deeper conspiracy and a power struggle for the future of Japan.

The story itself is mostly fine, if a little unremarkable, and can be approached in a non-linear fashion. So if there’s a particular questline you’re not terribly excited about, you can avoid that for a while and come back to it later. Character motivations are as standard as they get for this franchise. Naoe is a relatively likeable character; after the first act and I was surprised at how much I like this character throughout my playthrough. Not my favourite assassin, but still a pretty good one and better than Yasuke who fits better as a supporting character.

Whilst there are some standout moments, particularly with side characters like Hanzo, most of the other characters are fairly bland and forgettable. Or, in the case of Jinjiro, straight-up annoying. As a whole, it’s not a bad story, with some great side quests to help it along, just don’t expect anything on the level of Ezio’s trilogy.

Gameplay

If there’s one thing that stands out about the gameplay is that Ubisoft made each character feel different from the other. Instead of a simple reskin of both characters with the exact same animations, moves, and abilities like in previous Assassin’s Creed games, both Naoe and Yasuke appeal to different playstyles. Each character wields their own unique weapon types and armour, leading to incredibly different and distinctive gameplay styles.

Yasuke takes the role of a samurai in this game. He’s focused much more on a combat-heavy playstyle, able to wield various katanas. He also has ranged capabilities using Bows (and various ammo types), as well as Teppo. He is very much the character to play if you just want to hit the enemies hard until they die, which often won’t take long as he’s able to easily dispatch multiple foes with a single hit.

I won’t lie, Yasuke showcases Assassin’s Creed: Shadows at its worst. Whilst the character himself can be interesting, his gameplay just doesn’t inspire anything dynamic. Moving around the game world feels sluggish and slow, unable to take many of the pathways Naoe, can which feels really limiting. I appreciate the effort put into making both characters feel unique, but this personally wasn’t for me and doesn’t appeal to my preferred gameplay styles. However, I can’t deny that loading into missions as Yasuke and going wild can be satisfying. If you pick this game up, try his gameplay style out, but know that doing anything outside of missions or the occasional castle can be dull.

Naoe, on the other hand, as a Shinobi takes the more traditional Assassin role, providing the biggest upgrade to this era’s Assassin’s Creed gameplay. Whilst Mirage may have brought stealth back in a big way, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows takes that even further. Assassinations themselves are quick, snappy, and simply badass. In terms of gameplay, this might be my favourite character gameplay in the franchise since Arno. Her swift speeds and agile movement make her parkour system the greatest leap for the franchise in some time, able to rapidly ascend or descend a building. Naoe also has a grappling hook, which gives her even more mobility,  allows her to scale larger structures with ease, or move between rooftops. It can take a moment to adjust to the movement and 95% of the time it works wonderfully. Then you have that 5% where you awkwardly launch off a ledge and drop into a bunch of guards, as is tradition at this point.

There’s also a fully dynamic shadow system and the ability to go prone to avoid detection. Much more emphasis has been placed on sticking in the shadows and making as little sound as possible. If you move the stealth difficulty up to Expert, even rooftops are no longer a safe place to hide, and I would absolutely recommend trying this or stealth becomes trivial, with enemies easily able to see Naoe if she’s not in the shadows. During the day this makes rooftops much more dangerous, and even as much as knocking over a pot will cause enemies to investigate. I’m using much more of the toolkit than I normally would, with shurikens and kunai able to disable lights and kill guards. The effective stealth system really makes me feel like a badass shinobi. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of a perfectly executed stealth encounter.

Whilst Naoe is a stealth-focused character, she is capable in combat. She’s not as efficient as  Yasuke, making her style more deliberate. I would often times during combat or assassination encounters move in and out of stealth. If you move that combat difficulty up to Expert, dealing with more than a few enemies can be brutal. The Kusarigama provides her best combat option when dealing with multiple targets, able to hit multiple enemies with a single wide hit and reposition targets with ease. In one instance, I sent an enemy right into an explosive barrel, which I detonated with a shuriken. Where Yasuke can devastate enemies with a single blow, Naoe employs death with a thousand cuts. Her lower damage is balanced out with much higher agility and attack speed.

The vast majority of my playtime was spent as Naoe, as she represents what I always wanted from this franchise. Sneaking into areas you aren’t supposed to be in to steal some loot or assassinate a single target. Avoiding guards and servants and only taking out those who are necessary.  Of course, the best-laid plans will inevitably go horribly wrong, and Naoe’s quick movement and faster combat style is where Assassin’s Creed: Shadows shine. It’s almost comical how fast a wrong move can escalate on Expert difficulty, but also makes the game so much more rewarding.

It is worth noting that when a guard does manage to ring an alarm, the character you are playing immediately becomes wanted in the region. This is a good idea, but unfortunately, I never really got to engage with this system, which is a shame. Becoming wanted spawns in new enemy types which are much more relentless on their search, and will join in on fights. However, this has no long-term impacts as alerts are reset at the start of a season. I was hoping for a more granular system here with a longer-term impact.

You might be surprised to discover that Yasuke, despite being decked out in armour, can engage with stealth systems, able to go prone and hide in bushes, as well as climb over more objects than you’d expect. Although, with the brutal takedowns and more sluggish movement, I wouldn’t recommend it. Playing as Yasuke, stealth may be able to provide an interesting challenge, but it doesn’t make for a fun one. Yasuke being significantly worse than Naoe to play makes this dual protagonist system a bit of a miss.

Whilst I’ve been gushing about the stealth for a while, the combat shouldn’t be ignored. If you’ve played Valhalla, you’ll be pretty familiar with what to expect here. It’s not my personal favourite combat and system, with the heavier focus on abilities over combos. Like pretty much every action game, attacks are split into two, your standard light attack and a heavier attack. In Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, this takes the form of posture attacks that can be charged up to deal extra damage or break an enemy’s… well… posture leaving them up to more attacks.

Combining posture attacks with light and abilities is a huge part of the combat system. Mixing that in with perfect parrying and dodging will leave enemies open as well. The basic combat loop has you building up your adrenaline to use a wide variety of abilities that are unique to both characters and their wide arsenal of weapons. The combat system as a whole feels solid, with responsive controls and incredibly satisfying animations. Although, lacklustre variety in enemy attack patterns and speed can make the combat feel a touch repetitive.  The biggest issue, though, is the awful camera, especially when fighting indoors.

RPG Systems

If you aren’t a fan of the RPG systems in the past few games, then you’d be happy to know there are some big changes here. Regions are still artificially level-gated, so unless you get your level up, you won’t be able to do anything in them. Thankfully, progression is fast enough for it to not become a major issue, and being able to level up your favourite gear means you don’t need to constantly swap things out. It streamlines one of the most annoying aspects of the previous games without completely gutting it.

Throughout the world and quests, you will gain access to different weapons, armour, and gear. Each of these is equipped with a variety of perks and abilities that modify behaviour, damage, and stats. Once you find these perks, they can be applied to other weapons. So if you are really into min-maxing your gear you can. Personally, I never found it completely necessary to get into build crafting, but it is there if you enjoy that aspect. There’s some really cool abilities that can completely change how your characters interact with enemies. Random loot has also been reduced, so you know exactly how to get legendary gear.

Each character also has a few skill trees, divided by the weapons and special abilities that each character has. Whilst there are a lot of basic stat-boosting skills, there’s some really cool stuff in here. Naoe’s tantos, for example, have a relatively early skill that unlocks double assassinations for stealth. Yasuke can upgrade his skills with the naginata to chain posture attacks together for devastating combos. Best of all, mastery points can be reset for free at any time to encourage experimentation.

Finally, there’s the hideaway; a completely upgradable base that builds on Vallhala‘s own hideout. Here you can upgrade your scouts to be lest costly and provide more resources, as well as allies that you will recruit throughout the world and can help you in combat. If you want you can engage with overhauling the visuals as well, and build your own temple. That said, it is pretty basic and you probably won’t be spending much time here outside of upgrading your gear, unless you really like building your dream hideout with an absolute ton of options.

Open World and Quests

Set in the open world of Japan across the late 1500s, we have a wonderfully designed world to explore, from Osaka and Kyoto to the mountains. A nice balance between countryside and towns/cityscapes has been achieved here. Where Odyssey and Vallhala would often feel too big, this one feels much more focused, with a wider variety of countryside and large-scale towns to explore. There’s plenty of opportunity for parkour as well, with some scalable cliffs and well-designed castle maps with multiple routes and secrets to get around. It highlights the wonderful parkour system nicely.

Each province is home to a series of characters and side quests. Oftentimes, it results in a series of assassination missions that can be tracked on the mission board that vastly expands the more you explore, with dozens of side quests and characters that all get tracked here. There’s some really interesting stuff scattered around the open world, and I feel like I found a lot of this organically. Whilst exploring I’d see a shrine, cave, or group of NPCs having a discussion, which would often lead to something bigger. It’s easy to get lost in Ubisoft’s depiction of open-world Japan, and this makes it the best map of the Origins era.

Assassin’s Creed: Shadows puts a big emphasis on exploration and investigation. Once you arrive at a location, you might be a little way off, but a note that you can find or NPC discussions will update you on where to look. If you are a little too lost or want to skip some of the investigation, sending out scouts can help you find the location you need to look into. I tried to engage with sending scouts out as much as possible and the games were better for it, giving me more incentive to just experience the world. Both characters can also use focus which highlights nearby interactable objects to progress, but only Naoe has Eagle Vision to see nearby threats.

Castles provide the most interesting gameplay activity in the open world, taking Ubisoft outposts and making them interesting again. Scattered throughout the world are strongholds, full of guards and servants alike. Servants don’t provide much of a threat and will alert nearby guards. It’s weird that there’s no penalty for killing these unarmed servants, and would have provided a great gameplay incentive to use non-lethal options. Your ultimate goal though is to kill the Daimyo warriors scattered around each castle and unlock the chest which includes powerful weapons and armour. These enemies are usually tougher than regulars and typically in high-traffic areas, making each castle a strategic battle as you find ways to thin out the other enemies and give you a better shot at the big bads.

Other activities feel like they are padding the map: praying at shrines, completing random QTEs (these feel just incredibly awkward), and collecting lost letters. They are short and will only take a minute or so per location, but are necessary to unlock more skills in the skill tree by increasing your mastery rank. There are some better side acitivities that showcase the character’s abilities much better, like parkour challenges or duels with other characters that highlight big differences between these playable characters.

At a certain point though a lot of these activities start feeling the same. More of a checklist as you go from map marker to map marker. There’s no real evolution in gameplay variety or activities. Sometimes less is more, and Assassin’s Creed: Shadows still feels a little too bloated, even if it does handle this much better than the past few mainline games. Saying that, there’s a good chance of stumbling on a solid side quest, or even on assassination targets, accidentally skipping over the investigation portion. Again, this just makes the world feel much more organic. You never know what you will stumble upon.

Finally, we have the seasonal system. After a certain amount of playtime, the next time you load an instance, the seasons will change. This changes the look and feel of the world, whilst also resupplying enemies and restocking supplies. The first time I tried to jump off a vantage point during winter I went splat on the ground, not realising the lake froze over. It’s a wonderful system that breathes fresh life into the game world on a semi-regular basis, making the world feel less static and more responsive in doing so.

Sound and Visuals

Voice acting is a bit of a mixed bag, especially in English, where most of the cast sounds just bored. Immersive mode switches the language to native, so most characters will be speaking Japanese, although there is also Portuguese sprinkled in as well. I highly recommend turning this setting on, because not only is it more immersive, but the acting is much more authentic. I jumped back and forth between Japanese and English for my playthrough, and the English voice acting just wasn’t up to scratch and can end up being straight-up cringeworthy.

As for the soundtrack, I have some more mixed feelings. It’s not bad, just not what I was expecting and can feel out of place. Maybe Ghosts of Tsushima spoiled me too much here, but it feels like there’s too much going on with the soundtrack, mixing too many styles. There are some great tracks scattered throughout and can really help with the immersion in the world, but it’s when it starts getting experimental. Not suitable for the period when it can become immersion-breaking.

At its absolute best, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows can look absolutely spectacular. With mountainous peaks that stretch out for miles, all the way down to surprisingly massive towns and smaller villages that all breathe life into the world. Each region and each town feels totally distinct. What’s better is the seasons really do alter the world’s look and feel. There’s the occasional rough spot, but it rarely brings me out of the experience.

Where the visuals do lack is in the character models and animations, mainly with the faces. I don’t know how we keep going backwards, but the facial animations are often off-putting. Cyberpunk 2077 nailed this five years ago with some of the best NPC facial animations we’ve seen. Thankfully, gameplay animations are much better, with absolutely brutal animations for Yasuke’s finishing moves and Naoe’s elegant movement really makes up for that for a clean gameplay presentation.

Playing the game on an RTX 4070 at 3440×1440 and we have a mostly solid PC version here. Playing with a mixture of settings from Medium to High, I was able to achieve 60+ fps in most situations. I experienced absolutely no stuttering or crashing as well, an increasing rarity in the PC Gaming space. And yes, that full ultrawide support is here, from the gameplay to cutscenes (which are sadly 30fps locked). You are also able to centre your HUD if you prefer that as well.

Animus Hub / Modern Day

Coming with Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is the launch of the Animus Hub, because we all know individual game hubs have worked wonders over the years. With Call of Duty‘s abysmal CoD HQ makes the simple act of loading more cumbersome. On the plus side, Animus Hub is much snappier and never gets in the way. A brief launcher consolidates the Origins era of games and that’s about it there, I don’t fully understand why this is the case. If I wanted to play Odyssey, I’d just boot up Odyssey. Loading is at least quick, I don’t have to reboot the game twenty times. Looking at you Black Ops 6.

To quickly touch on the story of the Animus, which is largely separated from Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, only briefly taking you outside its historical setting for moments. We are not back in the days of Desmond Miles or Layla Hassan, taking too much spotlight in an overly convoluted narrative that should have ended after the mess that was Assassin’s Creed 3. It’s incredibly light and unintrusive to the core game, which is a good thing. Anything related to the Animus is a mess at this point.

The basics of Hub are essentially in-game quests that you complete for a variety of rewards in a Battle Pass-like system, and a limited-time vendor that sells items that look completely out of place. It’s unclear how or if this will be monetised, but anything at the time of writing is free (Note: There is still a premium currency shop as per other Assassin’s Creed games which is separate from the Hub. Just important to point out here). I’m personally not a fan of this, but at the very least isn’t intrusive and can easily be ignored.

Assassin’s Creed: Shadows

I had my skepticism going into Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. It’s not a perfect game and could have done with a few more tweaks, but I am pleasantly surprised. Its renewed focus on stealth gameplay provides the series’ strongest stealth and parkour offering to date. However, the story does fall flat in the end with a mixed bag of characters.

As a massive fan of stealth franchises such as Splinter Cell and the excellent Shadow Tactics series, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows gave me what I wanted and somewhat feels like a hybrid of those. A fresh new stealth system is just what the franchise needed. In many ways, it goes back to the basics for the franchise that once lost that part of its identity, though does occasionally fall back into some of the recent trappings.

 

Graphics: 8.5 A beautifully rendered world let down by some stiff character models and facial animations.	Gameplay: 8.0 An incredibly strong stealth and parkour system is a strong leap forward for the franchise. Although, lacklustre combat and occasionally repetitive activities does hold it back.
Sound: 6.5 A lot of the sound design choices left me conflicted. Voice acting ranges from good to terrible, and a lot of the soundtrack, while decent, seems to miss the mark at times.	Fun Factor: 7.5 Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, despite it’s issues, is a solid entry in the franchise.
Final Verdict: 8.0

Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is available now on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.

Reviewed on PC with an RTX 4070, Ryzen 7 7800X3D and 32GB RAM.

A copy of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows was provided by the publisher.