Assassin's Creed Shadows Review

Japan has been top of Assassin’s Creed setting wishlists for as long as I can remember. In theory, it’s perfect for the formula, but I was worried that Ubisoft had waited too long. The brilliant Ghost of Tsushima, and less brilliant Rise of the Ronin, did a lot of what fans would expect from a Feudal Japan setting, potentially in better ways. While Shadows is unashamedly Assassin’s Creed, for better or worse, it’s the best the series has been for a long time.

Land of the Changing Seasons

For the most part, that’s down to the quality of Ubisoft’s recreation of 16th century Japan. Valhalla’s gigantic map was a chore to explore, and even the smaller map in Mirage was quite empty. Shadows’s map is phenomenally well designed. It’s full of things to see and fun to explore, without sacrificing on size.

The bustling towns and open rice fields are beautiful, but it’s following the mountain paths and forest trails that are the highlight. Having explored just a fraction of the map during the 40-hour story, I still can’t get enough of wandering around the gorgeous landscapes, stumbling across hidden temples and mysterious shrines. Shadows perfectly balances scale, ease of exploration, and the number of interesting landmarks.

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I used photo mode countless times while exploring.

Whenever the season changes, you get a refreshed look at the incredible landscapes. Riding through valleys and fields as the wind swirls around you and snow falls is brilliant. The world is among the best in the whole Assassin’s Creed series.

The map exploration itself has everything you’d expect from an Assassin’s Creed game. There are countless viewpoints to synchronize, scrolls to find at temples, and the enemy clans have taken over every castle in the game. You can infiltrate them to claim some powerful gear rewards, killing a couple of samurai as you go.

Ubisoft by Design

There’s nothing groundbreaking to the open world design in Shadows, but Ubisoft has clearly worked hard to make sure exploration isn’t a chore. Well spread out map icons, a simple and effective pathfinder tool, and hugely improved visuals all help. An effort has clearly been made to ensure that Shadows doesn’t feel overstuffed, which makes everything more enjoyable.

Shadows is also significantly more polished than recent Ubisoft open world games. Aside from some instances of shaky framerate in the Hideout hub area for Naoe and Yasuke, the game runs perfectly and looks great on the base PlayStation 5 with the balanced performance setting.

My only other quibble with the world is the sheer number of trees that got in my way. To get to objective markers as the crow flies, you need to run through forests that are so dense you can’t see more than a few feet in front of whatever character you’re using. You have to just hope you’re not running towards a three hundred foot drop. Also, why are we still having characters slide back down hillsides that are too steep, forcing players to take the long way round? That’s something I thought modern open world games had left behind. Improved collision systems that feel more authentic would be nice at this point in the current generation of consoles.

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You’ll find towns and shrines around every corner.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows’s quest structure also prompts exploration, so it’s a relief that running or riding a horse around has been improved. Now, the majority of quests start by providing you with three clues as to where a target or a person of interest will be. They can be somewhere you’ve been before or somewhere entirely new, so you need to use your Scouts to help find the area or head out to where the tips have sent you to find the objective.

As you progress, it becomes second nature to head to a vague area and hold L2/LT to Observe the area for the blue quest icon indicator, but the mechanic is a great way to help you learn the map in the early hours. I found myself starting to know town and province names - unlike how I usually am with an Assassin’s Creed game - memorizing the geography or the world more than ever. It’s a simple but effective way to frame story progression, taking advantage of the improved world design at the same time.

Double-edged Swords & Story

Unfortunately,Assassin’s Creed Shadows’s main story doesn’t match the structural quality of the world. While the writing and acting is a step up from other recent Assassin’s Creed games - albeit with its fair share of trademark awkward dialogue - I found the central plot line muddled and tough to keep up with.

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Most quests can be played as either Yasuke or Naoe.

The story is essentially a revenge story for Naoe, with a struggle for power thrown in like it is in any feudal Japan story. As rival clan leaders fight for improved standing in the country, Naoe is skulking in the shadows to take them out. Her aims are to avenge her father’s death and retrieve The Box, which serves as Shadows’s McGuffin.

Yasuke, who became a powerful boss’s trusted samurai, soon changes allegiance and joins Naoe on her crusade. Naoe and Yasuke don’t always make sense to be joining forces at certain parts of the story, but they’re the best Assassin’s Creed protagonists for quite some time. Naoe can be a little bland at times, but she’s fearless and determined - elevated by the best lead performance in as long as I can remember.

Yasuke has a more interesting personality, commanding more immediate respect while also having a comedic side. Naoe and Yasuke work well as a partnership, with entirely opposite approaches to every situation. But they’re not kept to regimented tropes. Yasuke isn’t always the destructive brute, and Naoe isn’t always the quiet assassin. They each have moments to showcase a more well-rounded personality, which makes them far more endearing.

And while the main story is convoluted, with Yasuke’s own story losing its way in the latter half of the game, the variety in the main quests is excellent. No two assassinations play out in the same way. You’ll have quiet kills from above, cinematic duels, war-like castle infiltrations, and more considered negotiations. When you start each of the 11 main assassination quest lines, you have no idea how they’re going to end. And since each one tends to introduce a new group of side assassinations, there’s plenty of opportunity for experimentation when it comes to how you deal with Naoe and Yasuke’s prey.

In the early hours - since you don’t get access to Yasuke until ten hours in - I thoroughly enjoyed slowly reaching my assassination target as Naoe, silently taking out each guard as I went. Stealth is still a basic mix of hiding in bushes and quick takedowns, but I think it’s improved in Shadows. It might simply be more forgiving, but Naoe’s agility and the design of Japan’s castles make escaping or hiding much easier. Taking on the castles, which are the game’s version of strongholds, require less planning, but aren’t any less fun.

However, once I stepped into Yasuke’s shoes, I found it hard to go back. He climbs slowly, can’t dodge attacks as reliably, and doesn’t have his own hidden blade, but he’s so much fun to fight with. I completely left Shadow’s stealth aspects behind as I got more powerful - knocking down the front door of every enemy base I came across and smashing every guard’s head in. With a finishing move, Yasuke can chop each of an enemy’s arms off, followed by their head, and I still let out a loud “oof” every single time. Whether you’re playing as Yasuke or Naoe, there’s a brutality to combat we’ve rarely seen in an Assassin’s Creed.

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Best of all, you can pet dogs and adopt them from your Hideout.

The story does make using both characters beneficial, though. Many quests can be approached in whatever way you prefer, but some have a smarter option. Both Naoe and Yasuke are interesting characters, even if the main story they’re involved in isn’t.

All Roads Lead to One

I don’t think the main story is helped by the lack of impactful narrative choices. While you’re often given choices in key moments, such as the option to spare or kill an assassination target, both options regularly lead to the same conclusion. That’s not the case every time, but don’t be surprised to choose a kill option only for you to be stopped from finishing the job, or vice versa. Disappointingly, the choices you make rarely, if ever, actually impact the story.

Thankfully, that doesn’t take away from the cinematic drama of every key scene. The moment we first meet Yasuke will go down as one of my favorite Assassin’s Creed moments of all time.

I’m glad Assassin’s Creed Shadows is such an improvement when it comes to world design and its characters, because some will find the lack of progression in its core mechanics frustrating.

Jamais Vu

I, for one, enjoy the combat in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. It’s smooth, attacks hit hard, and the weapons feel great. There’s just very little depth to it. While it feels undoubtedly better to how it does in Valhalla, Mirage, and some of the games before it, you still don’t need to think about much beyond dodging red attacks, parrying blue ones, and holding the attack button to break enemy guards. There are no combos, no special enemy moves, enemy attacks rarely change, and the upgraded skills in each character’s skill trees do little beyond increasing stats.

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Every assassination is given a dramatic color change.

The variety comes in the weapons you can wield. Both Naoe and Yasuke have access to three or four weapon types. There are katanas, which are my favorite due to their agility and the smoothness of their animations, kusarigama for close quarters attacks, bows, and guns called Teppo. You can equip up to two different weapon categories at any time, which gives you the option to approach every fight differently. And since Naoe and Yasuke play so differently, you can really switch up your combat style.

Much like any other Assassin’s Creed game, though, there’s little else to think about. Boss fights, often in the form of duels here, are fun but just more focused versions of standard fights. Bigger health bars and additional armor is about all you’ll face to make enemies trickier.

The enjoyment you’ll get from it depends on what you want from an action RPG, or even an Assassin’s Creed. Shadows combat plays a lot like other recent games in the series, for better or worse. I couldn’t get enough of rampaging through enemy castles with Yasuke once I upgraded a particularly overpowered legendary katana. Slashing away at enemies, ripping limbs off, and embarrassing massive samurai is always fun.

It’s a similar case for the parkour gameplay. It’s certainly more polished than in recent games, but it generally feels the same. Climbing around is fun, especially as the more agile Naoe, and she provides ample chance to quietly liberate bases and assassinate targets from the shadows. The towns and bases in the game are less height-focused than other Assassin’s Creed games, which actually makes traversal more fluid. You’re usually running across buildings rather than climbing endlessly.

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You’ll still get some gorgeous views from viewpoints.

Climbing is where the issues can arise, as they have since Altair’s debut. While parkour is smoother than in recent years, you’ll still get stuck on ledges or leap off buildings in the wrong direction for no discernible reason. The quality of the world design means the frustration is fewer and further between than Assassin’s Creed fans may be used to. Just don’t try to climb to a new viewpoint as Yasuke, as it’ll take you a while!

That’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows in a nutshell. For the most part it is more of the same. This isn’t a big revamp, nor are there any deep changes to the formula. However, it’s the best the series has been for a while. Fun combat, a pair of genuinely interesting protagonists, and a gorgeous recreation of 16th century Japan mean the series’s flaws are easier to overlook.

This review is based on a pre-launch build with a code provided by the publisher.