Assassin's Creed Shadows Review

Ever since the beginning of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed franchise, fans have been clamoring for a particular setting. While we got to experience a variety of historical settings over the past two decades, all well-realized, there was one locale at the top of players' minds – feudal Japan. It seemed like it would be a perfect match for the mix of stealth and action gameplay and the pinnacle of a ninja-style experience. Alas, while Ubisoft waited, other franchises delivered their takes on the setting in rapid succession, with the very recent games such as Rise of the Ronin and Ghost of Tsushima. As Assassin's Creed Shadows finally brings players the historical Japan they've been hoping for, what was once a unique dream has become a surprisingly oversaturated reality. The title still delivers on its core gameplay with a few interesting tweaks, but it's been beaten to the punch a little bit.

Before entering the new title, players are presented with the new Animus Hub. This Call of Duty-style launcher allows players to select which of the recent AC games they would like to launch, and it also hosts some currencies that can be collected and redeemed on various in-game rewards, as well as information on the game's modern-day storyline. The modern-day stuff, despite being so poor for a long time, remains. However, it has been relegated to the background, so there's no actual gameplay involved like there was in AC Valhalla, and it pops up so rarely that you can easily forget about it, other than timed mini quests on the map.

Shadows takes players to the 1500s, and stars Yasuke, a man who arrives in Japan with religious missionaries from Portugal, and unexpectedly finds himself gaining favour with a local powerful lord Obu Nobunaga. He lets Yasuke join his ranks and trains him to become a powerful samurai, eventually joining him during conquests across Japan. The second main star of this story is Naoe, a young woman who has been battle-trained by her father to be a protector of her village. But when the village is one day attacked by Nobunaga's forces, her father is killed by a group of masked strangers, who also take his mysterious box. Naoe survives, and pledges to hunt down these masked enemies, and retrieve her father's box, whatever it may contain. She also acquires the strange wrist blade device that her father carried. Later, through a series of events, the paths of Yasuke and Naoe eventually cross, and after having a heart-to-heart, they agree to work together to navigate the politics and clans of the land, and achieve their goals – whether they are justice, revenge, or just keeping your word.

While the most recent Assassin's Creed Mirage was a return to the more focused and smaller-scale Assassin's Creed, Shadows brings the series back to a bigger scope. Though thankfully not as tediously long as Valhalla, the latest entry will still clock in at 30+ hours, as the duo of protagonists explore the large in-game world and work their way through eliminating each of the main masked targets. Surprisingly, the game mostly shies away from delving into the Creed mythos, and instead often poses philosophical style conversations between the two protagonists and the scenarios they encounter. The opening hours are a bit cumbersome in their pacing and poorly structured for thematic cohesion, featuring time skips and uninteresting flashback missions. Only Naoe is playable until you reach a certain story mission – which, depending on how much you explore, could be over 6 hours; it would have made more sense to unlock Yasuke much earlier.

There's been some controversy around the fact that Yasuke is a black man, and the game itself does directly address this early-on, but it's not a central theme. His sheer size also causes civilians to either bow or stand back and stare, but the game skirts by without pushing anything more edgy. As a character he is formidable and strong-willed, and the voice acting is solid. On the other hand, Naoe struggles to establish herself. From either being very mopey or easy to anger, it takes a very long time for her personality to evolve at all, and she isn't an enjoyable protagonist to be around. Her dialogue lines and voice acting can also be notably rough at times, especially in the opening hours. She just has a strange vibe that doesn't really seem like it fits in the setting or the story.

As for the overall narrative itself, it's predictable – you get entangled in local troubles, chase quests and speak to tons of different characters, on your way to eliminating each target spread across the different regions. Occasionally, there are dialogue and even story choices to make, which do have some immediate and longer term outcomes. Interestingly, Shadows features a new "canonical" option, which basically removes all choices and lets the story play out as the writers intended.

The game world is suitably large, and is split into different regions that feature different visual flare, landmarks, and required character levels to prevent players from venturing too far off course. Still, there will be lots of travel time, as the game insists on spreading out quests quite far apart. Players can call upon their horse at any time, and strangely enough the function to follow the road automatically has been removed – you can only deploy the visual guidance. The map is nicely varied, from some large lakes and smaller rivers, to the mountainous terrain and open valleys. It's an expectedly colorful world for the setting, with plenty of greenery and trees of all shades dotting the landscape.

The presentation gains further variety thanks to the seasons system, alongside time of day. Progressing through the story changes the world over time, from winter to spring, summer, fall, and winter again. This changes the visuals of the landscape, and even details like what clothing the civilians are wearing; different regions are affected in specific ways, with more snow at higher elevations. The visuals are shown off with the classic camera sweeps when you climb to synchronization spots (where you don't have to press a button anymore), which still act as fast travel points. These sync locations are often notably distant, or located within hostile castles, making reaching them an unexpectedly more challenging process (lest you just choose to sprint past all the enemies). So instead there are new hideout locations, which add much more flexibility to your fast travel options, but can only be unlocked for a fairly high amount of in-game currency, making for an interesting dilemma.

As mentioned, the game likes to spread out its main quests, and quickly escalates the level requirements for venturing into new areas of the map. As such, you'll have to partake in a variety of optional activities to earn more experience and hopefully good loot. Sadly, the side quests are a bit generic in Shadows – the vast majority ask you to either assassinate entire groups of criminal clan leaders (also spread far across the map), or just randomly kill bandits around the major towns. Story-focused quests are rare, and often forgettable in both their events and gameplay. Optional collectibles include finding codex pages, praying at shrines, or sneaking up to serene moments in nature, such as two red foxes playing in the grass, and sketching a sumi-e drawing.

Just like its recent predecessors, the game offers players a free-form approach to exploration during quests – you get a few clues, but beyond that it's up to you to try and find the spot. If following clues is not your forte, which can easily add hours to the game, the Guided mode is still available to provide the classic objective markers. But if you do want a challenge or higher immersion, Shadows adds a new Scout system for non-Guided players, which lets you ping map areas to reveal them and see if your quest destination is in this area. The number of scouts is limited and can be replenished with cash; scouts are also used to secure supply loot in some castles, which cannot be carried out by hand – it is delivered to your homestead when seasons change.

The homestead is a base for the protagonists and their allies, but is a rather undercooked idea. In a special build interface, you can place buildings on your lot of land, and upgrade them a few times. You can even place various decorations such as trees and pathways, which are found as loot or bought from vendors. But it seems a bit unnecessary – you rarely need to return to this home base, except to upgrade your equipment every few hours of leveling. Otherwise, the homestead just becomes a series of large empty buildings with a few NPCs / story characters walking about, and your only reason to visit them is to access a menu from a table or to chat with them briefly about something generic. The idea is decent, but rather shallow, and focuses more on visual customizations than offering worthwhile gameplay functions like perhaps AC Brotherhood did with its Guild.

Exploring this world with two protagonists brings a few new aspects to the gameplay formula. This isn't the first time that the series has attempted this as fans will recall Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, but that title offered a largely similar experience regardless of who you took control of. In Shadows, switching between Yasuke and Naoe is frequent, and often required. Some quests can only be completed by one of them, and the game often throws in a choice of who to play as during missions, even sometimes multiple times per mission. That's because the gameplay style is so notably different between them.

With Naoe, you get the more traditional third-person AC experience that focuses on stealth. She gets Eagle Vision, which lets her see all enemies in the vicinity (the bird itself is not used, so no aerial view this time around). This makes stealth fairly trivial and a matter of patience; silent takedowns are still one-hit kills as long as you are within the same character level range as the enemies – though the option still exists to allow all assassinations to be instant regardless of level. Naoe can also scale almost any surface very quickly, and for ledges (of which there are plenty in Japan), she can just deploy a grapple hook and climb up, bypassing manual climbing. The game doesn't really try to limit your climbing ability by impassable obstacles or spiked walls, so for the vast majority of the game, Naoe will be your go-to. Both characters can lay down and hide in shorter grass, or in shallow water.

A new stealth element also comes in the form of a visibility meter, affected by time of day and lights – so players can go around breaking or putting out candles and other light sources (as in, the titular "shadows" mechanic). It's an interesting addition, but doesn't seem to be a good fit in an AC game. The constant visibility meter at the top of the screen is also initially confusing, as you assume it's an enemy vision meter; after a few hours, you might just stop caring about this light-source mechanic altogether. And as enemy AI continues to be easy to trick and systematically lure and eliminate, the more dynamic stealth design seems at odds with worrying about standing near a candle. A more fun addition is being able to takedown enemies through shoji doors, and the return of typical gadgets such as distraction bells and smoke bombs.

Where Naoe does falter is direct combat – while extremely quick, she relies on parrying rather than blocking damage, has less healing capacity and doesn't deal as much damage. As such, for a lot of action packed scenarios, especially missions where combat is prominent, Yasuke is the best choice. This man can tank damage like there is no tomorrow, has more healing and health, and his special attacks are quicker to build up and use. It makes the game more into a brawler, with satisfying attacks and offense-focused gameplay. On the other hand, he cannot climb nearly as fast or as well, has no Eagle Vision, can't do assassinations from above, sneaks around loudly, and cannot use certain elements of the environment – such as tightropes. Instead, he can just run through doors, so that's something.

The two gameplay experiences are vastly different, and you may find yourself gravitating to Naoe and just avoiding combat. That isn't to say that playing as Yasuke is less entertaining – he is just not as versatile overall. But when you know a battle is coming, the big man delivers on his combat skills and brutal takedown animations. Outside of missions though, because there is so much inherent exploration and climbing in an AC game, Naoe may become the de facto option. Perhaps the most annoying part of the whole system is having to go into a menu and then sit through a loading screen to switch characters. While this was also the approach in AC Syndicate – that was a near decade ago, and by now we should be able to swap between protagonists faster. At least the game offers to switch characters when fast traveling and during missions.

Both characters have their main katana weapon, as well as two more melee weapons, and two ranged ones. The melee weapons (Naginata, Kanabo, Tanto, Kusarigama) offer short/medium/longer distances and a differing feel, while the ranged options include a quiet bow with various arrow types, or a loud gunpowder rifle for massive damage. The weapons are unique to each character, as is their equipment. You will find new equipment in loot chests, for sale at vendors, as well as a reward from quests. The game isn't loot-heavy, with just a clothing and head gear slot, along with an accessory; you get a steady stream of new gear, and rarely need to buy something. Thanks to the upgrade system, you can use resources to improve your existing items to make them match your character level, helping you hold on to rare gear and keep it effective for a long time. Gear can also come with different rarities and can be engraved with some massive, passive boosts to your abilities or stats. The engravings are cheap and easy to swap as well, allowing for a lot of flexibility and some potentially overpowered builds.

As long as you keep your gear up to current level, on Normal difficulty the combat is not very challenging. Enemies come in a few basic varieties, but for the most part you just have to dodge the unblockable attacks that glow red, and parry or block those that glow blue. Good timing on dodges leaves enemies glowing yellow and vulnerable. Enemies often have armor, which may need to be broken first before you damage their health. It's all fairly basic design, and it works, but can become repetitive; still, it remains entertaining and visceral as long as you take on level-appropriate enemies. Missions also have a surprising amount of checkpoints, so death (desynchronization) is not overly punishing.

Just as the equipment is separate between the two protagonists, so are their skill trees. While you earn experience and skill points for both characters, each has a skill tree for their gameplay speciality (stealth vs combat) as well as each of their weapons. The new skills include typical passive improvements, as well as new special abilities that can be used in combat. It's probably a good idea to stick with one or two weapons, as there aren't enough skill points to go around trying to improve each tree. Things remain flexible here as well, with the ability to reset and re-spec the skillpoints. However, the game has a weird soft-block mechanic for unlocking higher tiers of the skill trees in the form of Knowledge Rank. To increase this rank, you have to visit specific temples and do a quick collectible run within them; it seems like unnecessary busywork.

As touched on earlier, Shadows arrives at a time when the feudal Japan setting has been thoroughly explored in recent years, and thus comparisons to games such as Ghost of Tsushima and Rise of the Ronin are inevitable (not to mention the upcoming Ghost of Yotei). While the game features a highly detailed and large world, and it is immersive to traverse through, it's not very engaging. Going on long rides on a boat, or your horse, reveals some wonderful vistas and the art design is strong, but there's often just not much to do on the way. The different seasons and times of day does create some pleasant visuals, but from a purely technical standpoint, Ghost of Tsushima was probably better.

The game also continues to struggle with facial animations and their quality, an area that AC Valhalla also disappointed in, despite making the franchise's debut on the current console generation. Even the protagonists look very stiff and have unnatural expressions, eye and mouth movements. There seems to be little improvement in this area since Valhalla, and it's starting to become a stark contrast compared to the quality of the natural environments. We already touched on the uneven quality of the main voice actors, and that continues into the rest of the cast. The music choices are also strange and never quite fit the scene when they kick in during pivotal moments. There is also an absolute ton of loading screens, even though they are brief, in everything from mid-cutscenes to transitions between dialogues.

Performance is steady on Xbox Series X. The game offers a Quality and Performance visual mode settings and ray tracing support; on Quality the game looks decently clean and the framerate never noticeably dips below 30fps. On Performance mode the visuals are somewhat subdued but the higher 60fps rates may be preferred by some players for the combat. Uniquely and unfortunately, while the game does feature the typical Balanced mode, it's restricted to users who have a high-framerate display or TV (120hz/240hz).

Assassin's Creed Shadows finally delivers the long-awaited feudal Japan setting, and while it makes for a competent entry within the series, the overall gaming landscape has changed and this particular time and place in history is no longer as unique as it once could have been. Despite a weak start, the game eventually settles into its comfort zone of typical third-person stealth and combat, and with two vastly different protagonists, it creates for some new mechanics. If only it was more convenient to swap between the two heroes. The world is large and the natural environments are once again wonderfully realized, if not particularly interactive outside of the scripted content. The technical visuals are decently impressive, though there is much room for improvement in character facial capture. The RPG elements have been mostly streamlined, without too many choices or loot to worry about. Fans of the franchise will be satisfied, but there's not much here to reinvigorate the series halfway into a new decade.