Assassin's Creed Shadows Review: From the Shadows, a New Creed Emerges

The Assassin’s Creed series has travelled the globe over decades of game releases, with stories set in the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, Victorian London, and everything in between. While side games in the series ventured to China and India, the main series has never explored Asia.

For years, fans have clamoured for the series to venture into Japan, and at last, Ubisoft has listened. Enter Assassin’s Creed Shadows, a game that finally transports you to Japan and once again places you in the shoes of two distinctly different characters: the might and sheer force of Yasuke and the more elegant, nimble Naoe.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a game that seeks to demonstrate its lovingly crafted design, from the depth of its world to the intricate details of its locations and the way the narrative unfolds. Assassin's Creed Shadows marks a return to the open world, but does it truly broaden the series’ horizons, or is this leap of faith misaligned?

While the world is beautiful, the odds are stacked against you from the opening minutes of the game.

Like many people who have been gaming for a few decades now, Assassin’s Creed has likely grown up alongside you. I have fond memories of the series, from Altair to Ezio in the early games, and the Frye twins and back to its roots with Basim. The franchise has travelled the globe; while the Middle East and Italy have been the main settings for most of the series, it has always been one that explores diverse perspectives.

Consequently, each entry in the series tends to evoke a unique personal interest. Personally, my favourite historical periods are the Medieval Era, Rome, and the Victorian Age. Thus, for me, Assassin’s Creed is a franchise that offers me a great deal.

The franchise has evolved over the years, transitioning from a game set in a single city to one that encompasses an entire country. From the original Assassin’s Creed to Syndicate, with notable exceptions like Black Flag and Rogue, the series primarily focused on a few small regions or just one city. This approach shifted with Origins, as the series moved away from the elements that initially made it vibrant but had begun to feel worn out.

Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla transformed the series from a game about being an assassin in tight city streets to a sprawling open-world experience. I played Odyssey and Valhalla back-to-back, and when I returned to play Origins, I felt completely burnt out on the series. With Mirage, the franchise came back closer to its roots, but considerable damage had been done. While the game received a positive response from fellow critics, it was evident that the franchise was beginning to stutter.

Now, with Assassin's Creed Shadows, we have Ubisoft’s big play to bring everyone back. Shadows is a blend of, Ubisoft hopes, everything that players liked about each part of the series, combined into one. The game is an open world yet divided into regions to maintain a smaller, more intimate feel, in a positive sense. The dual character role has returned, and this time, they truly feel like two distinct characters. As a result, the assassin gameplay is back in the form of Naoe, while Yasuke provides the more robust heavy combat that we witnessed in Valhalla and Odyssey.

The question is: does Assassin’s Creed Shadow land successfully, or does it falter?

Shadows steps into the light to give us two genuinely interesting and unique characters to play.

The game starts with you walking through the street, flanked by your Portuguese priests, and it's clearly early on that you are the outsiders. This is your first chance to play as Diogo, a name given to you rather than one you chose yourself. You will then meet Oda Nobunaga, one of these individuals, and during the opening scene, set the stage for Yasuke's side of the story.

Next, the game jumps forward six months as Oda Nobunaga initiates his attack, alongside thousands of soldiers, but more importantly you. Yasuke has clearly spent the last 6 months at Nobunaga's side, and in doing so, he's become very much the right-hand man. This marks your first real opportunity to play as Yasuke, serving as a basic tutorial on his mechanics and generally how the combat in Assassin's Creed Shadows operates. This section is brief but gives you a glimpse into what Yasuke is all about.

Naoe, on the other hand, represents the polar opposite of what Yasuke embodies. She is fleeing from trouble, the very trouble you just started five minutes ago. Unlike our time with Yasuke, Naoe’s initial adventure is significantly longer, providing a proper introduction to the game while establishing her story and serving as the first tutorial. You will quickly feel at home as an Assassin as the stage is set for Naoe’s journey in these lands that she considers home.

This approach is unusual for an Assassin’s Creed game. However, it is the first instance in which the two playable characters are positioned on opposite sides of the narrative. The pair are clearly not aligned from the outset of the game. This aspect causes the game to falter slightly as it struggles to maintain the initial tension of having two characters juxtaposed against one another.

To avoid spoilers, we shall leave it there. Clarity will emerge later in the game, but that does not prevent this section from feeling somewhat disjointed initially. You will have ample opportunity to play as Yasuke, yet Naoe will be your principal character for the majority of the first 15 to 20 hours.

The beginning of the game is divided into four parts: the introduction of Yasuke and Naoe, an expanded section featuring Naoe, and a transition into the open-world segment where you can freely roam as Naoe. Finally, without revealing any spoilers, the fourth major part of the game, where Yasuke becomes fully playable.

Assassin's Creed Shadows plays its story beats safe, doing what worked well in the past without reinventing the wheel.

Over the years, Assassin’s Creed games have become long. Origins, Valhalla, and Odyssey were all 80+ hours long. While Mirage came in at about 20 hours, Shadows brings it back to a much higher play count. It took us around 45 hours to complete the vast majority of the story content in Assassin's Creed Shadows. Taking into account the side quests and exploring, it will clock in at around 60 to 70. While much longer than Mirage, it does at least keep us away from the dreaded 100 hours.

When it comes to the way the story is presented, or at least how you advance through it, we find ourselves firmly in the Odyssey and Valhalla territory. Shadows expands the narrative slightly to encompass much more than merely a tale of eliminating a group of “secret leaders.” While Shadows still has its own version of an elimination list, it adds a layer of complexity to it in the form of location hints as to where each person is.

This system was somewhat of an early pain point for me. On the surface, you're presented with a series of characters to engage with, and the quest related to them provides a set of instructions. These instructions vary but can be distilled into a simple formula: Person X is located in this region, west of this area, and within this temple/castle, etc. This may sound straightforward, but you must have unlocked parts of the map to view the latter two sets of instructions. You'll need to do some work for people first, which does make the clues seem more like a breadcrumb trail, rather than just bumping into a leader on a road like in previous games.

However, this scouting system is one of the key new aspects of Shadows. The game sets you up with a hideout early into Naoe's story. Featuring scouts that you can employ to explore an area of the world map and reveal NPC locations. You can utilise up to four scouts per in-game season, and you may deploy all four scouts on a single search; however, they will enter cooldown until the next season. Employing more scouts expands the search area but also restricts the amount of scouting you can undertake. We discovered that you can complete two main story quest chains per season, so using all four scouts when you are uncertain about a location isn’t an awful idea.

The scouts do have another purpose. As you play, you’ll collect resources, but when you attack major settlements, you can spot crates filled with resources that require the use of two scouts to transport them back to base. You will receive these resources at the beginning of the following season. It’s not mandatory, and if the hideout doesn't pique your interest, bypassing these is advisable.

Regarding the remainder of the story, everything adheres to a similar pattern. All the side quests are divided into rings of characters. One might be a ring of essential NPCs in your hideout, where you can undertake their “loyalty quests,” so to speak. Others may comprise a separate group of individuals you need to eliminate.

Not all are merely “go kill these people” quests, thankfully. One of the side missions requires you to seek out the children of someone you eliminated in a story segment. As you gather information about each of the kids, you’ll discover whether they will seek revenge for their father's death. If they will not, you can choose to spare them. While you won’t really deduce this yourself, the game will clearly indicate that “they will not avenge him,” though you can kill them regardless. Your character will comment on the fact that they were “different from their siblings."

However, you are free to do as you wish. The main story progresses basically with two leaders at a time, with the deaths of the first two unlocking the game fully. Subsequent pairs are found in each region as the story moves towards a conclusion.

A beautiful representation of Japan, let down by some clunky world traversal and hallmark tower climbing.

When you play an open-world game, the world itself becomes a main character. From Baghdad and Victorian London to Paris and Egypt, Assassin's Creed has been set in some incredible locations, and that’s no different here. Shadows takes place in Japan, specifically in the central to central-east area of the map. You’ll visit both Kyoto and Osaka on your journey as you explore nine regions of the map.

Your adventure begins in Settsu, and you are largely free to explore as you wish thereafter, although the game will guide you to Yamashiro and beyond afterwards. However, the game does not prevent you from exploring the world early and unlocking locations. However, the higher-level enemies in the region might have something to say about it.

It’s a pretty straightforward, open-world adventure. The region of Japan we play in is glorious to travel through, with dotted camps, temples, and castles. While I hate to compare it to something else, what Assassin's Creed Shadows isn’t is Ghost of Tsushima. While they are both effectively Samurai games set in Japan, they take very different approaches.

Although the exploration in the game is generally handled reasonably well, it is not without its frustrations. As always, the primary method for unlocking new areas of the fog of war is to climb a tower and synchronise with it. The issue lies in the fact that several of these towers are located within enemy strongholds, which respawn with enemies each season. So, if you fast-travel to a location to get closer to an objective, you must sneak away to avoid detection and deal with early aggression. This is manageable on the lower difficulty levels, but at higher settings, it becomes quite tedious.

Shadows doesn’t attempt to reinvent the Assassin’s Creed open-world playbook. There are not as many collectables; in fact, you could argue there are none in the traditional sense. However, you’ll traverse the world, uncover the map, discover new quests, assist people, and eliminate some foes.

Additionally, there’s the terrain itself. Shadows makes it clear early on that this isn’t an AC game where you can parkour up any surface. This region of Japan is quite hilly, and I often found myself running aimlessly up a cliff face in search of a handhold, only to slip on a patch of terrain and tumble down.

Initially, this frustrated me significantly, as Naoe is a traditional Assassin’s Creed main character of old. That said, Yasuke is not; he is less adept at parkour compared to Naoe, which likely explains the rationale behind restricting your climbing abilities. It might frustrate people, but it's interesting to see the game acknowledge the fact that Yasuke is massive.

At first, I felt like I was fighting the traversal system to get to where I wanted to go. Don't get me wrong, having to get to a location when you have zero fast travel points is frustrating at first, but it's how the game wants you to play. When you start using the Pathfinder system while on your horse, you'll find the travel system makes a lot more sense. The Pathfinder won't travel for you; it will set you on a path on the road that you can follow. Doing so, you'll find it paths you past side quests and areas of interest, working as a distraction from the critical path.

When the combat starts, Assassin's Creed Shadows doesn't hold back.

One thing that Assassin's Creed Shadows does well is finally giving us two unique characters to control. In previous games, the two characters have been either exactly the same, just male and female, or two unique characters, but one has combat stats, and one has stealth. See the Frye twins for an example of the latter.

Here, however, we technically get that, but we also get two very physically different characters. In Naoe, we have a pretty typical Assassin’s Creed assassin. She is fast, uses smaller, quicker weapons and works best when working from the shadows. She can parkour up higher gaps, has more escapes, and can get out of a tight spot.

Yasuke, however, is quite different. He lacks speed and even lacks parkour ability (he can still perform it, but his range is considerably lower). Yasuke compensates for this with his damage output and his skill set. While both characters can wield a katana as one of their weapons, Yasuke additionally has access to a spear, a bow, and a gun. The latter two are significant game-changers, because while he can’t stealthily eliminate foes like Naoe can, he can take them out from much greater distances. Although Yasuke can still execute stealth kills, it’s a much more… brutal affair.

On a systems level, Assassin's Creed Shadows adheres to typical RPG conventions. We have a talent system for each weapon and playstyle, levels within them, gear to upgrade, and new items to acquire. It doesn’t do anything to reinvent the wheel; it is very much more of the same as previous titles. There are four tiers or rarity, and items have a level. The general rule is, each rarerity basically adds a level, so a white level 15 item, is better than a legendary level 10 item. Legendary items will have "bonus stats," which will add an effect like "adds a bleed to the target," which can make them worth upgrading or keeping hold of.

Given this different style, Yasuke won’t appeal to everyone. His kit is distinctive, and both characters possess their own unique content, mostly in the form of specific Knowledge quests (Yasuke can engage in sword training and mounted bow training, while Naoe focuses on medication or tackles parkour courses).

Yasuke is a great character; however, the game handles him poorly early on, which doesn't help ground him in the game. While I believe part of this stems from my preference for the stealth style (I only used Evie in AC Syndicate), I also think there’s an issue with how the story is conveyed. The narrative begins with Yasuke, showing his perspective and how he is perceived by the locals and even his captors (it is made clear that Yasuke is a slave to the Portuguese). While Yasuke clearly progress in the 6 months we don't see in the time skip, the game makes it clear that Yasuke is just a puppet to the Shogun.

Then, your initial time with Yasuke ends, and you are thrown over to Naoe. You learn her story, her past, her tragedy, and you want to get revenge for her. A lot of this is done via flashbacks, which are done well and never outstay their welcome. But what you realise is, five hours in, you're still playing as Naoe. When Yasuke does come into the story, I felt it took me another 10 hours before I really felt like Yasuke really came into his own, at which point I was nearly done with the story.

Yasuke will come into the game later on, as he also gets his own flashback sections and dedicated story sections. It changed my opinion of how he was handled, though I feel like I'd have liked to have these sections come a little earlier in the game. It would be very easy for someone looking to play more than just the main story could be well over 30 hours in before ever really progressing Yasuke's story/backstory anymore.

With that in mind, and since the rolling credits, I feel like Yasuke is much more a part of my gameplay. I will tackle certain side stories as him and roam the world as him to see how it all feels. However, the way the early story unfolds makes Yasuke feel like a side character. This seems clearly intentional, given how the two characters interact in the story; I’m not sure there was an easy way for Ubisoft to handle it otherwise.

Yet, it felt disconnected. After the initial period with him, he is basically forgotten for a major portion of the story, only to be thrust back into your lap when you’ve already built a bond with Naoe.

Assassin’s Creed Steps out of the Shadows

Assassin’s Creed Shadows truly feels like a game Ubisoft has held back for as long as possible to deliver the best experience. By removing the season pass, forgoing an early access period, and ensuring a Steam release, along with Steam Deck verification. Ubisoft has thrown everything, including the kitchen sink, at Assassin's Creed Shadows, and, for the most part, they have succeeded.

Assassin's Creed Shadows successfully bridges the old and new Assassin’s Creed design philosophies. It retains the open-world scale of recent titles while reintroducing stealth in a way that feels meaningful once more. This establishes it as one of the most well-balanced entries in the series in years.

In fact, it made me want to play Mirage, a game I overlooked at the time. The series is capable of telling unique stories, and when time and attention are dedicated to the games, we receive something that exudes the levels of passion and hard work that we just don’t see enough of in the AAA space.

Assassin's Creed Shadows faced numerous delays, but in the end, we received a better product because of it. I didn’t encounter many bugs, no crashes, and very few issues generally. All of this is based on the review build of the game, prior to the Day One patch version that everyone else will play.

I think it’s unfair to assert that Assassin’s Creed is back, because the series never really left. But Assassin’s Creed Shadow feels like a series that took a detour with Mirage after stumbling with previous entries. Then, with Shadow, it returned to the format, but it was more refined than before.