Ubisoft clearly has a hell of a lot riding on Assassin’s Creed Shadows. I feel like it really needed to do something to push the series forward with this entry to really move the needle. To be fair, the game probably has not only the best stealth, but the best combat in the series, which is an appreciable feat. But it’s also incredibly similar to the last few main entries and it shares many of their downsides. The game is gorgeous, often very fun to play, and has a surprisingly good story (for an AC game, anyway.) Anyone who has long since grown tired of the formula, however, won’t find much here to change their minds.
Although Assassin’s Creed Shadows has two protagonists, the female lead, Naoe, feels like she’s quite clearly the actual “main character.” The story opens up with the other lead, Diogo, taken as a slave by Portuguese missionaries to go meet with famous Sengoku-era Warlord Oda Nobunaga, who quickly takes a shine to him and makes him a samurai. After a fairly brief intro and tutorial, the game switches to Naoe, as her life changes due to the Oda clan attacking her home. Her father gives her a hidden blade and sends her to grab a hidden box, only for things to go awry and for a mysterious group to steal the box and kill her father. Naoe, naturally, embarks on a quest for vengeance against the group.
While this hook is very standard for the series, the story here is treated with a surprising amount of gravitas that hasn’t been present in some time. Naoe especially is well-developed, likable, and grounded, in stark contrast to how over-the-top and kind of cartoony recent protagonists such as Kassandra and Eivor were. There’s simply a ton of cinematic flair here that actually made me care more about the plot than any AC game has in an extremely long time. The lack of any overbearing present-day Animus plotline (it is there, but you won’t see it much) certainly helps things, as does the endearing cast of characters.
In terms of structure, though, it’s business as usual with Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The world map is huge and divided into different areas with levels assigned to them. You level up and are meant to venture to higher-levelled regions as the plot progresses (which hinges on assassinating key figures.) Once you reach a certain threshold, each area will scale two levels behind you, so you’ll never be totally over-levelled. You can swap between Naoe and Yasuke on the fly (although not while in combat or in a restricted area), but it took me over a dozen hours before I unlocked Yasuke. Naoe gets a ton of build-up compared to him, so it’s no wonder she feels like the actual lead.
Naoe and Yasuke’s dynamic will feel familiar to anyone who played the dev’s first AC game – Syndicate. The female lead is the stealth character, the male lead is the action one. Naoe is still very capable in terms of combat, of course, she just can’t overpower her enemies or take large amounts of damage like Yasuke. Conversely, Yasuke does not really work as a stealth character. He’s huge and makes a lot of noise while moving, so enemies tend to spot him. As such, he lacks stealth tools and doesn’t even have a silent assassination really. Assassinating an enemy with Yasuke tends to draw attention, so you’re meant to fight all the enemies that come running. He also doesn’t have Naoe’s grappling hook, so she’s your go-to for getting around.
The stealth, as I mentioned, is better than ever, but not by a wide margin or anything. You can go prone for the first time in the series, which makes a pretty notable difference. Naoe is much harder to see this way and you can even dodge roll while crawling without breaking your prone state. Darkness also influences your visibility, so Assassin’s Creed Shadows feels more like a stealth game than ever before. Naoe has a solid set of tools to aid with this, such as bells to attract enemy attention or smoke bombs to break their line of sight, but those are standard for the series.
As far as combat goes, Yasuke isn’t incredibly different than Eivor, save for the fact that his sprint can break doors and knock enemies over. He’s slower than Naoe and can’t climb nearly as well as she can, meaning that you might find yourself defaulting to her. I also really hope you like constant decapitation animations while playing him, as he’s just always cutting people’s heads off. There’s one animation where he cuts the enemy’s arms off followed by their head, which I thought was particularly gruesome and a stark contrast to how calm and good-natured Yasuke is in cutscenes.
What’s really different, though, is how even more emphasis has been placed on parrying and dodging. Enemy attacks flash one of three colours before striking. White means it’s a single hit you can parry, blue is a flurry where every attack must be parried, and red is an unblockable attack. If you parry the first two, enemies become vulnerable, allowing you to get some hits in. Doing a perfect dodge of red attacks will also accomplish this, though.
Enemies are very good at blocking, so attempting to button mash might not really get you anywhere, especially with Naoe. Yasuke has a much easier time accomplishing this. You’ll accrue mastery points as you play and these are used to enhance each protagonist’s skill tree, which can add some seriously major abilities, including moves for weapons and the like. For instance, Naoe can purchase a skill that lets her wrap her kusarigama’s chain around an enemy’s neck and then pull them down. Yasuke can get a move that breaks the enemy’s guard immediately. It’s not particularly deep combat, but it’s deep for an Assassin’s Creed game, at least.
Whether you’re sneaking around and pulling off assassination after assassination or just tearing enemies apart, Assassin’s Creed Shadows can be a lot of fun. But this is a massive game (completing a single region can easily take over 10 hours depending on how thorough you want to be,) so there’s some typical AC copypasta going on here. One of the main side activities are castles. You go in, find and kill a certain number of samurai, then you unlock a chest with a piece of legendary gear in it (oh yes, there’s levelled gear again.) These castles mostly feel interchangeable and they can get very old. With that said, cutting down foes and robbing the place blind is fun enough that you might be able to stomach it after it gets more stale.
If an alarm is triggered, the character you’re playing as becomes wanted. Once this happens, they’re hunted by guardians, which are strong enemies that can melt your health bar in a single hit. What’s interesting is that you become wanted throughout the entire region, so guards will attack on sight no matter what. This resets at the end of each season, which is a neat feature in and of itself. The environment changes based on which season it is, of course, so it’s cool to see how different the world looks. Snow can make you move much slower on your feet, though, so that needs to be kept in mind.
You’ll consistently be finding all sorts of materials (mostly through stealing,) used to upgrade weapons and improve your hideout. You actually place buildings yourself and even those can be upgraded. You’ll also find gear that scales with your level. Gear comes in multiple tiers, with legendary being the best, as they come with powerful perks that can lead to massive changes. One of my favourites is the armour that lets Yasuke block red attacks, making him even more dangerous. The issue, though, is that there’s no reason to really use non-legendary gear once you have some, so a lot of the loot feels pointless.
Other side activities include searching temples, exploring tombs for treasure, archery tests, and some boring quick-time events reminiscent of the meditation in Ghost of Tsushima (almost made it the whole review without mentioning that game, didn’t I?) The rewards here are knowledge points that raise your overall knowledge level which determines what abilities or passives you can learn. It’s a solid system, but it doesn’t help the open-world bloat issue. Plus, there’s just so much space on the map that isn’t used for anything. It’s typical, but game worlds just don’t need to be this big and padded out.
That’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ biggest problem and one it shares with the previous three games – it’s needlessly large. A lot of people are just going to get bored before the credits roll because of the samey, repetitive world. It helps a lot that the gameplay and story are as high quality as they are, but if you weren’t big on the last few games, you’re not going to find anything profoundly different. I think this is a perfectly enjoyable game that I’ve had a good time dumping hours into, but I was hoping that Ubisoft would learn some lessons, especially considering how much better the world and exploration in Star Wars Outlaws was. Still, if you’ve always wanted a Sengoku-era AC game, this one more than gets the job done. As long as you don’t get sick of it early on.
Assassin's Creed Shadows: Huge and with the best stealth and action the series has probably ever seen, Assassin's Creed Shadows is an engaging game that can't quite shed the issues the series has been saddled with in recent years. – Andrew Farrell
