Assassin’s Creed Shadows is, if you count every spin-off and mobile game, the 31st entry in Ubisoft’s long-running historical open-world franchise about sneaky assassins and secret conspiracies. While I consider myself a fan of the series and was excited to play a new Assassin’s Creed adventure set in feudal Japan, I wondered if Ubisoft would be able to meaningfully shake things up this go around. The short answer is yes, things have indeed been shaken up. The longer answer is, well, the rest of this review.
Launching March 20, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a third-person open-world RPG set in 16th-century Japan during a time when the various clans were fighting for power and control of the country. This was a time when powerful lords ruled over chunks of the island nation and used Samurai to maintain order. It was also a time when outsiders, like religious missionaries and foreign traders, were arriving and bringing about big changes in Japan, including the introduction of gunpowder and new belief systems. It’s a perfect time period for an Assassin’s Creed game, as Ubisoft is able to weave the franchise’s signature conspiracies and alternate history into the real chaos and strife of the era.
But unlike most Assassin’s Creed games, Shadows lets you play through all this historical drama as two very different characters: The Black samurai Yasuke and the young female shinobi Naoe.
As a powerful and deadly samurai warrior, Yasuke is able to bash down doors and take on large groups of enemies using big, heavy swords and clubs. He plays a lot like the protagonists found in AC Odyssey and Valhalla. Meanwhile, Naoe is a sneaky and agile assassin who can take out a whole castle full of baddies without being spotted. She plays more like the main characters found in older Assassin’s Creed games like AC2 and Unity. And while both can sneak and fight in a pinch, there are limitations.
For example, Yasuke can’t walk across ropes hanging across gaps. If he tries, he’ll snap them and fall. And Naoe can’t break down locked doors, so she’ll need to sneak around or find a key. These differences made it so much fun to hop between them, and helped me change things up when I started getting bored. Tired of sneaking around? Switch to Yasuke and take out a whole army by yourself. Fighting people getting stale? Play as Naoe and parkour your way to sync points or solve traversal puzzles out in the world.
While they might fight and explore differently, both of them are working together to get revenge against the powerful while hopefully bringing peace to Japan. How these two eventually start working together and why that’s extremely awkward is something I’ll leave for players to experience themselves. But once the two of them team up and start putting together their own league of assassins, I really enjoyed their dynamic. Their interactions get a lot of screen time in Shadows and the way their connection develops over time—eventually leading to a strong friendship—is one of my favorite parts of the game. I like how, despite everything, these two warriors smile, laugh, and support each other and their ragtag found family.
Yasuke in particular might end up being my favorite Assassin’s Creed protagonist since Bayek in Origins. He’s a noble, kind, and determined man who wants to help people and do the right thing. I found myself rooting for him and as the game revealed his history, what he has lost, and his larger connections to the Assassin’s Creed universe, I became totally invested in his story. I’d say more but those details are under embargo. (Other stuff under embargo: Some truly exciting lore connections to the Assassins and Templars that superfans will be happy to encounter.)
Suffice it to say, Yasuke is great and his race and history play a big part in the game’s story of assassins, lords, samurai, invaders, and war.
Unfortunately, the way the story is structured in Shadows means that between the bombastic first 12 hours and the exciting final 10 hours, there’s a stretch that feels slower and less gripping. You spend a lot of time between the opening and closing hours repeating the same basic loop of locating a shadowy target—part of a larger, powerful group—and then completing a few quests before assassinating them. Some of these quests, like one involving Naoe having to blend in at a fancy tea party, are memorable and unique. But most of the time they boil down to “Go somewhere, grab something or kill someone, repeat.” They aren’t bad or annoying quests per se, but you’ll forget you even accomplished many of them a day after playing the game.
Part of the problem is that Ubisoft designed most quests to be playable as either Naoe or Yasuke. This is nice for players who prefer playing as one over the other, but it also means that a lot of these quests have to be completable for two very different kinds of characters, which has the effect of making them less distinct.
On the flipside, when Ubisoft does lean into having two characters that play differently, it makes for some awesome adventures. Some main quests offer you a choice, such as: Do you want to sneak in as Naoe and take out snipers, or do you want to fight on the ground as Yasuke? Other quests, though not enough of them, let you play as both characters, each doing completely different actions that ultimately connect together into one bigger event.
It’s a shame that most quests and side quests don’t take advantage of Naoe and Yasuke’s dynamic, but I also understand that Ubisoft was likely focused on not forcing people to play as either character too much. Still, when Ubisoft does lean into the dynamic it creates some standout moments.
For a series that has always been about sneaking around places, it’s sort of wild to realize that for a long time, you couldn’t even crouch manually in these games. (That feature was added in Unity.) And hiding in shadows or going prone has never been possible before! That finally changes with Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which has the best stealth gameplay in the series.
Sure, I do miss some of the social stealth mechanics featured in past games—like blending in with a crowd or hiding on a bench with NPCs—but being able to finally crawl around in dark areas and not be spotted makes up for it.
At one point early on I was infiltrating a castle in an effort to kill its two powerful samurai and loot the rare chest hidden inside. I jumped down from a roof to take out a target and a person I didn’t see before started to spot me. I panicked, but then remembered I could go prone, which I did before crawling into the shadows nearby. Thanks to the new feature, I was safe. The guard lost interest, and I could whistle to draw my target into the shadows and do my dark business. If you’ve not played the Assassin’s Creed games but have played other stealth games, this might not sound notable. But this is all new for Assassin’s Creed, and I’m so happy it’s here and works so well.
Another big new feature in Shadows is how dynamic and destructible the world is compared to the more static sandboxes featured in past games. While playing as Yasuke and ransacking another castle (there are a lot of castles to invade and loot in Shadows), I got into a fight with a few guards inside a building. As we swung our weapons around and I powerfully kicked some of the baddies away, the room we were standing in was destroyed. Props were demolished, paper-thin walls and doors were blasted apart, and even candles and lanterns were knocked over and extinguished, making the whole area darker.
This destruction isn’t just cosmetic. It can impact gameplay in big ways. At one point I was sneaking around some bushes as Naoe and screwed up my plan, suddenly having to fight a guard in close-quarters combat. It was still early in the game so I hadn’t unlocked all of my nifty abilities and upgraded my gear much—and yes, this is another RPG Assassin’s Creed game with skill trees, XP, lootable weapons, upgrades, and passive abilities—and started swinging my sword wildly. I killed the guard but, in the process, chopped away the bushes I was hiding in, leaving myself completely exposed. I had no place to hide as more guards showed up and was forced to make a swift exit to a nearby roof using Naoe’s handy-dandy grappling hook.
The dynamic world coupled with the new stealth options makes Shadows feel different from most other Assassin’s Creed games. Yes, you are still climbing towers and marking enemies using Eagle Vision (though Yasuke can’t do that) in a historical setting. This is still Assassin’s Creed at its core. But now the world reacts to your actions in a way it didn’t before, and you can sneak around it in ways assassins in the past games could only dream of, unlocking new options for completing missions or taking out pesky targets.
Something that annoys me is when devs and publishers claim that the digital worlds in their games are characters unto themselves, when in reality the setting is just another big city or forest. However, in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the world really does feel like a third character with an important role to play in the adventure of Yasuke and Naoe. A gorgeous, massive world with a big ugly pimple in the middle of its face that I’ll get to in a moment.
The big reason the Japan of Shadows stands out and is so incredible is that Ubisoft has implemented changing seasons in the game. During the winter you’ll encounter lots of snow, blizzards, and frozen rivers. During the spring, trees will blossom, thunderstorms will happen more often, and those frozen rivers will be thawed. Summer, on the other hand, brings bright sunny days, lots of green fields, and more buzzing bugs. And then fall changes the map into a sea of orange and yellow leaves and grey, stale skies.
It’s genuinely impressive how much the map changes in Shadows, and even more impressive that these changes happen dynamically and aren’t directly tied into story progress or quests. This occasionally leads to some weird moments, like characters talking outside in a giant thunderstorm or someone lying down on a roof and disappearing into snow during a cutscene, but 90 percent of the time the dynamic seasons work perfectly, periodically changing how the entire game feels.
Seasons also change how the game plays. During the spring you might be able to easily and quickly run through a part of the world that, later on, is covered in knee-deep snow that slows you down. Blizzards and heavy rain can provide more cover while sneaking. Even icicles, which only form in winter, can be used to your advantage if you send them falling right onto the heads of unsuspecting guards.
These various seasons also make Shadows—which is already a stunning-looking open-world game, with incredible draw distances and tons of detail packed into every part of it—even more gorgeous. I took so many screenshots playing Shadows because I kept being stunned by how much color and variety its world contains. A valley during the winter might feel cold, miserable, and icy, but later during the fall it becomes a breathtaking collage of orange, brown, and yellow as the wind whips thousands of leaves around. It’s almost like Ubisoft has built four different, massive open-world maps and each one is a visual treat.
This isn’t just a first for Assassin’s Creed; it’s one of the first open-world action games I can think of that does this. I’ll miss the seasons in Shadows any time I return to more static open worlds stuck in a perpetual summer or winter.
Oh, and about that ugly pimple in the middle of the gorgeous map? Well, as Naoe and Yasuke build up their league of assassins in their war against tyranny, they also literally build up a headquarters that eventually turns into a tiny little village filled with your allies. Shoving a village builder sim into Shadows is an odd choice and while it is important to interact with as it unlocks some useful features and abilities, it ended up being my least favorite aspect of Shadows.
At first, I did enjoy decorating my base with items and pets I found out in the world, but after a few hours it became clear that there wasn’t much else to do at the base.
Sometimes you can talk to your allies, but these characters become far less interesting once you finish the quests needed to recruit them. Out in the world, they’re wonderful. Once they arrive at your base, however, they just mindlessly walk around all the crap you’ve built, stopping sometimes to talk to each other for a minute. The base just feels empty, lifeless, and static, the exact opposite of the rest of Shadows. After 50 hours of play, the nicest thing I can say about your HQ is that you can mostly ignore it once you upgrade your core buildings.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows doesn’t completely revolutionize the core of the franchise. You still climb towers, take out targets, sneak around places, and interact with real history.
However, it does shake up everything around these cores. Now you might climb a tower during winter and see a whole different view than you did in summer. Now you can sneak in the shadows as a lithe assassin or kick down the door as a samurai tank. And it leads to one of the most dynamic, fun, and best-looking open-world games I’ve played this generation, and one of the best Assassin’s Creed titles in years.
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