Assassin’s Creed Shadows review

Naoe is definitely the textbook assassin in the game. She’s got the hidden blade and the hood to match, along with the excellent parkour skills that make the clay and straw roofs of 16th-century Japan her personal jungle gym. Yasuke is a Samurai, taken in and trained by Nobunaga because he takes an interest in his skin colour and warrior instincts. Before this, he served as a slave and bodyguard for the Portuguese church priests. He’s not trained by the stab-happy cult of Assassins or a family of ninjas so Yasuke cannot climb roofs and stab evildoers in the dark of the night with the same swiftness as Naoe. He’s a 6-foot-tall tank that relies on his brute strength and precise katana swings to decapitate enemies. The way you approach missions depends on which of the two characters you pick at the start of the mission and based on that the bloodshed to the boss is going to be wildly different. Neither of them can do what the other can and it’s this particular choice in gameplay with the two characters that makes Shadows such a compelling game.

In terms of story, Yasuke’s story is straightforward. He's of a foreigner trying to survive in a foreign land by adapting to Japan’s customs and traditions. He’s portrayed as a humble giant who follows the tenets of a Samurai and warrior.

Naoe’s story is tragic and driven by revenge but nothing too shocking. A missing box and a dead father leading to a tragic initiation into the Creed? Now, where have I ‘Ezio’ that? Naoe's background seems a little predictable and cliche but one that works in the game's favour. Yes, sometimes things happen for the sake of the story, so it’s not getting any Oscars for best scriptwriting. This time Assassin’s Creed lets its characters have more than silly motivations for revenge. It tries to fill in the story gaps as crucial side missions that add a bit of depth and heart to the series, something I feel the series lacked.

Ubisoft has also taken some creative freedom in this series. There are some cutscenes and boss fights that add a soundtrack to the mix, breathing life into the mundane sword fighting. Sometimes it’s cheesy but it always works.

The short answer is that Shadows’ story is more interesting than Valhalla and if you’ve sat through that game then this one is better.

Yasuke uses heavy weapons ranging from Long Katana, Naginata and Kanabo to Bow and Teppo (rifle). Yasuke’s combat moves are more destructive and brutal. He can jump forward and smash the Kanabo on the enemy and deal AoE damage as well or cut the head clean off an enemy with the Katana. He’s also efficient at breaking armour and can kill most enemies with two or three hits. If you get frustrated with stealth, use Yasuke to smash through doors and bamboo walls (yes, he can do that) and absolutely trainwreck the enemies. It’s a lot of fun!

Naoe is your cookie-cutter Assassin with Japanese ninja techniques. She’s very acrobatic and uses backflips and kicks with her weapons to deal damage. She uses a Katana, Kusarigama and Tanto (used with the hidden blade). Naoe primarily uses stealth and a new prone feature lets both, Yasuke and Naoe, stay out of sight better than crouching. She can even be prone and stay underwater in garden ponds to stay out of sight. These tiny ponds and rivers will freeze in winter which will limit her movements.

Only Naoe has Eagle Vision and a grappling hook because she’s the Assassin in this game. Her grapple hook lets her climb any roof with ease and she can even swing across some trees using the grapple hook. She also has Shuriken, Kunai and smoke bombs to take out enemies as stealthily as possible.

Each character has multiple skill trees for weapons and tools and you can unlock powerful moves using this skill tree. Naoe can call upon ninja allies to take down enemies for her while also having many interesting skills that deal tons of damage. Even Yasuke has brutal powerful abilities that we've seen in Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

 

 

 

 

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You can switch between Yasuke and Naoe at any point in the game but not during a mission. During open-world exploration, if you’re in an enemy zone that is marked yellow or red on the compass then you’ll have to leave the area to switch to the other character. This means you cannot sneak in with Naoe and then switch to Yasuke for combat if you get caught in the middle of the mission. However, story missions progress as if both are involved in the mission so there are points in the mission where the game asks you if you want to continue as Yasuke or Naoe.

During one main story questline called The Noble where we had to find out the main perpetrator behind an attack on your allies. The mission takes you clue-hunting across the small city of Harima and some choices in the game change certain interactions. For instance, I had a conversation with suspicious merchants as if I knew their plan and I just needed more information for certain reasons. This resulted in a non-combative interaction and I was able to get through to the other objective faster. At the same time, a work colleague who is also playing the same mission chose a different dialogue option and that interaction resulted in a fight. Finally, all roads lead to the same destination but the journey through your choices may differ.

The game is not peppered with dialogue options like Dragon Age: The Veilguard but it has a fair bit of dialogue options that genuinely make you think before choosing an option. Some pivotal dialogue options in the mainline quest make you scratch your head before picking a reply but if you want to skip all of that and want the canon dialogues then there’s a setting toggle in the menu to do so.

However, a lot of dialogues lack hand and body movement. It feels awkward and less immersive in my opinion. In the initial story interaction between Naoe and an NPC, the voice actors deliver impactful lines with grief, pain and emotion but the body and hand movement is static. It sort of ruins the immersion of the game, and dialogues. This is just us nitpicking but there is some truth behind it.

Coming back to the combat, charging in with Yasuke means you will have to fight everyone in your line of sight but it’s relatively easier to fight with Yasuke because he can take hits and can deliver hits. We had to climb a pagoda to the top where the perpetrator was hiding and with Yasuke, you take the stairs, literally, fighting your way to the top but with Naoe you can simply parkour from the outside and sneak in from a small window to get to the top. It’s such a shocking change in combat approach with these characters that Shadows will be worthy of a replay even after you finish the game. All castles and most military pagodas have an internal structure where you can sneak to the top as Naoe or fight your way as Yasuke.

There’s a new dynamic weather system which changes the landscape in a few interesting ways. Firstly, moving to Winter will freeze some ponds and water bodies, besides that, falling snow and icicles will alert nearby enemies of your presence. Thunderstorms, on the other hand, will hide your footsteps and make stealth easier. Foliage also changes with seasons with crop fields getting a harvest cycle and flowers bloom changing colour too. Your wanted status also resets.

Ubisoft is known to have some of the best worlds in video game history. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was jawdropping but the lack of things to do in the game made it hard to love. AC Shadows doesn’t have that problem. It’s equally stunning and the recreation of 16th century Japan is without a doubt their best work. Palaces, cities, villages, monuments, jungles, bamboo forests, crop fields, everything in this game looks like it’s handcrafted with care and love and it shows. You’ll be lost in exploring the many regions in this game. And if you find yourself awestruck by Kyoto, then let me tell you that there are plenty of side quests and activities to do within big cities as well.

Unlocking new regions doesn’t necessarily require a climb to the tallest tower, you can do it on foot as well but going the traditional AC way helps sometimes. However, don’t stray too far too quickly because regions are level-locked and you’ll have to be a certain level to even think about picking a fight with a higher-level enemy. Like Valhalla, an enemy with a higher level than you can one-shot you to the respawn point.

You can also paint animals in a traditional Japanese painting style called Sumi-e. These black ink painting opportunities happen as you explore the world and come across animals in their habitat. You have to crouch and approach the animal from a safe distance before you can paint them. Rushing in will not work here.

Ubisoft has also added a new Scout system which lets you pinpoint enemy locations on the map. So if you’re feeling foggy from the clues on the screen, you can use a scout and select the radius in which you want them to search. It’s just one extra step for players who require some help from time to time.

Base building in Shadows is oddly therapeutic. Seeing your base change with the weather and the day/night cycle brings a cosy feeling. Many side missions bring new aesthetic additions for you to add to your base, and these side missions are also necessary to get resources for building useful structures for better scout network, weapon upgrades and more.

As for levelling up, to unlock a new skill tier you must gain a Knowledge Rank which you get by visiting Shrines, completing meditation points, competing in Horseback archery and more. So ya, there’s a lot to do in this open-world game.

This is the most stable Assassin’s Creed game we’ve played on our PC. We ran the game on our testbench RTX 4080 Super at 1440p with the settings set to Ultra along with Ray Tracing and no DLSS upscaling. We got a steady 50 FPS and sometimes 60 as well. The game ran without a single frame stutter or crash, and everything just worked buttery smooth.

The game looks very beautiful, especially as seasons start to change and morph the landscape. Winds pick up pollen and leaves that blow across the crop fields similar to Ghost of Tsushima. Rain and thunder look stunning and provide incredible cover for noisy stabbing and snow makes every walk difficult.

Unlike Kassandra and Eivor who felt too brutish for an Assassin, Shadows is hoping to balance that open-world brutality of Odyssey and Valhalla with the tiptoeing stealth of Mirage. The setting is just perfect with the civil wars of the Sengoku period in 16th-century Japan serving as the perfect Petri dish for betrayals, bloodshed and brotherhood.

Yes, the open-world fatigue sets in after you reach level 13 or 14. The objective chasing starts to creep in once Yasuke teams up with Naoe and we can’t shake the feeling that this is where most of us will feel overwhelmed by the objectives and things to do in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. To the game’s credit, this time the objectives are a bit more varied and interesting than mere fetch quests. And having two game styles helps ensure that. Some side missions add backstory to Naoe and Yasuke, others let the NPCs take the stage. You also have some parkour sections for Naoe to finish for Knowlege Ranks, while Yasuke has his own set of Samurais he must challenge and defeat in combat. It’s interesting stuff but too much bloat for sure.

We said the story leans heavily into politics during our hands-on session, and that remains largely true but with Yasuke and Naoe’s personal stories running parallel, it feels less and less drab with politics.