The Assassin's Creed series may no longer have the luster it had with the games starring Ezio Auditore, but there's no denying that there's still no video game series like it. While the stories featured in many installments may not be one hundred percent accurate to the time period they are set in, the ability to explore some of the world's most incredible places while getting to interact with real historical figures is something that very few games can offer at this quality level. With the introduction of role-playing game mechanics, some of the uniqueness of the series was inevitably lost, but the market seemed to appreciate this direction, as Assassin's Creed Valhalla, even with its issues, achieved financial success, selling the highest number of copies during its launch weekend for the series.
Following the return to the series' roots with Assassin's Creed Mirage, the franchise doubles down on the open-world RPG formula this year with Assassin's Creed Shadows. While an entry in the series set in Feudal Japan was something that fans have been asking for for a very long time, the game has been very controversial since its reveal due to the choice of protagonists, mainly Yasuke, the first known African man in Japan who served Oda Nobunaga whose status as a proper samurai is still debated to this day, and other cultural mishaps, which include using a stolen flag design in concept art and a collectible statue of the game featuring a damaged torii gate resembling the ruined gate of Sannō Shrine in Nagasaki linked to the tragic 1945 atomic bombing.
While some of the complaints that have been raised are justified, I feel it would be a shame if the discourse surrounding the game were only limited to them, as I have found Assassin's Creed Shadows to be a solid game that improves on the series' RPG formula in a lot of ways and that takes full advantage of its incredible technical achievements to improve its open-world gameplay to make the experience more about exploring and living the world, rather than going from one map marker to the next.
Assassin's Creed Shadows is set in late 16th century Japan during the Azuchi-Momoyama period, the final phase of the Sengoku period marked by social upheavals and the unification of Japan under powerful warlords, which culminated with the Battle of Sekigahara and the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate by Ieyasu Tokugawa. The turbulent political situation of the period serves as the backdrop of Naoe's story, a female shinobi from Iga whose father has been killed by the Shinbakufu, a group of powerful individuals that move in the shadows to take advantage of the chaos enveloping Japan to further their own unclear ends.
Set on avenging her father and recovering a mysterious box Naoe's father told her to protect at all costs, the young shinobi embarks on a journey of vengeance that will get her to meet and act together with some of the most powerful men of Japan, and their servants, including the African warrior Yasuke, who will join Naoe in her quest for vengeance for his own personal reasons, which tie into the Brotherhood and Templar Order story previously seen in the franchise. The two will be joined during the course of the adventure by other individuals who will get to be part of the League Naoe has to put together to take on the powerful Shinbakufu.
While the premise is relatively straightforward, the story of Assassin's Creed Shadows is enjoyable, with some surprising twists related to the Shinbakufu that keep the player hungering for more until the mostly satisfying ending. Unlike Assassin's Creed Valhalla, whose story really started dragging on a dozen hours in, Shadows' story is much better paced and, clocking at around 40 hours, doesn't overstay its welcome, although some fatigue will inevitably start to creep in after 20 or so hours as some scenarios and individual storylines start to feel kind of repetitive. Still, there are definitely some remarkable moments in the adventure that make it worth experiencing, especially for history buffs who love the Sengoku period, as every major player of the late 16th century is present in some capacity.
Being the main characters, Naoe and Yasuke obviously get the most development, which is delivered in a series of quests that delve deeper into their pasts and how they got to the fateful day when the armies of Oda Nobunaga attacked Iga. Further development is offered during main and side quests, which delve deeper into their bond as well as into both their new and already established relationships. Those who like one of the two characters more than the other also have the choice of initiating quests with their character of choice, although there are times when both will be present or when either one of the two protagonists is required to proceed. Many other characters appear as the story dictates, but they receive limited development, which is not surprising considering their brief screen time, although the allies that get to be part of the League have a slightly bigger role than the characters who appear in the regional main quests, and thus stay a little longer in the spotlight.
Like in the prior games since the RPG shift, Assassin's Creed Shadows also allows players to make choices during pivotal moments that can heavily influence a character's relationships and how the story moves forward. Those who want to have a more traditional Assassin's Creed experience, however, can play the game in Canon Mode, which makes the story proceed as the developers intended. This is definitely a nice option to have and one of the many included in the game that further bridges the gap between the action RPG entries in the series and the classic formula that powered the first few entries in the franchise.
One thing that modern Assassin's Creed doesn't seem capable of bringing back properly is the modern-day story, and, as such, it is not surprising that Assassin's Creed Shadows fails in this area as well. The game serves as a starting point for a new modern story, but given how little importance it has in the game, it's clear that the developer focused more on getting their historical fiction set in the late Sengoku period right. For some people, they will have failed, as the two protagonists will continue to be controversial choices, especially Yasuke, who did appear already in other video games set in the late Sengoku period but never as a proper samurai, and details here and there remain inaccurate, but generally, Ubisoft, at the very least, attempted to address some of the controversies, such making it impossible to climb on torii gates, although this is only one of the many issues in the setting.
Would a traditional Japanese samurai have made for a better protagonist? Perhaps, but that would have required telling a different story. A key part of what makes Yasuke's story interesting is how he fits into a society so unlike the one he was born into, and his ambiguous historical role gave the developers more creative freedom to fill in the gaps. At the same time, the Assassin's Creed series has always taken liberties with real history, which led to plenty of inaccuracies, like the Icelandic Vegvisir magical stave appearing prominently in Valhalla when there is no known historical evidence that it was used during the Viking Age, so Shadows really isn't doing anything different in this regard.
Much like with its story, Assassin's Creed Shadows doesn't exactly push the boundaries of the third-person action RPG formula established by its predecessors but introduces some choice improvements that really enhance the experience. While the player will still need to explore a huge map roughly the size of the map in Assassin's Creed Origins, heading towards certain locations to initiate and complete quests, how the player goes on to do this has been slightly changed. To start and continue a good portion of the game's quests, players first need to find where exactly to go, as the game doesn't provide a precise location from the get-go but only a few pointers, leaving players on their own to find out where they have to go.
The scout system can also be used to search an area on the map, but scouts have limited uses each season and can only be replenished by spending money, so searching on your own will be the way to go most of the time. And the most fun, to be honest, as it makes the experience more immersive than before, requiring players to look at the map and engage in a bit more organic exploration in the vein of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its sequel or Elden Ring, to name a few open-world games that mostly avoided the excessive use of map markers. Similarly, some of the game's side activities, such as those that involve hunting down the members of certain groups, also require the player to put in some work to find their locations, which makes these side activities more engaging than most of the others in the game. Those who prefer playing Shadows as if it were any previous entry in the series can just skip all of the above and turn on Guided Exploration Mode.
Sadly, there's no way to completely turn off the map indicators, so you will still know beforehand the general location of points of interest, which include towns, enemy strongholds like castles, temples, individual challenges for Naoe and Yasuke, painting spots, and more. The vast majority of these locations are entirely optional to explore, but Assassin's Creed Shadows provides an incentive to do so by tying character progression with the Knowledge System. To learn additional skills on the twelve skill trees, six for each character, the player needs not only Mastery Points, obtained by leveling up and completing certain side activities, but also Knowledge Points, which unlock a new portion of the skill trees once certain point thresholds have been reached. Focusing on exploring the locations that are encountered while going for the main story objectives provides a decent amount of Knowledge Points, so there's thankfully no need to go out of one's way to explore every inch of the map to unlock fundamental skills for both main characters.
When it comes to variety, Assassin's Creed Shadows provides some in the moment-to-moment gameplay with a solid main quest design centered around the two protagonists and the open-world design technical advancements. After a certain point in the story, which coincides with a well-known moment in Feudal Japan history which takes place at Honnoji Temple, the player can switch at will between Naoe and Yasuke and becomes able to approach quests in two very different ways. As a shinobi, Naoe is extremely agile and comes with advanced parkour capabilities, which include a handy grappling hook that makes it very easy for her to stay concealed and eliminate targets with a bit of finesse. Yasuke, on the other hand, fully embodies the combat-oriented approach seen in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, coming with very average parkour abilities but a wealth of combat options that allow him to take on multiple enemies at the same time with ease, something Naoe sometimes struggles with due to her weapon options and skills. As such, every quest has been designed so that it can be completed with any playstyle, providing an unprecedented level of flexibility for an Assassin's Creed game.
Empowering the two different playstyles available in Assassin's Creed Shadows are some noticeable improvements for both stealth and combat mechanics. The former, in particular, has benefitted the most from the incredibly dynamic world Ubisoft created for the game, where sudden weather condition changes aren't just aesthetic but impact gameplay considerably. For starters, enemy visibility is heavily impacted by the time of day but also by certain weather conditions, so infiltrating a stronghold at night with a heavy rain downpour can prove to be beneficial for Naoe, who can use Eagle Vision to pinpoint enemy locations and mark them on the HUD with the Observe mechanics (which are returning in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced), no matter the visibility.
The lighting of any given area can also have a tremendous impact on stealth, so turning lamps and lanterns off can be incredibly beneficial and prevent enemies from being alerted by your character's shadow. All of these elements are further influenced by the current season, which can provide certain advantages or disadvantages, such as vegetation providing more cover, more frequent weather conditions changes, and so on. The enemy AI has been slightly improved as well, as they react to sound, which includes footsteps on nightingale panels, and group up when investigating anything that caught their attention. At Expert difficulty, enemies are even more observant, and even roofs become unsafe, requiring players to really be careful navigating enemy territory as any slip-up will result in getting discovered and potentially overpowered. The best thing about all of these features is how they dynamically interact with one another, forcing players to adapt to any given situation, elevating the typical Assassin's Creed experience in some surprisingly good ways, and making the Shadows' stealth mechanics some of the best in the entire series.
The combat improvements are slightly less substantial than those made to stealth, but they are still quite noticeable, building upon the existing foundation to deliver something a little bit more involved. Both protagonists can unleash light and heavy combo strings, powerful Posture attacks, and special skills that require Adrenaline, block, dodge, and parry enemy attacks, but it's how they accomplish all of the above that differs. While competent, Naoe is not that great at fighting enemies head-on, thus her weapon of choices, which include Katana, Nanto and Kusarigama, don't deal the same amount of damage Yasuke's powerful long Katana, Naginata spear and Kanabo war club.
Her superior agility, however, makes her better at dodging enemy attacks, whereas Yasuke's heavier fighting style allows him to take a few hits, though he is still capable of sidestepping and backstepping to avoid attacks. By unlocking skills on the 12 skill trees and completing companions quests, it is possible to learn additional combat abilities for all available weapons, which include different combo strings, timed button presses for increased power and some passives, and become able to call in allies to fight alongside Naoe and Yasuke and even assist them when they are undetected, which, together with the many types of gear available coming, in their Legendary highest level of rarity, with some rather useful perks, expand combat options and make the experience quite varied. Some of the skills also allow both characters to use the environment to their advantage, adding more depth to the experience.
All of this wouldn't matter much if we were in the same button-mashing territory of some of the previous entries in the series, but this isn't the case in Assassin's Creed Shadows. Button mashing here leads only to dragged-out fights and higher chances of defeat, as enemies not only tend to block a lot, forcing players to use the slower Posture attacks to break their guard, but they also parry and counter reckless attacks. To get an opening, the player needs to pay attention to how they attack, deflecting or blocking their regular white and blue-coded attacks, and dodge the red-coded unblockable attacks. When defending properly with the correct timing, enemies become Vulnerable, allowing the player to deal increased damage. With enemies often ganging up on the player and even canceling their attack animations with sudden guards, the combat experience in Assassin's Creed Shadows can get rather intense, which is something I wasn't expecting. The excellent animation work in combat and some brutal finishers from Yasuke also contribute to making fighting enemies head-on as satisfying as assassinating them from the shadows.
Another major part of the Assassin's Creed Shadows gameplay is the Hideout mechanics. A few hours into the game, Naoe will get the chance to start building a haven for her allies to help her, and later Yasuke, in her war against the Shinbakufu, adding a variety of facilities that offer different services like a forge to improve equipment, a dojo to train allies, a Kakurega to improve safehouse management, and more, and introduce some beneficial effects like increased experience points and the like. By improving the Hideout, it will also level up and introduce some other beneficial effects that can be more or less useful. Those who want to combine looks with functionality can also freely arrange the buildings any way they see fit, decorate them with all sorts of items, connect them using some of the Engawa roofed corridors available, and so on. To do all this, however, players will need to use a lot of resources besides mon. These are mostly found by completing side content, such as the seasonal regional contracts, which often involve stealing resources or killing all enemies from enemy camps that are randomly generated on the map, bloating the already inflated wealth of side content even more.
While the typical open-world bloat has indeed been reduced over past entries, Assassin's Creed Shadows still features way too many side activities clearly designed to extend the playtime and get players to spend money on cosmetics and additional gear that add little to the experience. At the start of my playthrough, I tried to explore a bit more and see what was hidden below all those question mark indicators on the map, but I quickly changed my mind when all I found were similar enemy camps that provided small rewards that, ultimately, have little positive impact on the experience. My time with the game got way more enjoyable when I started doing things a little more organically, exploring whenever I felt like it when going from one main story quest to another, engaging with the additional system only when truly required, or halting my travels whenever I saw some villager in need of help, or a Shinbakufu ronin ready to fight.
This also made me appreciate more how dynamic and living the world is, as there are a lot of little details scattered around that enhance immersion, such as groups of women grieving their dead, people talking about their lives, and so on. Ultimately, the additional content is there for those who really want to fully complete the game, but I feel the vast majority of players would get bored of the game pretty quickly if they were to go after absolutely everything they see on the map, as the rewards aren't really worth the effort. Unfortunately, there are times when completing side content is essentially required to level up so as to be able to take on story quests, so avoiding side content almost completely is pretty much impossible.
The release of Assassin's Creed Shadows also marks the launch of the Animus Hub, the project previously known as Assassin's Creed Infinity, which will act as the immersive point of entry for the entire series, allowing players to quickly access any of the previous games they have purchased, access regularly released missions to obtain Keys that can be exchanged for rewards and more. The rewards offered for the current projects are decent enough, so these additional missions are definitely worth pursuing for those who are wholly invested in the game's many mechanics and systems. Those who feel the game is already bloated enough, even without the Animus Hub Projects, will end up ignoring them to keep the experience slimmer and more focused on story-related content.
Before the game's launch a few months back, Ubisoft stated that Assassin's Creed Shadows would be the most visually advanced entry in the series to date, and after having seen a good portion of what the map has to offer, I can say that is not only the most visually advanced entries but also one of the most visually advanced open-world games to date. Besides being extremely polished with little to no visual glitches, this rendition of Feudal Japan looks outright stunning, thanks to the great usage of ray-traced global illumination. With the Diffuse Everywhere option, and high ray tracing quality, the game's atmosphere is unparalleled at all times of day and weather conditions, making it a joy to traverse the game world bordered by dense vegetation, get up high on viewpoints, and see some of the most amazing vistas seen in open-world games to date. Ray-traced global illumination, lighting, and the density of the game world are only some of the remarkable visual features of the game, as particle effects are just as impressive as RTGI.
Whether it's leaves blown in the wind, pouring rain, or snowflakes, these effects do a great job highlighting the great attention to detail that has been poured into the game, which, at times, rivals that seen in Red Dead Redemption 2. The tech used for rendering hair is also one of the highlights and something that very few games have got as right as Ubisoft has in Assassin's Creed Shadows. Unfortunately, there are some stiff animations here and there that really feel out of place in such a beautifully rendered world, as do some mediocre facial animations, but thankfully, the vast majority of them are fine. Some are more than fine, such as combat animations, which feel incredibly smooth and well deliver not only the extreme agility and the extreme strength of the two main characters, but also their lack of. Yasuke's heavy parkour animations and clumsy leap-of-faith animations are great examples of this.
This high level of visual fidelity also bodes well for the future of the series. Powered by the latest iteration of the Anvil Engine, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is looking to be as stunning as the latest main entry in the series.
Experiencing Assassin's Creed Shadows at its best, however, has a cost, and only the most powerful system configurations are able to run the game at maximum settings, full ray tracing, and native 4K resolution at 60 FPS. Thankfully, the game scales really well across different system configurations, sporting a great variety of visual settings to tweak with a handy preview that highlights how each setting affects the visuals. At 4K resolution, NVIDIA DLSS Quality and Frame Generation, and the settings in the screenshots below, the game ran extremely well on my system (i7-13700F, RTX 4080, 32 GB RAM) with no visible stuttering, often hitting the 120 FPS mark, except for cutscenes, which are sadly locked at 30 FPS to retain a cinematic feel. The in-game benchmark also returned excellent results with unlocked framerate, hitting an average of 117 FPS, 99 1% low, and 93 0.1% low. Seeing the essentially bugless high level of technical polish on display here, there's little doubt that delaying the game multiple times was definitely the right choice, one that more publishers should consider to deliver solid PC ports.
While the Assassin's Creed Shadows visuals do their best to make players feel immersed in this amazing rendition of Feudal Japan, the same cannot be said for the game's audio features as a whole. The game's soundtrack is mostly fine, alternating between some rock-oriented and traditional-sounding pieces as the situation requires, but the English voice acting is most definitely not. Accents are all over the place, and the insertion of Japanese words into the English script sounds really forced at times, ruining immersion. Thankfully, the game offers an Immersive Mode where characters speak in their native tongues, Japanese and Portuguese, for the most part, where voice acting is of really high quality. Needless to say, Immersive Mode is the one to pick for the best experience.
Everything considered, Assassin's Creed Shadows is undoubtedly a solid open-world role-playing game and one of the best entries in the series in a long time. It brings back the stealth gameplay that made the series what it is and seamlessly combines it with the combat-focused experience seen in Valhalla. While the content bloat is still as annoying as ever, the solid narrative, engaging gameplay, and one of the most beautiful renditions of Feudal Japan ever released make it a game worth experiencing for the vast majority of players.
PC version tested. Review code provided by the publisher.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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