I remember my reaction when first hearing about the development of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. As someone who lived in the Kansai area (where Shadows takes place), I was excited to see how Ubisoft tackles Japanese landmarks, setting, and culture. It also felt like a response to long-standing fan requests for a Japan-based Assassin’s Creed.
While fans were cautious due to Ubisoft’s recent track record, Shadows delivers as one of the franchise’s best. It incrementally refines the Ubisoft open-world formula and impresses with its characters and world-building, outstanding presentation, revamped and distinct combat, and stable console performance. However, there are several flaws, including storytelling and pacing, unbalanced protagonist gameplay, and some outdated traversal mechanics.
Shadows exemplifies the AAA release done right — accessible to newcomers, respectful to fans, and launched without major performance issues. It is the culmination of lessons learned throughout the years.
Once upon a time in the East
Assassin’s Creed Shadows starts in 1579, during Japan’s Sengoku period civil war and follows two protagonists — Naoe, a young shinobi, and Yasuke, a foreign samurai under unifier Oda Nobunaga. These two sides are at odds, and the story explores the introspective journeys of Naoe and Yasuke as well as presenting the different perspectives of the conflict. The main story takes around 40 hours to complete, with additional content comprising 80 hours.
The scale of Shadows is matched by the impressive setting and intriguing story. Without going into spoiler territory, the story is accessible to newcomers, although it rewards fans of the series as the Templars-Assassins conflict is not forgotten. While the story does not match up to series greats like the Ezio trilogy and Black Flag, Shadows nonetheless kept me guessing and engaged for the most part. The narrative starts strong and sets the tone well. However, the storytelling struggles with pacing early on. The beginning 10 hours focus mostly on Naoe’s story, sidelining Yasuke despite making a brief appearance in the prologue. This may confuse players into thinking that Naoe is the only star of the show. It feels like an uneven approach to storytelling, which is also thrown off by a series of Naoe flashbacks, further dragging the pace. Fortunately, Shadows regains its footing once Yasuke is introduced alongside Naoe.
Speaking of Yasuke and Naoe, our protagonists are well realized and experience compelling character development. I especially like Naoe, who is allowed to be flawed. She struggles with processing revenge and trauma at a young age. Yasuke is the “fish out of water” protagonist, stuck in a foreign land and with not much choice on who to serve. Sooner or later, Yasuke has to take charge and find his purpose. The protagonists operate at odds given their contradictory initial mission, yet their evolving dynamic is a key highlight. Voice acting stands out, particularly in Japanese, which adds more depth to the characters and immersion. For example, the Japanese voice actress portraying Naoe brings out a more vulnerable and emotive side to her. This is why I recommend playing Shadows with Japanese voice acting.
Duality of man
Shadows centers on two main pillars — combat and stealth — with a revamped and challenge-based combat system focused on crowd control. The game does a great job with this, making Yasuke and Naoe’s combat distinct and varied. Naoe delivers fast, agile attacks with smaller weapons, such as the tanto, whereas Yasuke functions as a heavy-hitting, slower tank that uses the long katana, among other weapons. For example, enemies can quickly surround and overwhelm Naoe due to her weaker attacks. Mastery Points and skill tree upgrades can lessen these differences but not negate them. Nonetheless, you can seamlessly switch between Yasuke and Naoe as the story progresses and depending on the approach you want to take.
Stealth is satisfying and represents one of the best iterations in the series. It flows well and leaves plenty of opportunities to experiment on enemies, including sneaking unseen in the shadows, throwing smoke bombs and shuriken, and staging attacks from above and below. However, this is a slower type of stealth and traversal due to the reduced verticality and scattered layout of buildings and landmarks.
Regarding our protagonists, the same differences apply here as in combat — Naoe uses her shinobi training to expertly sneak around and stage attacks. In contrast, Yasuke cannot match her graceful movement. This is evident in Yasuke’s limited traversal abilities. Don’t expect Yasuke to climb up high to reach a viewpoint or walk onto a rope to cross to another building. In this sense, Yasuke’s gameplay may leave more to be desired, and can be seen as being unbalanced compared to Naoe, who is my favorite to play as due to her fast and varied skillset.
The Ubisoft open-world formula has been upscaled and polished, featuring fewer fetch quests in favor of more variety. I was pleasantly surprised to see several quests that went beyond the standard combat and stealth approach, such as taking part in a tea ceremony. Shadows also features a breadth of side content like parkour challenges, assassination contracts, ally recruitment, and more. This side content mostly lands on its feet in successfully providing you with enough engaging activities to make you want to explore more of feudal Japan.
The Hideout is introduced as the hub, allowing players to build and upgrade buildings, including a forge and stable, in exchange for collecting materials. These buildings are a means of upgrading your equipment, recruiting scouts to reveal strategic points on the map, and more. The Hideout also gives you the opportunity to catch up with your allies and discover more about their background.
Despite these improvements, open-world traversal remains problematic. Horseback travel is often challenging as your horse can easily get stuck in trees and foliage. Shadows doesn’t improve swimming either. It is slow and you have to unlock a skill to be able to hold your breath under water for long enough during stealth sections. These are minor points that Ubisoft could address in future patches.
Utsukushii sekai
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is arguably the most stunning depiction of feudal Japan in the medium. It naturally draws comparisons to Ghost of Tsushima. Unlike Tsushima which adopted a thematic and artistic depiction, Shadows embraces high-fidelity graphics and focuses on outstanding production values. This is truly a next-gen showing from Ubisoft. Shadows is abundant in rich colors, foliage and detailed environments that change and affect the world and gameplay with each passing season. It also features painstaking recreations of historic Japanese landmarks, several of which I visited when living in the Kansai region. I commend the impressively talented artists and animators for capturing these details and taking me back to those places. Shadows is one of the most visually stunning games out there and certainly the best looking title in the series.
Appreciation also goes to the original score, which is brave enough to combine modern composition and instruments, such as guitars, alongside traditional Japanese instruments like the koto. On paper this shouldn’t work, but the end result is an unconventional harmony that enhances the setting.
This impressive presentation is backed up by a stable next-gen performance on the Xbox Series X. Shadows features three graphical settings — Quality at a locked 30 fps, Balanced at a stable 40 fps on 120hz displays only, and Performance running at 60 fps. I played Shadows in Balanced mode, and I recommend this as the best option for those who have an 120hz display. If not possible, the Performance mode looks great as well, although some compromises are evident, especially the absence of ray-traced global illumination. However, it is worth pointing out that while Shadows does a great job at maintaining a stable framerate most of the time, the Hideout hub brings the framerate down to a jarring 30fps in Balanced Mode. I understand this is due to ray-tracing concerns, although I encourage Ubisoft to remove the framerate cap in this specific area or revert to a less dynamic form of ray-tracing.
The Xbox Series X version is also mostly free of major issues on launch. I have encountered minor issues, such as texture pop-in and strange foliage physics, although nothing game-breaking in my 40 hours playthrough. This is a quality launch, which is unfortunately becoming a rare sight among AAA releases.
Summary
Assassin’s Creed Shadows delivers one of the best entries in the series. It incrementally refines the Ubisoft open-world formula and impresses with its characters and world-building, outstanding presentation, revamped and distinct combat, and stable console performance. There are several flaws, including storytelling and pacing, unbalanced protagonist gameplay, and some outdated traversal mechanics which stop Shadows from reaching its full potential.
Nonetheless, Shadows is the culmination of lessons learned by Ubisoft throughout the years. I hope Shadows revitalizes Ubisoft and gives it the much needed inspiration and energy to further calibrate its open-world formula and listen to the fans. It certainly paid off this time.
The Review
Superb
