Fans have wanted the Assassin’s Creed franchise to visit Japan for almost two decades, so it’s not an overstatement to suggest that a lot is riding on Shadows. The title significantly emphasises stealth gameplay and improves most RPG-inspired systems established since Origins. For many, Shadows could’ve been the ultimate Assassin’s Creed game, but Ubisoft’s overtly mechanical and sometimes soulless style of building systems stops it from being the best.
Shadows lets you switch between two protagonists, similar to Syndicate. The shinobi Naoe and the samurai Yasuke have distinct gameplay styles, catering to old and new fans. For me, the choice was simple: I played the majority of Shadows as the fast and nimble Naoe, with guaranteed assassination turned on and the story set to “canon” mode. I’ve notoriously been a hater of the franchise’s RPG era, and while Shadows doesn’t fully commit to a linear, focused story on the conflict between Assassins and Templar, it does enough on the gameplay side to cater to the stealth and parkour lover in me.
Let’s cut to the chase and talk about what might become the most controversial element of the instalment: progression. Both the character and the narrative progression in Shadows are non-linear, leaving it up to players to decide how they want to build their play style. That’s both a boon and a bane, as the non-commital approach often leaves Shadows from achieving greatness.
I appreciate the apparent breadth of freedom in its non-linear mission structure, where players can choose to follow multiple threads without relying on a chosen path. However, this approach significantly harms the growth and development of both Yasuke and Naoe. The most important bits of Yasuke’s story are in his past, while Naoe’s quest for vengeance strays into familiar, trope-y territory.
The non-linear progression for character builds is the best part of the game. Gone is the expansive ability tree from Valhalla, replaced by focused skill trees for each weapon and playstyle. If you don’t want to use a katana, you don’t need to invest ability points for that weapon.
Abilities are gated not by your level but by the number of open-world activities you engage in. Each row of abilities is locked via “knowledge points”, which are earned by completing activities like collecting pages, conquering forts, and so on. This may spell doom for those who’d rather neglect all of the open-world activities and want to go on a power trip, but for me, it ties exploration with combat with a neat little bow.
It’s awkward dropping into Shadows after playing through Ubisoft’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Star Wars Outlaws, two games that strayed from Ubisoft’s signature open-world exploration mechanics. To their credit, the team has downplayed the importance of climbing towers and clearing sync points, as those are more optional here than in past entries. Many such quality-of-life changes can be found throughout the game, but they don’t directly remove the problems they’re attempting to solve. You can hold a button to automatically follow an NPC during quests, but the game still has too many moments where you’re just following someone as they deliver exposition.
As I noted in my preview for AC Shadows, you can freely switch between Naoe and Yasuke and the game never pretends to divide its engagement exactly in half between the two. Naoe takes centre stage for almost 12 hours following the prologue, after which you’re free to play as either hero throughout your journey. I can’t help but feel that Naoe was meant to be the sole protagonist, but Yasuke was added to appease new fans who have come on board since Origins.
Most of the game’s mission design is built around Naoe’s playstyle. The stealth approach seems the ideal solution to most quests, and if push comes to shove, Naoe can easily take on larger groups of enemies if you’ve invested in the right abilities. As Yasuke, good luck trying to break into a castle. Not only do you miss eagle vision, which is paramount to tagging enemies from a distance, but you also can barely climb small structures. Yasuke is best used for head-on fights, where his brutish strength impresses and can be enjoyed if you want to fully embrace a ridiculous power fantasy.
Ubisoft is known for creating breathtaking open worlds, and that’s undoubtedly one of Shadows’ primary strengths. Feudal Japan’s architecture and vistas are a perfect setting for Assassin’s Creed, but the dynamic weather and season system take it to the next level. There’s nothing quite like sneaking through a castle assassinating samurai daishōs under the cover of torrential downpours and deafening thunder. Stealth has never felt better in Assassin’s Creed, and Ubisoft Quebec and every team that contributed to that element deserves every bit of praise they can get.
I like it when games tie in technical innovation with gameplay mechanics. Ray-traced global illumination is used throughout the game world to give it a realistic look, but dynamic light sources also play into gameplay when sneaking around. A light meter above Naoe constantly reminds you of your visibility, and you can knock down light sources using shuriken to create your cover. Splinter Cell fans, this is your moment.
Japan is huge and diverse, and it’s beautiful. Part of its beauty comes from how polished and dense the world feels. This might be the most polished Assassin’s Creed title since the franchise’s switch to the action-RPG genre. However, its dedication to realism brings over gameplay challenges, like its intensely dense forests where Naoe, Yasuke, and their horses get stuck consistently. An impressive solution is to swiftly cut through the foliage using their tools, and the environmental destruction extends to many other objects that add an extra layer of depth to the world.
Many elements of previous Assassin’s Creed games have also been brought back, including scouts and allies. Like Brotherhood, you can now recruit various allies and train them to aid in combat and stealth on the field. Scouts can help you locate a target’s exact location on the map, which now defaults to vague directions instead of directly relying on markers. These systems can be upgraded at the hideout, which can also be customized à la AC2’s Monteriggioni and AC3’s homestead. However, I still never felt as attached to the residents of the homestead as I was to Achilles in the Davenport homestead in AC3 or Mario in AC2. It may have bigger, more complex systems, but none of its rewards feel as significant as the connections you made with the characters surrounding the protagonists in prior games.
Another returning mechanic that I greatly appreciate is the addition of the “parkour down” button. Sure, it’s not as flashy or sophisticated as the parkour system in Unity, but seeing Naoe descend towers with sick flips makes this old fan happy. Naoe’s also one of the fastest-moving characters in series history, and every tool in her arsenal makes her one of the best-controlling protagonists in Assassin’s Creed’s legacy.
No Assassins, No Templars, Nothing From the Old Guard
Can we just focus on how the modern Assassin’s Creed games are either extremely afraid or ashamed of anything that links back to the Assassins, Templars, the modern-day meta-story and the Isu? These are the elements that gave the series an identity, but the modern RPG instalments have kept their distance from the same for unknown reasons. In my 30+ hour adventure, not once did I hear any mention of those elements in any meaningful fashion.
The modern-day story is, unfortunately, completely absent. Instead of building on the intriguing cliffhanger from the climax of Valhalla, Ubisoft has chosen to go the route of Activision. Booting up the game invites you into the “Animus EGO”/Dark Animus, a unified launcher from where you can start other AC games installed on your system, pursue weekly challenges, purchase items from the digital store and, in its most vile addition, level up through battle passes. Assassin’s Creed now has battle passes. Congrats Ubisoft. Thanks for fucking up a series I loved even more than I could’ve anticipated.
READ MORE: ASSASSIN’S CREED MIRAGE REVIEW – A LEAP OF FAITH IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
To their credit, there are no mythological gameplay elements, so you won’t be fighting dragons or gods in this title. While the Japanese setting lends itself to an exploration of its mythological beasts through an Isu lens, I think Ubisoft made the right call to keep the game grounded.
Cutscenes are also vastly improved, with actual, intentional scene direction and lighting. The opening moments of the game are straight out of a prestige show like Shōgun, and the quality is mostly consistent throughout the adventure, especially in canon mode. Is it an actual improvement, or is it meeting the bare minimum that the franchise shed off in recent entries? I’ll let you judge that, but I’m just glad I don’t have to stare at mindlessly auto-scripted animations that have plagued the series in the past. Pair that with the immersive mode’s period and region-specific voice acting, and we’re onto something fresh and accomplished.
A note on technical performance: I played the game on a base PS5, mostly in the “Balanced” mode that targets 40fps on 120Hz displays. It looked and ran perfectly. The 60fps “Performance” mode also works well, though stripping back the RTGI lighting removes a huge layer of depth and nuance to the world design.
Verdict
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is an impressive step for the franchise. It gives veteran fans enough options to choose a playstyle closer to the original games and its grounded elements are appreciated, but its unwillingness to deliver a focused narrative, timidity in embracing its own meta-story, and overtly mechanical, soulless engagement systems stop it from achieving greatness, leaving me wanting more from a franchise I once loved. This could’ve been Ubisoft’s magnum opus, and instead, it’s just really, really good. Maybe that’s enough for you, but I want more.
Ubisoft, please bring back bustling cities with challenging parkour traversal and social stealth, focus on the Assassin-Templar-Isu conflict, and retain the masterful stealth system from Shadows, and you’ll have a title that could hold a special place in my heart.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows releases on March 20, 2025, on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Disclosure: Ubisoft provided a review code for Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
