Review — Assassin’s Creed Shadows

I have a love/hate relationship with the Assassin’s Creed series, with ups and downs along the years. I stand by my opinion that Assassin’s Creed 2 is still the best in the series, and since then I have been hating and/or loving each entry for various reasons. In 2023, with Assassin’s Creed Mirage I was hopeful that the series steered back to its roots, with a much smaller scale game-world and more focus on the stealth aspects that made the original and its successor so enjoyable. However, from the get-go Shadows seems to remind me a bit too much of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, a game I could not bring myself to finish despite starting a couple of times. There was just too much happening, too much side content straying me away from the main quest-line, and too little focus on being an actual assassin and feeling more like an arcade Viking simulator.

Before going too deep on this, it is notable that Ubisoft has a lot riding on the game being a success. The company has been in financial decline for quite a while, losing the trust of its players over the years. There have even been talks about a buyout by a third party. This review is not the place to go too much in depth on this topic, so I’ll kindly refer to this article for more information.

With Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ubisoft takes the players too the very popular and already well explored time period of 16th century Japan, focusing on the end of the Sengoku period, a time rife with conflict and known for famous characters such as Nobunaga Oda and Tokegawa Ieyasu. The end of the 16th century saw the introduction of the arquebus weapons, a type of firearm that is said to have aided the Nobunaga clan to achieve their tremendous victories during this time. A main focus lies on the attack on the Iga Province by Nobunaga, and serves as an introduction to the game’s two playable characters.

The game starts the player of in the shoes of Yasuke, a name that might ring some bells for people familiar with the history of Japan. Yasuke was a samurai of African origin, who originally traveled to Japan while in the service of an Italian Jesuit priest named Alessandro Valignano. Yasuka is thus introduced to the players while he is brought before Nobunaga who has said to have shown interest in seeing an African person for the first time. Nobunaga took the man under his wing, appointed him as samurai, and Yasuke served as his weapon-bearer and bodyguard for several years.

Not long after the introduction, the player gains control of Yasuke and the combat mechanics are explained as such. There a light and heavy attacks, each mapped to R1 and R2 and both buttons can be held to charge up for an even stronger hit. Yasuke has the option to block or parry attacks and counterattack afterwards, and even has the ability to crash through doors by sprinting into them. Not much assassinating going on here as one could imagine, but the game does not take too long to introduce its second playable character: Naoe Fujibayashi. She is trained as a kunoichi, which is a female term used for a shinobi, and she has been trained in the arts of sneaking and assassinations, despite being more than capable to stand her ground in hand-to-hand combat. Naoe’s first section serves as an introduction to the game’s stealth mechanics, which have been severely overhauled for Shadows.

Gone are the days of relying on a pet bird to scan the area for enemies. In Shadows, the player will have to rely on observation and the use of the well known eagle-vision. Entering the eagle-vision state slows down the movement of the character, but does allow you to see enemies through walls within a small range. Using the L2 button while crouching down in hiding or on a high vantage point allows the player to observe their environments and mark enemies and treasure lying around. This observation mechanic becomes a crucial tool in exploring and completing your quests, as map markers generally don’t reveal any information unless you actually travel to them. Some locations are just small villages where a local farmer asks you to deal with some cattle-stealing bandits, while others can be huge castles hiding some unique loot, with powerful samurai walking around waiting to be assassinated. Completing areas awards you with “knowledge points”, which will increase the amount of skills that can be unlocked.

The player can hide in typical places such as high grass or bushes, but now it is also possible to literally hide in the shadows, as enemies will not spot you there. This especially comes in handy at night time, making lurking and sneaking around a lot easier but also more interesting. Add to this that you can now even snuff out the flames of lit candles, or destroy them with shuriken or throwing knives, and Shadows becomes the first game in the series in a long time to do its stealth origins truly justice. Naoe quickly gains access to the typical hidden blade, but can also use kunai (throwing knives that deal significant damage), shuriken (throwing stars that do less damage), shinobi bells that generate sound and of course the classic smoke bombs to quickly disperse from view. Additionally, Shadows is the first game in the series that allows the player to go prone and crawl around in the grass or under structures to reach certain areas. On the other side of that spectrum, a grappling hook can be used to reach heights of out climbing reach, allowing you to scale the largest buildings with minimal effort.

Both Yasuke and Naoe will be able to use stealth to their advantage, despite Yasuke being geared more towards an aggressive play style. However, Naoe also has access to her katana — and later will also be able to use a tanto (a smaller katana more similar to a large knife) and a kusarigama (a weapon with a chain that can be used to keep enemies at a distance by swinging it around) — to fight hand-to-hand with enemies. The regular combat revolves mostly around watching out for enemy attacks, some of which can be parried and some which cannot. A white glow indicates a parry is possible, potentially leaving the enemy in a weakened state that allows you to deal additional damage, while a red glow indicates and attack that must be dodged. Additionally, when an enemy’s weapon glows blue, it means you’ll have to parry (or dodge) multiple strikes in succession.

The early game focuses mostly on the exploits of Naoe, as she processes the effects of the ongoing war and the attack on her home-province of Iga. She is tasked by her father to protect a mysterious box that has been stored away, a box that should never be opened. Naoe retrieves the box but due to her lack of experience she is quickly overpowered and the box is taken away from her. After a traumatic experience with some mysterious masked individuals that killed her father and mentor in front of her eyes, she takes it upon herself of exact revenge. Naoe shows she is a fighter through and through and she quickly teams up with an old acquaintance in an effort to rebuild an old hideout in the hills of Izumi Settsu.

This hideout will serve as the player’s base, and several buildings can be build and improved (with resource which can be abundantly found throughout the world) to aid in your efforts to defeat the Nobunaga forces. One of the first missions is to recruit a blacksmith , which then allows you to build a smithy at the base, where weapons can be enhanced, dismantled or engraved to add additional effects. Aside from offering gameplay advantages, you can also add cosmetics to your hideout. Coupled with the ability to freely place buildings within a confined area, this allows you to truly make that hideout yours. Adding a nice little shrine under a cherry tree makes it look just a little more cozy in my opinion.

The game’s quests are selected from an objective board that can be accessed through the menu, with the center showcasing the masked individuals that need to be killed, and with several other objectives that need fulfilling populating the rest of the board as you progress through the game. From the hideout you can also send out scouts to learn more about the happenings around Japan, or use them to reveal certain areas on the map. Shadows encourages the player to turn off the “guided exploration mode”. Turning this on will display markers to your objectives, while leaving it off will require you to do some investigating for yourself. Quests will provide some general information, such as “this person can be found in the east of this town”, and you’ll have to use the observe function to navigate to your objective.

I do prefer this mode myself, making it a lot more fun to roam around and explore, but some people might prefer a bit more hand-holding, which is of course fine in itself. As with any recent Assassin’s Creed game, the difficulty can be tuned and even the most casual of players can enjoy Shadows. Even with the guided exploration turned off, you can optionally enable the “pathfinder” option, which provides a white line along the roads guiding you towards any marked areas on the map.

At some point, many of the missions will allow you to choose between Yasuke or Naoe, leaving it up to the player to determine to go for brute strength of subtle stealth. They each have their own strengths of course, and it can be quite refreshing to lay aside the sneaking around to just smash face with a huge naginata sword or shooting enemies from afar with a rifle. Shadows has balanced the combat experience exceedingly well. Naoe will absolutely struggle when having to face multiple enemies at the same time, and I often found it better to just run away and hide and try to strike from the shadows, despite me not wanting to admit it. Yasuke on the other hand does not do stealth at all, as he is a huge man with spectacular samurai armor who can shrug off multiple hits.

Shadows does lean fairly heavy into its RPG elements, with an extensive skill tree and a variety of weapons, armor and other gear to enhance Yasuke’s and Naoe’s attributes. Gear can add varying effects, such as adding a poison or bleed build-up on your enemies, or add extra health, extra critical chance or enhanced adrenaline buildup, a resource which is needed to use certain skills in combat. A lot of this gear can be found in the world by looting chests or defeated enemies, with many unique pieces to be found as well. However, there is too much loot that is of little to no consequence. The common pieces will be of enough service in the early game, but once you find a powerful unique piece, it is much better to keep upgrading that to your level. Having to manually dismantle each piece does not help either.

As has become second nature to the series, you’ll be able to read up about history as you progress through the game, learning more about people, cities and its landmarks, and basically everything else there is to learn. With Shadows, the series finally visits an area and time-period that has been long requested, and the game looks incredible while showcasing the beauty of the Japanese countryside, while also being as faithful as possible with regards to recreating known cities and buildings. It will always be a pleasure to wander around the areas and cities, just walking around and admiring the scenery. It is truly a sight to behold walking around the streets of Osaka. But keep in mind to keep your weapons sheathed to not attract unwanted attention from the guards. To make the world feel even more alive, the seasons will change after an amount of time has passed in game. This not only has an impact on the visuals, but will also restock treasures and redeploy enemies to previously cleared-out areas such as castles.

As a fan of Ghost of Tsushima and a general enthusiast of Japanese culture and history, Shadows really makes me enjoy running around and exploring the game world. I mentioned it above already, the game looks and sounds incredible, and it is a joy to just run around or ride around on your horse taking in the environments. Shadows allows for some leisure as well, as you’ll often stumble upon scenes that are literally worthy of taking a picture. Naoe learned the art of painting, and can sneak closer to various scenes of animals roaming around, creating a wonderful monochrome slice-of-life ink painting.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows manages to capture my attention quite well, and while I initially feared it would be too much like Valhalla where I was spending more time doing meaningless busywork and almost never sneaking around, Shadows manages to create a wonderful twofold canvas by creating two likeable and well-written characters that each play to their own strengths. The game masterfully creates a living world that is fun and rewarding to explore, and provides an engaging story with several main missions that can be tackled one of two ways: with brute force or by stealth.

The improved stealth mechanics really made me fall in love with what made this series so unique to me. While I found Mirage to be a great step back to the series’ roots, Shadows builds on that and manages to combine this with a large wonderful world to explore. Is this a true return to form as Mirage almost managed? No, but Shadows made me realize that is not necessarily needed.

Reviewed on PlayStation 5.
Download code provided by the publisher.