Assassin’s Creed Shadows Review: A breath of fresh air, with the scent of the familiar

While Assassin’s Creed Shadows provides plenty of action right off the bat, the first time it truly left me awestruck was a tranquil moment. I was riding my horse along the sea coast while it was raining heavily, yet within that chaotic weather, I found peace, and a sense of calmness that showed me how beautiful the world of Assassin’s Creed Shadows truly is.

This wasn’t my first time playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows, as I had the opportunity to try it out earlier this year at Ubisoft’s Studio. However, contrary to my optimistic view in the previews, my approach to reviewing Shadows was quite pessimistic. I actively tried to find the faults in the game, the chinks in the armor. While I did find a few shortcomings (or nitpicks), Assassin’s Creed Shadows overall left me impressed and excited for the future.

I cannot wait to get back to the rich land of Feudal Japan trotting along the lonely roads, as the winds carry the breath of fresh air, with the scent of something familiar.

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Premise - Living up to the legacy

Before jumping into Shadows and what it offers, let's take a step back and look at where it fits into the franchise with a decade-and-a-half-long legacy. Shadows has been divisive amongst both fans and netizens of the franchise. It follows in the RPG-era footsteps of Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, which at times left fans feeling alienated, all the while promising a new generational leap for the series.

While Feudal Japan, one of the most requested settings in the community, was once considered impossible, much like Ancient Egypt portrayed in Origins, life finds a way.

Divided by warring shogunates, this era is marked by honor, social hierarchy, and war. Assassin’s Creed Shadows takes place right between them, during the end of the Muromachi period and the beginning of the Azuchi–Momoyama period, with Oda Nobunaga, the first Great Unifier of Japan, playing a crucial role in the story.

The era of Feudal Japan has been portrayed across media in different interpretations, from Emmy-winning shows like Shogun to PlayStation’s 2020 classic, Ghost of Tsushima. Choosing such an exotic yet familiar location for Shadows is bound to draw, comparison, but after playing the game, I would say there shouldn’t be any. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not putting one ahead of the other, but Shadows’ portrayal of the setting is quite different from the others, and it all comes down to preferences. But what is a game without its protagonist?

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Protagonist - The duality of Shadows

Coming from the same team behind Odyssey and Syndicate, Shadows also features two protagonists, Yasuke and Naoe. However, unlike the previous entries, the protagonists have been fleshed out beyond just the storyline — they heavily dictate your gameplay choices.

Yasuke arrives in the region as a slave for the Portuguese Catholic Priests on a mission to spread Christianity, but quickly ascends to become a Samurai when Lord Oda Nobunaga takes an interest in him. Yasuke, as a Samurai of Oda Nobunaga, then assists the Great Unifier in conquering regions marked by blood, for the sake of unification.

This is where I was introduced to Naoe for the first time. The daughter of Fujibayashi Nagato, she portrayed the horror that Oda Nobunaga’s invasion brought and later the grief of losing her father, making her a more relatable character compared to Yasuke in the starting hours.

While Naoe often wears her emotions on her sleeves, Yasuke has more of a strong and reserved type characteristic, making them perfectly complement one another as the protagonists of this story. This stark contrast also affects their approach to a mission, as well as your preference of gameplay as the weaver of this story.

Assassin’s Creed as a franchise has been divided between two distinct camps of fans, one who prefers earlier games like Unity and Brotherhood with a more stealth-focused approach, and the other who got into the franchise because of its combat-focused approach of recent games like Odyssey and Valhalla. What I found quite interesting is that Naoe and Yasuke are written and designed to appeal to both these fronts, and to understand them better as characters, we need to take a look at the story of Shadows.

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Story

As mentioned earlier, Shadows takes place at the turn of an era. This is the perfect backdrop for complex characters, political turmoil, and of course, the Assassin Brotherhood and Templar Order's struggle for power.

To share my thoughts about the story of Shadows, I must take a step back and briefly share my thoughts on the story of Valhalla. While the Viking-era adventure in medieval England had quite a few interesting story beats, ultimately I felt disappointed as there really wasn’t a strong core narrative thread tying the entire narrative together. I am happy to say that isn’t the case with Shadows.

The primary antagonistic faction of Shadows is the Shibakufu, Onyo, a group of 12 masked people, in a position of influence, controlling the proceedings of the region during the turn of an era. The main story of Shadows kicks off when Naoe fails to protect a mysterious box from the Shibakufu hidden by the Assassins, resulting in the death of her father.

This fuels the initial hours of the story, which sees Naoe embark on a revenge quest, making allies along the way. This eventually tangles in with Yasuke’s story, where he has his own motives to help Naoe, which isn’t revealed right away but does help build the suspense and tension between the two. While this certainly helps establish both characters and their motivations, I could not help but feel that Yasuke took a backseat at times in spite of being one-half of the protagonist duo.

Aside from the main storyline, both Naoe and Yasuke have their own personal ones that flesh out them as a character, as well as those involving different characters across the world of Shadows. This breathed life into the beautiful open world, where Feudal Japan itself stands out as one of the most well-written characters in this storyline.

However, there is one aspect I felt that the game could have improved upon. After such a long and frankly quite enjoyable journey, the end of Shadows comes abruptly, with obvious threads for the future expansions. This could leave a sour taste in the mouth for many players, owing to the lack of a proper conclusion.

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Open world - The beautiful and the dangerous world

For all the flaws one points out in a Ubisoft title, the publisher never misses with their open-world design, especially in the Assassin’s Creed series. They have championed that quality while designing the world of Shadows.

The map is only part of Japan, more specifically the Kansai region situated island of Honshu, consisting of cities like Kyoto and Osaka. Even though that may sound relatively smaller compared to Origins or Valhalla’s map, in truth, Shadows is actually the second largest map of the series, falling just behind Ancient Greece of Odyssey. However, even for such a massive map, Ubisoft has not compromised in quality.

Regions

The map is divided into nine distinct regions, each with its own rich history and characteristics, influenced by the local people. For example, Sakai, a small merchant town located in Izumi Setsu has a completely different look than a massive city like Kyoto, ruled by the political upper class.

Moving beyond the cities, the regions are connected with intertwined roads through lush forests, fields of reeds, and snow-peaked mountains. This is where the new weather system comes into play in Shadows.

Shadows has four seasons — Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring — these not only change how a region looks, but also how guards behave. A shallow pond for Naoe to slip in during the summer could very well be frozen solid during the winter, or a bush to hide in during spring could have lost all its leaves when it comes to autumn.

Castles

While there are a few bandit camps, the real fun of taking down an enemy base is with the castles. Each has a viewpoint atop its primary structure, so once you synchronize, you can just fast-travel in; getting out is a different story altogether.

Castles have a specific enemy type called Samurai Daimyo, a strong armored emeny, and each castle may have anywhere from two-to-five Samurai Daimyos in it. Once you successfully take them down, there is a Legendary chest you can loot, which will give you Legendary gear along with Mastery Points.

I had quite a fun time infiltrating the castles and taking down Samurai Daimyos, followed by a successful exit or getting killed instantly. Beyond the massive area of the castle structure, it has also a lot of interiors for you to explore, or assassinate some enemies from behind a shoji door.

Hideout

Shadows brings back, or more aptly, reintroduces, the hideout feature from previous entries. However, unlike previous entries, you don’t just spend your money to upgrade an existing structure in a fixed location. You get the option to select where to build the structure in a very rudimentary simcity builder-like overlay, with the option to decide on how it will look.

Hideout is where you upgrade your weapons, restock tools, and most importantly manage your scouts. While Assassin’s Creed Shadows can be played in the traditional guided mode where objectives are marked, the exploration mode gets an interesting overhaul that simply gives you hints of where the locations are, instead of outright marking them on the map. Then, you can deduce a possible location from the clues, and either deploy a scout to find the objective or explore yourself to find it. Scouts are also useful to smuggle the goods you find in the open world as loot.

Beyond just your main hideout in Setsu, you can also build smaller ones in the cities called Kakurega, from where you can do some of the hideout activities and accept contracts across the region. This method, paired with the scout system, really gives you the feeling of building a creed, harking back to the early days of the Brotherhood.

Temples and other open-world activities

Aside from the bustling cities and towering castles, the regions are filled with locations such as temples and shrines, and open-world activities like Kuji-Kiri and Horse Archery. Alongside completing these activities, you can pray at a shrine or collect lost pages at temples, which will boost your Knowledge rank to unlock higher-level skills.

All in all, the open world of Shadows is a colorful character with bustling cities and peaceful temples that I cannot wait to get lost in time and time again.

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Visuals - A generational leap

While I don’t generally talk about a game’s technical aspect in a review, I will make an exception for Shadows, simply because of its visuals. While titles like Unity and Origins had impressive graphical fidelity when they were released, I feel Shadows has simply exceeded the expected jump in visual quality.

The addition of ray tracing has drastically improved the lighting and the shadows, which play a crucial role in stealth. This, along with a return to motion-captured cutscenes and overall more detailed models, has made this game one of the best-looking titles out there.

Another addition to Shadows is the weather system, creating winds and waves across the regions. Although the comparison with Ghost of Tsushima’s iconic wind system is inevitable, I won’t hesitate to say that Shadows’s system is certainly a step ahead.

This jump in visual quality is certainly due to Ubisoft’s new version of the Anvil engine, and although the series previously had controversies over visual downgrades from an earlier title, I hope Ubisoft maintains this quality of visual fidelity for the upcoming titles.

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Gameplay - Perfectly balanced, as all things should be

Since Origins, Assassin’s Creed has had a gameplay identity problem, stuck between prioritizing stealth or combat. If combat took priority in Valhalla with cinematic and gory actions, stealth took priority in Mirage with the return of social stealth. However, finally, with Shadows, the franchise has struck gold and created a balance between the two, with Naoe and Yasuke.

Naoe is a shinobi while Yasuke is a Samurai, and this is very much reflected in their gameplay style. While Naoe can easily climb onto a structure and crouch or prone inside narrow spaces to avoid detection, she can as easily get killed in a few hits by a Naginata-wielding samurai.

On the other hand, Yasuke is a tank when it comes to combat, as he can not only demolish enemies but also stagger them with a posture attack. However, he can only barge into the enemy camp and lacks the lightfooted abilities of Naoe. With that being said, let's discuss the two aspects in depth.

Stealth

Stealth has been a core pillar of the franchise since its initial inception, and while Shadows doesn’t bring back social stealth, it innovates in ways that have certainly left me excited. Shadows introduces a prone feature for the first time, and it is as big of an innovation to stealth as crouching was back in Unity. Secondly, light and shadows play a crucial role in the stealth, where Naoe can hide in the shadows, and can even create them by extinguishing torches.

One shortcoming that I have to mention is that the enemy AI still feels stuck in the past, which is similar to the issues I mentioned for Mirage. If I crouch and approach an enemy from the side, they don’t notice me at all, as if they have no peripheral vision. Secondly, if I take down an enemy in the shadows, others fail to notice their missing comrade, even if he is just a few meters away. And finally, if I whistle, only one enemy comes to check it out, no matter how many are close to me.

Parkour goes hand-in-hand with stealth for Naoe, and it has also gotten an upgrade, albeit not as massive. Ubisoft brings back the grappling hook from Syndicate, and while I’m sure some of the fans will lose their minds over the historical accuracy of a grappling hook in Feudal Japan, I quite enjoyed it and it felt like a natural extension of parkouring. Comparing the movement with that of Mirage, I can say with confidence that it feels smoother to such a degree that I fear Mirage might feel clunky if I go back now.

Naoe also has an arsenal of four types of tools complimenting her stealthy shinobi archetype, namely shuriken, smoke bomb, kunai, and bell. All in all, the stealth gameplay has seen a much-needed improvement in Shadows and I am here for it.

Combat

Although Naoe can certainly hold her own against an enemy or two with her Katana, Kusarigama, and Tanto, the game wastes no time in establishing Yasuke as the primary combat archetype. Yasuke has a selection of Long Katana, Naginata, and Kanabo for melee weapons, complemented with Teppo and Bow as ranged weapons.

Although I did not play as Yasuke as much as I played as Naoe taking the stealth approach, I quite enjoyed how Yasuke played. Compared to Valhalla and Odyssey, the weapon selection for melee combat has certainly seen a reduction, but that has given the developers room to polish the weapon combat that much.

Shadows carries over the active abilities from Valhalla and Odyssey, which are now called Poisture Attacks. Paired with the dedicated skill tree for each weapon, it really lets you master a weapon type according to your playstyle.

All in all, Shadows has an overall quality-over-quantity focus when it comes to weapons. For those unsatisfied with the selection, I’m sure Ubisoft will bring more weapons in the future expansions, as a Bo staff is already confirmed for Claws of Awaji.

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Progression - Bringing the best of the franchise together

Progression has been all over the place for the recent two Assassin’s Creed titles, but I am happy to say that the traditional level-based progression system is back. Not only that, it doesn't aggressively penalize you for being under level, where you're forced to grind before progressing any further.

Mission structure

Shadows brings back the mission-board-style structure that I quite enjoyed in Mirage. Instead of having a list of missions like a checkbox, the visual cues of the objective screens convey not only who is assigning what, but also how they are connected with the protagonist and the main storyline.

Targets

(Minor spoiler ahead)

Although the Shibakufu are the primary antagonist faction, interestingly they are not the only ones pulling strings and dividing the nation. Multiple factions are terrorizing the regions while hiding in the shadows. This provided not only an enemy variety from a narrative perspective, but also intriguing storylines involving each faction.

Skills and Knowledge

When I played Valhalla, its constellation of more than 400 skills felt quite inconsequential to me. Yes, there were a few useful ones here and there, but overall the skills became meaningless. After a while, I was just auto-assigning for a +1% boost here and there without giving much thought to it. Thankfully, Shadows is a return to form in this aspect as well, where I felt each skill mattered.

Naoe and Yasuke each have six skill trees, with some focusing on the individual weapons and others on playstyle. You can level up a skill by investing Mastery Points in it, which can be earned by not only leveling up but also completing in-game activities such as Castle.

Interestingly, a new Knowledge level comes into play for higher skills. Skills in the tree are divided into six Knowledge level tiers, and you can only unlock skills up to your Knowledge level.

This is quite an ingenious inclusion in progression, which might leave some fans annoyed, but I absolutely love it. The Knowledge level will make sure you’re not just fighting and rushing through the game, but actually spending time in what many consider menial activities, showcasing the beauty of the world.

Gear

Like weapons, Shadows also prioritizes quality over quantity when it comes to gear. Instead of having five separate pieces, it has only two: armor and headgear. On the one hand, I do like the fact that Ubisoft hasn’t divided a gear set into so many pieces that it becomes a chore to complete an outfit. On the other hand, I feel it takes a step back from the in-depth customization with the lack of variation.

All in all, the progression in Assassin’s Creed Shadows brings in the best aspects from different titles. And most importantly, it does not feel like a grind for the sake of completion.

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Conclusion - Where does Assassin's Creed Shadows fit in?

When I first started to write this review, I was conflicted over how to approach it. Should I compare it with previous entries or consider it a fresh start for the franchise like Ubisoft wants us to? Where does Assassin’s Creed Shadows fit in today's world of unfinished promises in video games? Whom is this game really for?

It's easy to hold a preconceived notion about Shadows simply because of its publisher, to judge and label it something it isn’t before its release. However, not only this game, but every game deservers a fair shot before being judged.

Keeping my personal bias for the franchise aside, I think Shadows succeeds as not only the modern day flag-bearer of the iconic Assassin’s Creed series, but as an action-adventure-stealth open-world RPG set in Feudal Japan.

The story brings together two protagonists from a vastly different world, but managers to skillfully intertwine the narrative without feeling forced. The rich open-world has plenty of activities, but it never feels overwhelming. The progression is well balanced where it gives you obstacles to master your skills, but never feels unnecessarily grindy.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows may very well be the franchise’s culmination of the controversial RPG era, but it brings the circle together, completing the promise of a stealth and action focused title that was made with Origins.

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Assassin's Creed Shadows

Assassin's Creed Review (Image via Sportskeeda)

• Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
• Reviewed on: PC (Code provided by Ubisoft)
• Developer: Ubisoft Qubec
• Publisher: Ubisoft
• Release Date: March 20, 2025