Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PS5
Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Review
It’s been roughly a year and a half since we reviewed Assassin’s Creed Mirage on our site, and the next installment is already here. We concluded that Mirage was a decent entry that went back to simpler gameplay from the first installments in the series, but because of this, it was also a lot less action-packed and less interesting. We sadly didn’t care that much for Basim and many of the other characters, but the gameplay was still fascinating enough to make it a fun experience, especially for fans who wanted the series to return to its roots. Now, however, we move back towards a bigger adventure with Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which offers a lot more content and even more side objectives to delve into. We realize this title has been met with a lot of backlash before it was even released, but we still want to give this game a fair chance, just like we did with other controversial titles such as Concord.
Story
Assassin’s Creed Shadows tells a story that involves two protagonists who eventually have intertwining storylines. On one side, you have Naoe, a shinobi from Iga, whose village gets destroyed in Oda Nobunaga’s attack. She loses everything dear to her, and she witnesses her father being brutally murdered by a group of masked attackers. She vows to exact her revenge, no matter the cost.
Then we have Diogo, who will eventually call himself Yasuke. He was originally brought to accompany the Jesuit priests who had come to negotiate with Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga takes an interest in Diogo and even commands the priests to transfer Diogo to him to become a proper warrior. Nobunaga clearly respects this foreign new addition to his army, and thanks to this, Diogo’s path to becoming a samurai begins.
Of course, the story is a lot more complex than this, but it does take a few hours before things really get going. While this might be a mild spoiler, it’s pretty clear right off the bat that Nobunaga’s empire will crumble, and due to this, both Naoe and Yasuke will join hands. You’ll have character-specific story beats for each of the two protagonists, and this works well to a certain extent. Swapping characters is a bit tedious at times, but we’ll get back to that further below. All in all, the story is enjoyable, albeit a bit bland and uninspired at times. This is something that is not uncommon for the franchise, as the focus is still more on the actual gameplay.
Graphics
First of all, let’s start by saying that the world of Assassin’s Creed Shadows is absolutely gorgeous. We found ourselves watching the backdrops more times than we could count, and it was a lot of fun exploring all the different areas. There is enough asset variety to keep things interesting, even though a few viewpoints use the same building or tree to climb on. The NPCs are also quite diverse, and most of them look decent. Some bigger towns have more duplicates, but even so, you’re often just running through the town toward your objective, loot, or the next target to kill. Naoe and Yasuke look great as well, but this is often simply due to the gear you’ll find. We did find some of the character animations stiff and stilted, especially the facial animations. On top of that, we often were under the impression that both Naoe and Yasuke didn’t really connect with the surface that they were walking on. Some movements seemed more like gliding over surfaces than actually walking over them. However, this was not the case when trudging through the snow, as our characters left clear imprints and even struggled when the snow became too deep. All in all, the overall package looks great and runs well on PlayStation 5.
An honorable mention goes to the combat animations and the finishing moves. While the latter may become repetitive during longer battles, we were rather impressed by the portrayed brutal moves that would almost be suitable for a Mortal Kombat title. There’s also a clear distinction in the finishing moves performed by Naoe and Yasuke. Naoe is more agile and moves like an assassin, while Yasuke mows down his opponents like a human tank.
Sound
In terms of sound design, Assassin’s Creed Shadows does a great job when it comes to the soundtrack and the sound effects. Even though the soundtrack sounded a bit too modern for the setting at times, we still enjoyed the variety of tracks and the mood-setting music. The sound effects pack a proper punch and add a lot to the fast-paced combat. In terms of voice acting, we preferred the Japanese voice acting, as it sounded more appropriate for the setting. Even so, the voice actors sounded a bit too apathetic at times. Nonetheless, it was still leagues ahead of the English voice acting, which is probably the worst voice acting we have heard in many years for such a big title as this. The thick accents get in the way of the performance and make it feel too forced at times. The cast members focused more on reading their lines as correctly as possible rather than adding emotion to their performances. Almost everything in the English voice acting felt phoned in, safe for a few voice tracks of several key characters.
Gameplay
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is an open-world adventure RPG in which you play with two characters, Naoe and Yasuke. You unlock Yasuke only after a few hours of playing the game, depending on how much side content you squeeze in between the main story missions. It’s your goal to explore the map, beat the story missions, and decide if you want to indulge yourself in hours upon hours of side content. You can play huge parts of the game with your favorite character, but some missions are character-specific, meaning you’ll have to invest some time playing both available characters. Everything is very straightforward, but the huge map and the many things to do might make it a bit overwhelming at times. Going for all the side content first might even give you a small burnout, so beware and pace yourself.
The game does have a few different difficulty settings for all types of players. If you prefer exploration and going through the story, then you can try the story mode, which reduces the difficulty by a lot. Playing on higher difficulty settings is interesting for those looking for a challenge, but it also turns enemies into bullet-sponges, which slows down the game significantly. Those who prefer playing like a real assassin can also turn on the instant assassination option, which allows you to insta-kill enemies no matter their level if you successfully sneak up on them. This would, in theory, allow you to take out high-level targets, but slipping up might mean you get insta-killed yourself. It’s a risk-reward type of situation.
While the game is open world, some regions are still too hard to tackle at the beginning, as all enemies will instantly kill you. Progress is luckily fairly quick, as you’ll gain a lot of experience from doing story missions and side objectives. As you level up, you’ll also unlock new skills, which further strengthen your character(s). A lot of these skills provide passive bonuses that aren’t that impressive, however. The weapon variety, on the other hand, is rather impressive. Both Naoe and Yasuke can use different weapons, ranging from katanas and tantos to bows and even guns. It’s fun trying out both characters for different battles, as they play hugely differently. Naoe is fast and nimble and can easily climb structures, while Yasuke is bulky and just crushes everything in his path. Swapping characters was a bit tedious, however, as you need to go through a small loading screen every time, and you can’t even swap in hostile zones. The latter is extremely annoying when you find a collectible that only one of the two can pick up, basically forcing you to leave the combat zone and redo the entire battle with the other character.
Last but not least, there is also the option to improve and expand your hideout. This involves placing basic structures that provide you with bonuses, allow you to recruit allies, and even allow you to upgrade your gear. It’s fairly basic, but you can opt to further customize everything by adding decorative items. Upgrading existing buildings provides even more passive upgrades and bonuses. This does motivate players to explore the world for resources, as it will eventually pay off when your base is fully upgraded. The building system itself is also rather basic, but you can still create a good-looking hideout for when you’re not out exploring and butchering your enemies. The upgrading of gear is simple as well, as you only need materials and some money to do so. All gear can be leveled up, so if you really like specific items, you can keep upgrading them to match your current character level.
Even though we enjoyed most of what Assassin’s Creed Shadows had to offer, it was not without faults. Many minor bugs start to become more irksome as you progress through the experience. Even when locking on targets, some of our attacks still didn’t hit anywhere in the direction of said targets, for example. We sometimes simply got stuck when doing our execution move, and sometimes the damage didn’t seem to properly register. Outside of these mishaps during battles, the controls feel a bit iffy at times. When climbing, Naoe sometimes doesn’t respond to button inputs. Sometimes Naoe gets stuck behind a tiny wooden crate and becomes unresponsive when trying to get over it, while moments before, she scaled an actual castle with ease. Her grappling hook also doesn’t always trigger properly, and the same can be said about loot prompts, as they simply do not work at times until you loop around a chest and try again. While these are mainly minor annoyances, we hope many of these issues get fixed in the near future. We are also unsure why a store with microtransactions is pushed on a single-player game.
Conclusion
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is far from perfect, but it’s rather enjoyable nonetheless. The huge open world is a joy to explore, there is more than enough to do if you want to diverge from the main story, and the combat feels very satisfying. While there are still some issues with the general controls and locking onto targets, Assassin’s Creed Shadows feels a lot more polished than many older Assassin’s Creed titles. Despite the fact that the new cast of characters didn’t fully convince us, the gameplay stood tall on its own. We suggest doing your own additional research to see if this one is a title to add to your library, but if you decide to do so, you’ll have a title that offers hours upon hours of engaging gameplay.
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