Introduction
A series entry set in feudal Japan has long been at the top of Assassin’s Creed fans’ wishlists, but Shadows arrives with more baggage than it ought to.
2023’s Mirage had scaled what had become an immensely bloated franchise back to its roots (historical tourism interspersed with unhealthy amounts of murder), yet here we are again: another vast open world to explore, and another lengthy gear and level-gated RPG structure in order to experience it all. Then there’s the new Animus hub the game sits within, which is desperate to show you how it interconnects with the other titles – and the wider modern-day storyline Ubisoft still thinks you care about.
I can’t deny roaming feudal Japan is a tantalising prospect, and Ubisoft has in some sense returned to the gameplay that made earlier Assassin’s Creed games so much fun. Shadows is trying to please OG fans as well as the newcomers expecting hundreds of hours of content, but I reckon both camps will feel it has missed the mark.
Shadows play
Shadows puts a new spin on the dual protagonist approach last seen in 2015’s Syndicate, with two very different play styles. Yasuke, the samurai of African origin based on a real historical figure, is built for the direct melee combat familiar to fans of ACs Valhalla and Oasis; stealthy shinobi Naoe’s penchant for leaping off buildings and knifing bad guys in the neck represents the Assassin’s Creed playstyle of old.
It’s an intriguing best-of-both worlds approach, but I would’ve preferred it if the whole focus was on Naoe. Her links with the original Brotherhood of Assassins and personal vengeance quest (like a feudal Kill Bill with some detective work thrown in) mean she’s simply the more relatable protagonist. She’s adept at all the sneaking around that the bulkier Yasuke isn’t equipped for, though the game does express this in some intentionally comical ways.
Even if you pick him at the outset, once you’ve seen how he went from a slave of Portuguese Jesuits to a one-man army for a ruthless Japanese warlord, you actually spend about 10-12 hours just playing from the shinobi’s perspective. That alone is as long as Mirage’s entire campaign.
Forced perspectives
The quests start off quite interesting, too. You’re not just following waypoints on the map but get clues to figure out where a lead or target is. One cool mission early on involves working out which attendee of a tea ceremony is your target, affecting how the assassination plays out.
Once you get to the point you can choose either character for a mission, combat inevitably takes over. You’re almost forced to pick Yasuke if you want to avoid an uphill struggle with Naoe, who has a shorter health bar and fewer health rations. They’re well written characters that complement each other, but the gameplay execution falls short. It doesn’t help there’s a glut of Japan-set open world RPGs to compare with, each with a single protagonist perfectly capable of both stealth and combat.
Shadows nixes the Souls-style stamina meter, making gameplay more hack-and-slash, but enemies also seem to behave erratically. Sometimes they’ll wait ages before attacking, while different elevations of the environment are also a constant source of frustration. Aside from knowing when to parry or dodge telegraphed unblockable attacks, there’s little to the fighting, so the game simply chucks more enemies at you. The awful targeting camera makes this a chore to manage. Many foes also feel like damage sponges even when you’re trying to keep your gear up to the mission level. At least do yourself a favour and change the option to allow for instant assassinations.
Leaping into virtual Japan
Where Shadows has the most going for it is in the visuals. If you just want to be a virtual tourist in feudal Japan then this is the dream. It’s not just care that has gone into replicating the architecture of shrines and castles but also in the natural environments. The new system of changing seasons takes it even further; you get to see the same places covered in snow in winter, trees a crisp brown in autumn, though the natural favourite is spring when the cherry blossoms are out.
Having also worked alongside its Japan-based studios in the consultation process, Ubisoft has really done its homework to achieve a faithful representation of Japanese culture. It’s not just obsessed with imitating Kurosawa films, but musical instruments like the biwa or etiquette in tea ceremonies. Yes, some elements are incorporated into the typical open world box-ticking collectahons, but it feels apt that collecting scrolls or praying at shrines grants you knowledge points that unlock skill levels.
Even more authentically, there is an option to play the game in ‘immersive mode’, which means characters actually speak in the language that they would realistically speak (in this case Japanese and Portuguese). The latter was spoken by the first and only known Western foreigners to be in Japan in that time period. It makes this game even more accurate than the Emmy-winning smash Shogun, set in Japan in 1600, where non-Japanese dialogue is all just spoken in English. Naturally, I went with this option and was pleased it wasn’t subject to any poor lip-syncing issues.
Cultural border control
On the other hand, I can’t help but think Assassin’s Creed Shadows feels culturally reverent to a fault. Contrast that with Japan-set games made by Japanese studios, which not only have the ingrained cultural knowledge but then have the freedom to have fun with it in weird and goofy ways, such as with Rise of the Ronin or Like A Dragon: Ishin.
Even thinking back to a recent entry, Valhalla had minigames involving dice and viking rap battles, whereas your lot in Shadows is largely visiting and praying at lots of shrines. On the other hand, animal lovers will be thrilled that you can interact with lots of creatures in the wild and even add them to your customisable base.
Having been criticised for bloat previously, it might seem weird to criticise Shadows for having less to do (the story will nonetheless keep you busy even if its level-gating means you’ll find it trickier to mainline your progress in the latter half). My issue is not so much quantity but whether it’s any fun. A minigame obstacle course where the path is unironically signposted with yellow is the opposite of that to me.
It’s also just wild that, for a series partly responsible for popularising parkour movement, it still does a poor job of it. Maybe that’s also a crutch of being more grounded and ‘realistic’ when other open world games let you climb anything or glide everywhere, but what’s the point of riding a horse if you have to get off because you can’t get from A to B without wading through a dense forest. If you feel compelled to use fast travel because it feels too much of a chore to traverse the world itself, that’s never a great sign.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows verdict
If Assassin’s Creed Shadows is supposed to be a vision for the future of the series, then the future is muddled in trying to balance the old with the new. Its two lead characters have fascinating journeys and you’ll want to find out how they intertwine not just with each other but with the overarching Templar plot – but that’ll be in spite of the dual gameplay system, where it’s hard not to feel the forced trade-offs to combat and stealth.
Still, if your real interest is to dive into a vast and authentic recreation of 16th century central Japan, this is your virtual ticket. You just may have to contend with how it’s been beaten by older games that, while less technically dazzling, know how to have more fun in virtual historical Japan besides sightseeing.
