Assassin’s Creed Shadows Review

Despite all the controversy surrounding the newest entry in Ubisoft's stealth game series involving the samurai Yasuke, a real figure who held the title of samurai, and the fact that some people were rooting for the game to fail, it appears that this time the company has recovered and managed to deliver a good game, something it hadn't done in a long time.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is a great game, the likes of which we haven't seen in the franchise for a long time. Not even the attempt to "return to the origins" of the previous game, Assassin's Creed Mirage, could deliver the same quality in terms of narrative and story that this new game brings us. But is it really all that? Are there any negative sides to this new historical adventure?

I received a key for this game as a courtesy from Ubisoft, and I’m thankful for the opportunity to play the game before its release. So, let's talk about the new Assassin's Creed Shadows and whether it's worth investing in this game. If you have any questions, leave a comment.

Just like in the most recent games in the franchise, Assassin’s Creed Shadows starts as if the whole thing was an entertainment experience sold by Abstergo. As if you were “playing” the lives of those characters, including having the option to watch the previous games, Valhalla, Odyssey and Origins, as if they’re the “previous chapters” of this “interactive film” that you’re about to experience.

When the “simulation” begins, we follow a group of Christian missionaries seeking an audience with the shogun Oda Nobunaga, to ask for permission for Catholic priests to preach in the region and, among these missionaries, a very tall and strong black man, named Diego, who accompanied and protected them.

They managed to get an audience, and Nobunaga was impressed by the height and physical stature of the “painted man” and asked to speak to him alone. After the conversation, Nobunaga decided that Diego would stay with him in exchange for the priests’ free pass in the lands. Months later, Yasuke was one of Nobunaga’s trusted generals, had led and won several battles and was heading for yet another: an attack on the city of Iga, which was resisting Nobunaga’s rule.

Elsewhere, Naoe rides with her father into battle, eliminates Nobunaga's samurai, and meets with Iga’s leader to get an important object to take away from there, a mysterious box that Naoe was tasked with protecting. This box was in a cave with a symbol carved on the door, and the key to open it was the Hidden Blade that Naoe received from her father. She manages to retrieve the box, but is attacked from behind by a samurai, who steals it from her.

Naoe, ashamed of disappointing everyone, with the leader of Iga and her father, will organize an attack on a castle and recover the box.

As it’s common knowledge already, you play this episode of the franchise with the two characters, Naoe and Yasuke. Unlike Evie and Jacob from Assassin's Creed Syndicate, who were practically identical in their gameplay, the two Assassin's Creed Shadows protagonists are very different from each other. The things you can do with Naoe are nearly impossible for Yasuke and vice versa.

Naoe is an assassin in the most traditional sense of the series. She’s stealthy, uses the hidden blade to carry out kills, hides in bushes, climbs walls and takes the famous “Leaps of Faith” when she climbs to high places that can be synchronized. However, in combat, she’s much more fragile and can easily die if surrounded by enemies. She wears light armor, and her blows with katanas, tanto (a short sword) or kama (a type of short sickle with a chain), are not as effective as Yasuke's in open combat.

Yasuke, on the other hand, is a giant (especially if we consider that he was about 2 meters tall compared to the adult Japanese man's 1.60m average), strong and heavy. Trying to act stealthily with Yasuke is practically asking to fail. He also has a hard time climbing walls or trees and swimming, thanks to his heavy armor, bows and kanabo (a heavy combat staff) and his leap of faith is really funny to watch. However, he can come running, go through walls and wooden doors, destroying everything in his path. Plus, he's a killing machine in combat.

In addition to all this, you can explore the map with both characters by climbing, running, swimming, riding and everything else. Choosing whom to play with, and whom to advance in the missions with, defines your play style. Personally, I advanced most of the missions with Naoe, as I find it a lot more fun to play in stealth mode, breaking into places and leaving without being seen.

This game’s map is also a refreshing experience for those who are tired of gigantic open worlds. I never finished Assassin’s Creed Unity because, when I look at the huge map of France, with thousands of things to do, I get tired before I even start. Something that doesn’t happen here because the map of Japan is not as big as the previous games and doesn’t have as many things to do. Yes, there’s a lot to discover and explore, but it doesn’t feel suffocating like in other entries in the franchise.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is one of the games that feels like it’s been influenced by RPGs, similar to the most recent games in the franchise, such as Valhalla and Origins, with decision moments (which don’t have a lot of influence in the story, but are there) and there’s the option to choose the “canonical mode”, where you don’t make decisions and the choices are made according to what “really happened”. You have a skill tree, in which you spend points to evolve and learn new tricks and skills.

You can also choose which weapons to use, to upgrade, to dismantle to recover materials, and you can use those to modify your equipment. We can also customize our equipment, giving it the appearance of another you’ve already acquired or, in other words, you can make an item look like another item that you think is cooler without changing its stats (combining aesthetics with good attributes and having the best of both worlds). It’s also possible to hide the equipment, in case you don’t want to hide the character’s face with a mask.

In addition to the common enemies, you’ll hunt a secret organization called Onryu, which is equivalent to the Templars from the other games, and you’ll gather clues to locate each of them searching for revenge. There are also random ronins from an unknown organization who are hunting you (just like the Mercenaries in Assassin's Creed Odyssey) and, by defeating them, you’ll get better weapons and equipment.

The combat is also quite similar to the most recent games in the franchise, such as Valhalla and Origins, with influences from soulslike titles, having parry movements and dodge rolls. If an enemy prepares to attack, your weapon will glow blue, and you can parry the blow, to open the enemy's defense and attack them.

If it glows red, then it’s a lethal blow, which cannot be parried and you must dodge it. By dodging the blow, you can attack the enemy who’ll have an orange glow, reflecting that they’ll be vulnerable and will receive more damage.

If the enemy is too strong for you, their name will be displayed in red, and you won’t be able to sneak attack. If the name is yellow, it means that they’ll take damage from sneak attacks, but it won’t be lethal. Knowing how to balance these parry, dodge, attack and counterattack moments is what guarantees your victory in combat.

Let's not pretend to be surprised, after all, we’re talking about a Ubisoft game and an Assassin's Creed to top it off, so we know that the game would have many "bagus" (or bugs in Japanese). As a big title, with a huge open world map, it’s very common for there to be bugs and problems. And in this case, the problems even got in the way of my gaming experience a bit.

The main problem I faced was the slow loading of textures, objects and even NPCs, even on the lowest settings. I had to wait for a few seconds, even minutes, for the textures to load correctly, not to mention the time it took for even the HUD to load, which left me not knowing which way to go when it was time to continue the mission. In this tweet from the NikTek account you can see a cut from an official Ubisoft live stream where a bug occurs when trying to pet a dog.

Opening up the map meant a few more minutes without loading textures, HUD, enemies, NPCs, wall textures, etc. There were times when I saw NPCs that looked like wooden dolls, no face, no proper clothes, just that 3D object standing there in the middle of the path, until it loaded, turned into the NPC and started walking. There were also bipedal dogs that “moonwalked” across the map and boats that “breakdanced”, spinning in the air as if they were kites completely out of control.

There were times when enemies “took a long time to die”. I jumped on them with the stealth attack and Naoe didn’t “complete the attack”. I pressed the button again, she made the move, but still didn’t complete the attack. The enemy just stood there, looking at her, without attacking and also without dying. I then simply started attacking normally and everything worked, but the delay in the response of the action was really frustrating and prevented me from playing in stealth mode the entire time.

I don't know if the problem will ever be addressed, but an update that arrived a few days after the key was released improved the quality of the game a bit, so I imagine some kind of "Day One" patch will fix this. Let's hope that happens.

Pros

Great story and characters;

The map has the right size. Not too big, not too small;

Distinct protagonists with visible differences between them;

You can pet the dogs and cats!

Cons

Problems with loading textures and HUD;

Bugs in NPCs that hinder combat;

Lack of optimization;

Assassin’s Creed Shadow is one of the best AC games released in recent years. It has a great story, characters and, even with all the controversy surrounding people spewing all their racism to the point of wanting to rewrite history and nullify the existence of Yasuke, the game is great, and it’s not tiring to play and explore the entire map.

But it’s worth waiting to get the game a few days after its release, as it’s still poorly optimized and will need some updates to run properly. It’s normal for a big game like this to have issues, so we can overlook a few bugs here and there.

Do we have a Game of the Year candidate? I don’t think it’s quite that much, but if you can, give Assassin’s Creed Shadows a good play, as it’s worth it. Let us know if you agree or disagree with the review by leaving a comment.