Assassin's Creed Shadows

Assassin's Creed Shadows is Ubisoft's open world action role playing game set in Japan during the turbulent Sengoku period era. Released on March 20, 2025, it was developed by Ubisoft Quebec and became the series' first entry centered on Japan.

Its story follows Naoe, a fictional shinobi from Iga Province, and Yasuke, the historical African samurai who served Oda Nobunaga. The opening conflict begins after Nobunaga's 1582 campaign against Iga, where Naoe's community is devastated and her father Nagato dies.

Naoe survives and pursues the people responsible, while Yasuke becomes entangled in Nobunaga's final years and the political upheaval afterward. The protagonists provide deliberately different playstyles: Naoe relies on concealment, grappling tools, kunai, smoke bombs, and a hidden blade weapon.

Yasuke instead fights openly with katana, long weapons, firearms, and heavy armor, allowing him to break formations and absorb punishment. Players can switch between them for many activities, but certain missions and dialogue scenes are designed around one character specifically.

Shadows features a large region including Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, and parts of the Iga and Omi provinces as explorable territories. Its castles are not simple decorative landmarks: infiltrating them involves scouting defenses, identifying entrances, and exploiting darkness, weather, and sound.

A dynamic seasonal system changes landscapes and gameplay, turning summer foliage into autumn color and winter snow into tactical cover. Light and shadow are central mechanics, because Naoe can hide in darkness while guards react to illumination and visibility changes.

The game also includes a customizable Hideout, built in a secluded valley, where players arrange buildings, decorations, and companions' spaces. Hideout upgrades support crafting, scouting, resource management, and relationships with allies including Tomiko, a practical organizer who helps maintain it.

Naoe's personal storyline connects with figures such as Momochi Sandayu, reflecting Iga's shinobi traditions and the region's resistance to Nobunaga. Yasuke's campaign intersects historical events involving Nobunaga, Akechi Mitsuhide, and the 1582 Honno-ji Incident, though the narrative uses fictionalized elements.

The game presents these events through Assassin's Creed's continuing conflict between freedom seeking Assassins and order seeking Templars and control. Exploration emphasizes investigation rather than constant map icons, using spies, scouts, rumors, and discovered clues to locate targets across provinces.

Postlaunch content includes the Claws of Awaji expansion, which adds a new island setting, story quests, enemies, abilities, and gear. Overall, Assassin's Creed Shadows stands out for combining a Japanese setting with two contrasting heroes and systems that respond dynamically.