Assassin’s Creed Shadows review: The best Assassin’s Creed game in 10 years

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a game with undue pressure on its shoulders. Not only is the Assassin’s Creed franchise itself in a holding pattern after a transition to the RPG genre last generation, but Shadows now seemingly finds itself as a make-or-break project for a publisher that’s currently struggling.

That’s before even getting into the storm-in-a-teacup online backlash that caused Ubisoft to release own-goal statement after own-goal statement about the game’s historical accuracy – a game in a series that, I’ll remind you, previously had Leonardo da Vinci making Super Mario jokes.

There have been plenty of games in the past where pre-release nonsense has torpedoed public opinion on a game before anyone had a chance to play it, and it was easy to see the same fate befalling Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

This is why it’s such a pleasant surprise to say that Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the best entry in the series in over a decade.

While lauded at the time, Assassin’s Creed’s transition to a sprawling RPG was arguably the worst thing that ever happened to the series. Historical tourism and memorable characters fell by the wayside in favour of maps that were so large that there are parts of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey that no human has ever set eyes on.

Shadows feels like the middle point between those RPGs and Mirage, a game that was specifically designed to evoke the small-scale, personal stories that kicked off the franchise. The map is still big, though it won’t take you 45 minutes to scroll through it all, and the endless RPG admin has been largely stripped away.

Gear progression is still locked behind levels, but there’s much less of it, meaning much less time is spent in Destiny 2 adjacent menus. The focus, instead, is on the characters and slashing throats. The load-bearing walls of Assassin’s Creed.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows follows Naoe and Yasuke, two outsiders in their own way, wrapped up in a conspiracy gripping Japan, just as the country is opening up to the wider world. Naoe suffers a tragedy early in the game, leading her to hunt down a shadowy syndicate. Plenty of necks to slash. The other side of the coin is Yasuke, a towering Black man who is a stranger in every room he enters. While he’s earned the respect of his clan due to his incredible prowess as a samurai, he can’t help but feel ‘othered’ everywhere he goes.

The game allows you to play the vast majority of it as either of the characters, switching between them as you wish. There are a few story moments that will require one or the other, but outside of the beginning of the game, you’re virtually never locked into either option.

This is a good thing, as although I enjoyed Yasuke’s character, and his performance is exemplary, I did not think he was fun to play. In comparison, Naoe may just be the series’ best character from a gameplay perspective and a top 5 protagonist in Assassin’s Creed history.

Naoe is a Shinobi. The fantasy of a Japanese Assassin’s Creed game, one that has existed for as long as the franchise has, is finally executed in Naoe. She is the fastest protagonist the series has ever had, she is extremely nimble, and her coterie of tools makes for a level of creativity and freedom that the series has lacked in some time.

When Ubisoft finally said it was doing an Assassin’s Creed game set in Japan, there was practically a 100-meter dash to make the first joke about how Sony already did that with Ghost of Tsushima, but Naoe is a genuine differentiating gameplay factor.

By contrast, Yasuke is powerful but incredibly slow. He is best deployed during the story segments when both he and Naoe are working in tandem. Yasuke clears out an area, and Naoe finishes off the target. Except, I rarely wanted to do that. I found it far more satisfying to infiltrate a castle without even being seen, much less killing any guards. There are few things in video games quite as satisfying as reaching your target, extinguishing them, and then leaving without a single alarm being raised.

Yasuke feels like a holdover from the brutal, action-heavy combat of the series low point; Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Yasuke’s still an important part of the game from a story perspective and has a very well-written and well-performed subplot, but perhaps appropriately, when you’re using him as your open-world character, he doesn’t quite fit.

Speaking of the open world, Shadows is far more reserved about just how many icons it fills its open world map with, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t fall into some tired tropes. While we were genuinely thrilled when we ran into a wild fox and didn’t have to follow him to a shrine, there are still a few too many objectives that require using your focus abilities to follow a blue ball around a map.

The progression system is hurt by this, as new abilities are locked behind a skill tree that requires knowledge points. These are sometimes rewarded for completing missions, but largely they’re acquired by going to temples and looking for collectibles. The game shows you where they are if you’re close enough, but it’s needless admin.

Infiltrating castles and sneaking through traditional Japanese homes was some of the most fun I’ve ever had with the series. Assassinating someone through a paper door and watching the comical amount of blood spray across the parchment never got old.

The other thing that never got old was the game’s unbelievable visuals. I think you will struggle to find a game on a console that not only runs so well, but also maintains such a high level of graphical fidelity. It’s not only the quality of the lighting and shadows, which are second to none, but the weather effects, the foliage, and the level of detail in the architecture around the world are staggering. It’s easily one of the most beautiful games ever made.

I genuinely can’t believe how much I enjoyed Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Divorced from all the pre-release nonsense, I have felt so burned out with the direction the series has gone over the past 10 years that I thought this would simply be another ‘numbers go up’ romp around Japan, but it isn’t. It has never been more fun to assassinate people. The story is very well written and performed, and Japan is a beautiful, sprawling playground.

Yasuke is a great character, if not a very good playable one, but Naoe more than makes up for that. Most of the RPG garbage has been discarded to the dustbin of history where it belongs, and a second game made in this ethos will hopefully rid the series of it for good.