Assassin’s Creed Shadows Review (PS5) – Following The Light But Never Catching Up

I’ve been watching, I’ve been waiting, for an Assassin’s Creed set in Feudal Japan all my life. Or at least since the start of Ezio’s journey in Assassin’s Creed II, proving that we could go anywhere in time and place in a sequel. It felt like a no-brainer to immediately set a game where shinobi and assassins collide. However, Ubisoft have been playing their cards close to the chest, learning lessons through previous instalments, switching genres entirely with Origins onwards, and now with a hidden blade up their sleeve, they’re ready to play their ace: Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

I’ve had a slight gap in my ACV, with Assassin’s Creed Origins being the last entry I truly beat. The new open-world RPG-lite approach was a welcome change to a series that was getting stale in its formula. But the new genre brought its own problems with it, as we saw Odyssey and Valhalla release. There was a distinct lack of that core assassin stealth gameplay, the open worlds became bloated with busy work as maps were getting bigger, and the loot/levelling system was punishing to players that wanted to golden path the story. Also, the games were just getting too long as we were hitting the hundred hour mark just to get to the finish line.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows, for the most part, addresses all of the prior games’ problems. This entry still carries the torch of being an open world RPG, but the focus on stealth and parkour is back at the forefront. As well as a promise from Ubisoft of a shorter runtime, with a pivot away from check boxes as the game invites you to discover 16th-century Japan yourself. But is this enough to be a rising sun for the franchise?

With Honour

Assassin’s Creed Shadows takes place near the tail end of the Sengoku period. Lord Oda Nobunaga has taken most of central Japan by force at this point, with his ever-growing army in the ongoing civil war. Christian missionaries and traders from Portugal are taking settlement in Japan, introducing their religion, culture and of course their firearms to the natives. Along with the Portuguese is one of our playable protagonists, Yasuke, a slave worker who’s taken in by Nobunaga to be a samurai in his army.

That same army ends up pillaging the hometown of our second playable protagonist, Naoe. During the invasion, a masked clan seize the opportunity to kill Naoe’s father and take a box with an Assassin’s emblem engraved on it. Left with revenge in her heart for her family and home, Naoe sets out to kill the masked clan, later known as The Shinbakufu, who took everything from her.

Yasuke is urged to seek out Naoe as an ally because of her ties to the Hidden Order, and the two go on this journey of retribution together. I’m being intentionally vague as we’ve been asked to be very light on spoilers, but the set up to this story brings in the old tried and true way of progressing the narrative. There is a list of targets to assassinate, all of which require a handful of sub-missions to complete to get their location, and you do what the Hidden Ones do best.

Lost In Japan

For the opening hours of Shadows, you’ll have your hand held through a linear set of missions, cut scenes, etc. to set the world and characters up far better than I’ve done for this review. However, after that, you are left to your own devices to explore at your own pace, and for a good several hours I almost had no idea what I was doing.

This is because of Shadows’ new approach to objective design. You can track targets or quest givers (if you know them) in the Objective hub, think of it as a pin board if it was a scroll that’s been painted on. Instead of map markers to point you in the right direction, you’re given clues to where they might be. The quest will be in one of the eight regions, with half a dozen sub-regions within them.

If you’ve done a mission prior that leads up to the current one, it may even give you a landmark to go off which is the closest to knowing exactly where it’ll be. Because of this, I spent a good amount of time exploring the regions I was a high enough level for just looking for things to do. When you think you’re nearby, you’ll look with L2 to scan your surroundings with quests showing up as a blue orb.

I appreciate the attempt to get players to discover objectives and landmarks more organically, as opposed to going from quest marker to quest marker, but there were too many times where locations were so vague, that I’d spend 15 minutes aimlessly walking around looking for a blue orb rather than taking in my surroundings. It really doesn’t work as well as it’s intended but a Guided Exploration mode shows you where to go plainly.

Cherry Blossoms Bloom

Once I found my footing, I started to get into the flow of completing quests that act as setups to discover the identity of the target, then the location and any other way to draw them out and make them vulnerable. It’s worth mentioning that Yasuke doesn’t become a playable character until you defeat the first couple of targets, so my initial 10 hours or so were solely as Naoe.

Playing as Naoe is like how the pre-RPG Assassins played. There’s an emphasis on parkour, assassinating enemies unseen and engaging in combat as a last resort, given how nimble Naoe is. There’s also been an overhaul in the franchise’s stealth mechanics with a new light metre that indicates how visible you are. The darkness is your best friend and you can take out lights, use the bushes for cover, as well sling your grappling hook to quickly scale buildings, swing across trees or hide on the ceiling.

I’ve missed how stealth-orientated Assassin’s Creed used to be and Shadows is the best example of utilising it in a long while, sorry Mirage. The enemy AI outside of combat is pretty par for the course for the series. A white bar will show up if an enemy thinks they see you, without investigating. If it goes yellow they’ll check out where they last saw you, and if it goes red then you’ve got a fight on your hands.

The Hidden Blade Is Mightier Than The Sword

To circumvent getting caught, you’ll utilise the crouch ability to lay low or get behind cover and now you can even go prone. Going prone obviously keeps you low and hidden most efficiently, but you can also take advantage of crawl spaces to infiltrate, adding just that little bit more variety to your stealthy endeavours. Parkouring has had a slight upgrade as you hold ‘cross’ to go up as you run or hold ‘circle’ to go down.

It’s still not as accurate as I’d like, oftentimes I’d be jumping the wrong way or fully leaping off a castle but the animations are sleek. When it works in your favour it’s satisfying to pull off and not all environments are climbable anymore, creating opportunities for you to think more carefully about your footing. Another returning feature which has had a confusing absence for too long is the ability to assassinate enemies with a one-hit-kill.

You’re still at the behest of enemy levels compared to yours on whether or not you can take them out, but it’s far more satisfying than how it has been over the past iterations. Yasuke isn’t quite as formidable as an assassin, as he’s instead a hardened combat-focused brute. He doesn’t share the same luxury of parkour, stealth assassinations or even having Eagle Vision to see enemies and items through walls. He even has a smaller observation radius than Naoe when looking for quest orbs.

One-Sided Argument

This resulted in me relegating Yasuke to playing as him only if I needed to. Which is a shame because so far in my 40-plus hours, he has the more interesting story to tell. The game will make you decide to play either character in some of the main quests, but I never felt the need to gravitate towards Yasuke, because whilst his combat capabilities are far superior, with a larger health pool, bigger damage output and some far more devastating special abilities, everything is still doable as Naoe.

How uneven playing as both are is the games’ biggest drawback for me. It’s almost as if Yasuke has been implemented because there are some players out there who only know the RPG Assassin’s Creed and its combat. Speaking of which, the combat itself is fun to engage in for the most part. Assassin’s Creed Shadows focuses more on a block and riposte system over its more button-mashy predecessors.

Blocking at the right time will stun the enemy, opening up an opportunity to send a flurry of hits their way. During their stunned phase, you can also unleash your special ability at the cost of an Adrenaline chunk. Naoe has a dashing slice that further stuns and can later do increased damage to enemy armour, amongst others. Yasuke can stun multiple foes with a battle cry or sheath his weapon before dealing an obliterating blow.

Enemies have a variety of attacks for you to respond to that will either require a singular block, a few in a row or a dodge altogether. It keeps you on your toes and on the lookout for flashes of each move that’s telegraphed by colour, but when you’re taking on a handful of enemies at a time, it can get a little frustrating.

Onry-no

Yasuke can mostly handle crowds of enemies like he was built for it. Naoe on the other hand, especially later in the game, is almost up against multiple damage sponges. I get that it’s meant to be like that for the sake of the two characters feeling different, but there are a couple of main quests that poke holes in that difference.

For instance, I picked Naoe during a main quest because the context of the narrative kind of fit for her to take on this target. However, when I got to the target and engaged in a boss battle, they’d summon multiple shinobis to also attack me. And with Naoe not having the same damage dealing, alongside not having as much help almost had me restarting from the beginning – which could have been a good 20-minute setback.

This notion persisted in the open world as I got further into the game. I wanted to play as Naoe as she’s the one who can climb and discover more efficiently, but if I stumble upon a group of foes, I was almost always at a disadvantage. Now I could swap to Yasuke before fighting, but that would mean going through a 10-15-second loading screen, which just takes you out of the moment entirely. I’d also have to leave the area I’m in because chances are I’m in a military base or castle that’s not welcoming visitors.

Fashion’s Creed

Gear doesn’t make too much of a difference here either. The rarity system for each gear piece is still prevalent, with rarer pieces having more bonuses applied, alongside the usual higher stats. I found the armour to be negligible in difference, as well as being quite scarce. Double that up with splitting the gear between two characters as rewards for open-world activities like killing Daimyus in a base, and you’re really not paying too much attention to what you have equipped.

The weapons are slightly better at setting themselves apart. Both Naoe and Yasuke have their own handful of weapons for you to indulge in. Weapons like Katanas, Nignatas, Kanabos and Kusarigama are split between the two. The stats themselves don’t change too much in what you pick but rarer weapons usually come with a damage buff. Things like a daze effect, making enemies miss more, poison, damaging health over time, and bleed taking large chunks of health are a few of the buffs that you can utilise.

There wasn’t a particular buff I was looking out for, given that you go through so many weapons whilst you level up, you’re going to really struggle to cater to specificity. I kept most of my gear on, even if I was a few levels ahead, because the rarity of a piece would overrule the level of another. So whilst it’s always fun with the fashion element of swapping out gear, it really isn’t integral to your gameplay.

Skill Issue

There’s a decent skill tree which is the entire point of the level scaling, but again it caters more to Naoe’s abilities than Yasuke’s. Naoe has Tools, Shinobi, Assassin, alongside her weapons, Yasuke has just Samurai and then his weapons. You have mastery points that you get from levelling up or killing targets – those unlock the skills themselves – as well as knowledge points that you gain from exploring the map and finding scrolls at temples or by completing minigames.

The minigames are very simple button prompt affairs. Naoe performs Kuji-kiri, making players repeat a string of buttons to a rhythm. Yasuke will perform Kata, which is a weapon routine of Simon Says. This alongside the attempt at organic exploration feels the most derived from another open world game set in Japan, but I guess it creates more for the player to do.

Another aspect that’s brand new to Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the change of seasons. As you play, you’ll go through Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn respectively. There were reports of it changing gameplay but the only thing I noticed was when it snows you walk a little slower when you’re off the beaten path. Gameplay gimmicks aside, seeing feudal Japan go through all the seasons naturally is stunning.

Although I probably saw more seasons than day and night cycles while playing, I can’t argue that Shadows is one of the best looking games of this console generation.

Visual Assassination

As someone who usually plays in performance mode over quality, the game recommends the latter and for good reason. The art direction for Shadows feels very vernacular and true to life. This version of Japan is lush with flora and fauna, absolutely dense with environments that appear to not repeat itself. From cherry blossom-rich ravines, hulking castles to stunning vistas showcased when you synchronise at viewpoints, it’s all beautiful.

Quality mode adds lighting effects in interiors, increased environmental flourishes like leaves blowing and more. Usually, this added finesse is at the cost of frame rate but as far as I can tell on my base PS5, it’s definitely over 30. There’s no stuttering as you swing the camera around, no missing frames when running through densely populated environments, it’s all fine-tuned very well.

To add to this layer of visual authenticity is a new native language mode, where you can pick from English or Japanese voice actors. I’d vouch for the latter as the English voice acting started to become very grating, but I think that’s down to the “complete things at your own pace” formula. A lot of scenes from quests have to fulfil this catch-all niche where you could be at any part of the game and the cut scene will work.

There was one instance where Naoe and Yasuke had a hangout sesh over sake to build their friendship, but it wasn’t that long ago that Naoe begrudgingly became allies with Yasuke. It results in flat, near-emotionless performances because everyone has to remain so neutral because another player may have experienced what I did 20 hours later.

Stepping Out Of The Shadows

Like with Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ commitment to being non-committal, whether that’s the unequal differences between the two characters, the more explorative approach to unlocking quests that can be changed in the settings, the gear system that doesn’t care if you tweak or the recently mentioned lack of chronology of cut scenes, I’m about just as committed.

Like how the franchise has been for me for a while, it’s a pleasant, frictionless and one-size-fits-all approach to open-world design that it’s good at everything, but doesn’t excel at anything to a degree where it’s great. Other than the visuals, I wasn’t wowed by anything Shadows had to offer. There’s nothing new outside of the game’s setting that gives me the pull to seek out everything here.

Obviously, if you’ve been a long-time fan of the series and this formula is what you gravitate towards, this may be the series at yet another peak like with AC2, Black Flag or Origins. However, if you thinking Ubisoft might have changed their approach here then you’ll be mildly disappointed. Shadows doesn’t dip below the already relatively high standards, but it’s not pushing it either.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is out 20th March 2025 for PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam.

Developers: Ubisoft

Publisher: Ubisoft

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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