Assassin's Creed Shadows - Review

Sorrosyss, April 21st 2025

The standout star of this game is without a doubt. The open world of Japan is a beautiful depiction, with a good variety of biomes to give us the true variety aesthetically that the region deserves. I know for many players it has been a location that many of us would like to travel to in real life, so the draw to virtual tourism for this title is certainly one of the strongest out there. Indeed, the desired setting has often topped polls of fans over the years, with even an article from yours truly dedicated to the vision of Assassin's Creed visiting the land of the rising sun.

For those of you that have played Ghost of Tsushima, there was always going to be a comparison between the two titles. It's my opinion that the Ubisoft title comes out on top in regards to the actual depiction of Japan, with a larger number of unique art assets, including taller buildings and walls to ensure we still get the traditional rooftop experience of a parkouring Assassin.

One of the best new additions to the game is the introduction of seasons. It really does make a huge difference to the look of the open world, with areas looking vastly different between the summer and winter months especially. There are not just visual differences though, as gameplay itself can be impacted by them too, such as snow slowing your movement, or eagle diving into a frozen pond and killing yourself (I know it wasn't just me that found that one out!). The seasons also bring in some wonderful new weather mechanics as well. The rainstorms introduced into this title are truly spectacular, making a huge difference to your immersion levels. I also found myself in the dark of a snow storm at night at one point, with visibility cut down to a handful of yards. It left me in awe at how much impact the new systems can make here. Suffice to say, I'm a big fan of these weather effects, and hope the seasons mechanics will continue onwards into the future titles.

That all being said, there are a few quality of life issues that I found. I often found night time to be plain too dark in some locations, which left me turning up the TV brightness more than I would like to. A key offender was the Kofun tomb locations, where I was surprised to find that there were no carry-able torches like we have seen through the rest of the series, as they were strangely absent. There were times where I would simply like to switch between day and night time, but there is seemingly no ability to do so. I do feel that the game could have used having the meditation mechanic (such as the one in Assassin's Creed Origins) to flip the time of day, or even the seasons themselves. The latter was especially annoying not to have, as some of the achievements within the game are tied to specific seasons as well. As things stand, you have no choice but to wait for real life time to pass to reach these season points, and it can be a little irritating honestly.

Exploration of the map is also not as easy as it should have been. For some strange reason, the viewpoints do not fully clear the map this time around, which even after I finished the game, I still had large areas of the world still uncleared. Thankfully, traversal is a little easier by horse this time around, thanks to the removal of the stamina mechanic – something that really became the focus of my ire for the likes of Valhalla, as it slowed you down needlessly. However, there are a number of times that you have to ride around entire portions of the map, as crossing atop most hills/mountains is essentially cordoned off. I found a lot of locations where there was simply nowhere to climb up, or it had slippery gravel bringing me back down again. Even if you should get up quite high, there is normally an aggravating amount of foliage, meaning you end up basically dodge rolling through them all as you keep getting stuck. It all feels a bit unnecessary honestly, especially as we had such free direction of movement within the likes of Odyssey. Riding in diversion around large mountains instead often ends up to be quite time consuming, especially as there was no auto run option for the horse – though this has admittedly been patched in a few weeks after I finished the game thankfully.

Moving from Mirage's smaller map to a huge map was always going to be a little jarring though. We were promised it wouldn't be as large as the likes of Valhalla this time around, but it does feel incredibly dense, even if it’s not physically as long or wide as the RPG title before. Is there a large portion of bloat here? I would say yes, unfortunately. I do think we could have done with a couple zones less here, as we do see a repetition of activities, such as the pretty boring Kata and Kuji-kiri quick time events. Given the wide-ranging praise for Mirage's more concise experience, I'm not quite sure why we went back to as large a scale here as we have. We simply end up with a larger portion of our playtime dedicated to traversal, or certainly more than most players would probably have liked.

Fortunately, there was one further good addition in the hideout. Whilst we have had base building in the past, it was quite fun to see the iteration provided to us this time, which reminded me a lot of The Sims franchise. As we are able to place the buildings, furnishings and gardens the way we like, we all get to play out our designer fantasies thanks to the excellent build tools. The sheer number of options is great, and I was impressed to see some of the creations by talented players on social media, making their own stunning hideouts. The only slight downside was that the hideout location was locked at a lower frame rate (on PS5 at least), though this has evidently been fixed in the post launch patches. Certain cosmetics can also only be placed a limited number of times too, which is an odd restriction given the size of the hideout area.

Finally, given Japan's rich history, it was nice to see the codex spread around the map as collectibles to be found upon your travels. I have to assume this likely means there will be no Discovery Tour this time around, which is a bit of a shame, but I at least enjoyed reading some interesting facts surrounding Japanese culture and traditions, which helps immerse gamers yet further to this grand open world.


Combat is a much better affair here, at least compared to the likes of Mirage. The main reason for this is the removal of the stamina system, which really killed the fun of going into combat in the last game, as you could perform a couple of dodges and then be barely able to swing your sword whilst waiting on the stamina to recover. Here then, it's a much faster affair, with quick paced battles, that are a lot more rewarding this time around. This is also thanks to a good variety in weaponry between the two characters, all with some very satisfying animation work and finishers – though some of the latter do drag out a touch too long at times.

Another good change is the return of auto healing. I often found this tedious in Valhalla for example, where you had to go around picking up fruits to top off your health outside of combat. The auto recovery therefore ensures that you can get back into the action relatively unimpeded, which is definitely a positive in a larger game world such as this.

Fortunately, the controls in general this time around feel a lot sharper, with good responsiveness – especially on Naoe. Playing as her, parkour is a lot more entertaining than it has been in recent titles. It feels faster, which is a huge plus, and I especially enjoy her artful somersaults and flips mixed into her movement – which really show off the acrobatic skills that you would expect from such a skilled assassin. There's probably an argument that the ejects could use some further fine tuning, or even consider re-introducing a jump button, to give players a bit finer control over their parkour experience. The grappling hook is a great introduction though, and certainly helps with getting to higher elevation faster, combined with a faster parkour “up” animation range. Animations in general are a lot faster compared to Odyssey and Valhalla, though I'd argue they could still go a touch faster yet. That being said, I found the parkour “down” progress would sometimes still get stuck on ledges, flipping Naoe round to catch grab instead, which kills the downward motion when you are plain just trying to get down to ground level as fast as possible. That area could use some refinement for the next game.



Stealth continues to have a good influence over the game, following on from the great work that was done on improving it within Mirage. Whilst playing as Naoe, we get a good selection of tools between the usual smoke bombs, bells, kunai and shuriken. It really drills home the shinobi fantasy, and when executed well, you really feel quite powerful.

Alongside the addition of the seasons to the open world, there has also been an overhaul here to the visibility meter, with a higher emphasis being placed on active shadows and darkness to aid your skulking around. You do find that being able to stick to the shadows does help a tremendous amount from being spotted, but on the flip side, I found myself being insta-detected far more often than I would have liked, even after lowering the stealth difficulty as much as I can. It's admittedly not to the levels of Unity bad, but it could certainly use being looked at.

Another surprise is the lack of social stealth mechanics. We seem to have completely lost the benches and blending, which is a shame. Out of recent games, this felt like the one that might have benefited the most from considering a re-introduction of the Persona system used in Assassin's Creed Liberation. Given the position of women within society, it would have been fun to see Naoe try out different outfits to infiltrate and eliminate her targets. She does admittedly do this within one story mission, but it ultimately feels like a missed opportunity not to expand further upon this.

Let us start with the positives first. The historical story gives a great insight to this historical period, often touching on traditions, cultural references, and a good selection of actual historical figures to give the storyline a good feeling of authenticity. Voice acting generally sounds like Japanese accents too, so no random American or British accents to pull you out of your immersion. In terms of a story experience within Japan, it absolutely succeeds, with good character development for both Naoe and Yasuke, offering insights to both of their backstories which I found genuinely rewarding.

Does all of this make it a good Assassin's Creed experience though? This is where things get a little disappointing. Firstly, fans have made it pretty clear that they have not particularly enjoyed playing proto-assassins or indeed novice characters within the order. We have done that kind of storyline multiple times now, with even Naoe's story following very similar story beats to Ezio's from Assassin's Creed 2. One could argue that is why Ezio's trilogy is so beloved, as running with an established Assassin helps more with the overarching meta plot of their war with the Templars. Within Shadows, both factions effectively take a back seat in the story though, with our main targets instead accomplices to the former Shogun and his plot to obtain culturally sensitive relics. Memory corridors (target confessions if you will) are also strangely absent, which might have made some of the targets we encounter somewhat more memorable.

It's a shame then, as the revelations surrounding Naoe's mother (Tsuyu) seem to be leading into a greater element of the meta plot, but then the main game just abruptly ends. There have been suggestions from fans that the latter part of the game may actually have been cut out to sell as the first expansion, which is a bit of a shame – if true. It makes the standard game feel very unfinished either way, and we know from previous titles that many players simply do not purchase or bother with the expansions – let alone finish them (only 9% of Odyssey players played the first DLC to that game for example). That's a great deal of the player base missing out, and either uninstalling or selling an incomplete narrative.

There are also some other strange climbdowns from previous games. For example, there is essentially no Isu (First Civilization) content at all, which is really troubling for fans of that element to the franchise such as myself, as their presence is almost always felt. Indeed, supernatural elements in general seem to have been severely toned down here too, though the side activities do have elements such as ghosts, yokai and a handful of legendary mythical animals.

Finally, it also feels like pre-existing lore in relation to Japan from transmedia seems to have been slightly changed, or indeed completely side stepped – such as the Assassin’s Creed: Blade of Shao Jun manga, and the mobile game Assassin’s Creed Memories. For example, within the latter title, Oda Nobunaga was actually assassinated by the Assassin, Yamauchi Taka. Fans often argue over the validity of the transmedia titles versus the main games, but retcons such as these continue to devalue the expanded universe yet further unfortunately. If we are going to take this stance though, can we just pretend Juno didn't die in a comic then? Just saying.

The cutscenes themselves in Shadows are also quite a bit hit and miss. It's quite obvious that there is software animating some of the conversations, as the characters look increasingly robotic in their movements in some dialogues, but it really does vary a lot in quality from scene to scene. It isn't helped by the obnoxiously large screen borders that appear during cutscenes, which I feel really pull you out of the game and take you out of the Animus experience somewhat. There's really no reason they should be there.



The ambient sound within the game is actually pretty good. There are some great variations on howling and whistling winds, something that I hadn't really noticed in previous games. The previously mentioned thunderstorms are also a real treat to be heard as well. I love being able to hear the muted patter of rain as well, when you stand underneath any kind of roof.

Ubisoft seem to have genuinely made an effort to make living spaces more believable in Shadows. You often come across NPCs doing lots of random animations, such as jobs or chores, or sometimes even having full blown conversations between themselves – some of which even offer hints about nearby locations or secrets in fact. It collectively helps player immersion, giving more character to the various places that you visit.

In terms of the music, I would say that The Flight (who previously worked on Odyssey) did an acceptable job. Most of the instrumentation and synth work they provided suited the oriental tone, though compared to their previous work I didn't feel there were any particular stand out tracks on this occasion. By contrast, I really disliked the tracks put in by the group TEKE::TEKE. I found it really jarring to be enjoying a dramatic cutscene, to then suddenly have contemporary rock music (with lyrics even) playing atop the scene. For me, it really killed the atmosphere and does not suit Assassin's Creed tonally either.


Overall stability of the game is generally pretty good. I only saw very minor bugs, such as an NPC partially in the ground, but in the 104 hours it took me to reach 100% completion, I did not encounter a single game crash. In that respect the architects of the Anvil engine have done a great job with optimisation, as even loading times are a lot quicker compared to the more recent games.

Skill trees feel a bit more sensible this time around, with clear progression paths, allowing players to focus on specific weapons that they so initially choose. Appreciably you do have most of the skills by the time you finish the game anyway, but it’s nice to slowly feel your character growing in strength. This is backed up by a load of setting options, that allow players to tailor matters to their desire. That being said, I did try to turn off controller vibration, yet found it still had vibration present with strong winds and when riding horses - which was a bit odd.

Utilising the objectives board for questing is a bit of a mixed affair though. You generally find that quests are all over the world map, and it genuinely looks like there is not a focused attention or direction with them – especially with the side quests that just seem to be randomly sprayed across multiple zones. In this regard, it can at times therefore make it tricky to keep track of what remains to be done in your current zone.

One of my major dislikes is with the Guided Exploration Mode. For this game, it was pushed with the default of being turned on, and even put an achievement behind it, effectively strong arming most players into using it. From my perspective, I really do not enjoy this mode. The scout system becomes a horrendous time sink, as you fire them at the map trying to find things, where you are often left with vague directions that result in you constantly dancing between the map and the game world trying to find things. Some players may enjoy that, but it will frankly increase your game time considerably with no real material benefit. As such, as soon as I was able, I turned off the mode and gladly had my next objective clearly marked for me so I knew exactly where I was going. Whilst I appreciate that players may be in either camp on which exploration model they prefer, we can hopefully all agree that we should not be putting in achievements tied to one playstyle in this fashion. Player choice is paramount, and should not be coerced in this manner.

Another factor that makes exploration more challenging is the removal of the 'Eagle drone'. It has been part of the RPG series since Origins, and it feels odd to have this now missing. Given that the aforementioned viewpoints no longer fully clear the map, it would have been nice to still have the bird drone here to help us locate objectives and treasures. For example, the quest that requires you to locate all of the Jizo Statues upon the map is extremely challenging, given that neither the viewpoint or purchaseable maps show their location, with the statues only appearing when you get within a couple of yards of them. From a personal standpoint, I had to use a third party map on a web browser to systematically check them all, namely as there is no record on the screen of which ones you have already obtained even. This shouldn't be necessary for a player to have to do. Progression in general is very poorly recorded in fact, with no territory progression displayed for each zone, as we have come to expect from the other RPG titles. In fact, the only way completionists can see their overall progression percentage appears to be by logging onto the Ubisoft Connect app, which feels really regressive compared to what we have previously had.

Another mode that I saw causing some dispute amongst fans was the Canon Mode. As someone with a great affection for canonicity (as indeed do all the ATA team), I couldn't bring myself to use this mode. Given that we have a full RPG, it feels strange to me to willingly surrender dialogue options and player choice in this fashion. Purists point to the fact that they want to know exactly what was said between characters, though at a high level it doesn't seem like the major story beats between Canon and non-Canon mode change in any remarkable fashion. I would take the counter point that the Animus is portraying a rendition of a DNA sequenced memory. Is the player walking the EXACT path that the historical character took? Probably not. My point is there will always be this level of ambiguity on the canon actions when we have a real life player taking control of the protagonist. Then there is always the question of whether Abstergo have manipulated the memory to start with anyway. But that's a discussion for another article.

It probably comes as no surprise to find that the Animus Hub and Modern Day finds itself in the negative category. In Ubisoft's defence, they did warn us that the Animus Hub would start small and build itself up over time. That being said, even I did not think it would be this bare bone at its launch.

My initial response to seeing it was how we were seemingly robbed of a Shadows title screen. It was always my tradition to load up each new game, and to listen to the fantastic new main title theme, before launching into the game. Here though, Shadows just jumps straight in with no warning which felt pretty odd.

The Animus Hub is therefore effectively a launcher - within a launcher. I'm still not entirely sure what the point of that is, or why we need this extra hoop to getting into Shadows. Yes, the other titles are also present on the screen menu, but from what I could tell, clicking those just launched a streaming version of the game – even if you own the original, which is just... weird.

So what else do we have in the Hub? Well, we have a couple of “Battle Pass” style Project progression screens, some weekly quests, a microtransaction store, and the Exchange. The Battle Pass Projects are a strange addition, as it solely relies on the player completing the weekly quests, which at present amount to only a small amount of progression each week. Indeed, I had already finished the game before I was even 75% done with the first of two Projects. Frankly, it’s a strange time sink to have in a single player game, as you tend to see these kind of Battle Passes within multiplayer titles where you expect the player to be engaged for a longer time period. Given the single player story is only finitely long, and the previous point of the majority of players not sticking around for expansions, I dare say the majority of the player base will have moved on long before they finish these Projects.

It is a shame then that our primary Modern Day content is tied to the Projects in this way, in the form of text files. Admittedly, we do also get the opening Ego cutscene, plus the audio files from the The Guide character, but what we have here is profoundly lacking and not particularly engaging – even for die hard fans such as myself. Given that players will be progressing through the Projects at different rates, it feels like a missed opportunity to not try and align the Modern Day content to a formalised timetable, so that the player base can experience the new content simultaneously – generating conversation and hype at the same time. Something to consider perhaps.

Given that the Modern Day content is still releasing at the time of this review being written, we will certainly cover it further in another article. Though from the little we have seen thus far, it might be wiser to title it “Future Day” content going forwards, as early indications are that it could be set quite a ways into future decades. That is at least somewhat exciting, as I do feel jumping us into a futuristic setting allows us to have a fresh slate away from all other contradictory Modern Day lore of recent years. After the misfires and muted responses to Layla and Basim as protagonists, it's probably for the best.

Will the Animus Hub and Modern Day improve? Absolutely. Or at least, I hope so. It feels really jarring to have an Assassin's Creed game with no narrative framing. Why are we in the Animus? Who are we? What are we searching for in Feudal Japan? There is a whole heap of questions there that we simply cannot answer at this time.

What am I hoping for? Well, I've long argued for us to have a character creator, so it would be nice to have players be able to create their Future Day avatar to represent us in the Assassin's Creed franchise. Given that we know there are multiplayer titles coming, it feels like a natural progression to have this, as so many games these days have social hubs for players to meet with their friends within the game between matches etc. How exciting would it be for us all to hang out within the Animus Hub, before jumping into historical eras together within the Animus?

I'm optimistic for the future of the Animus Hub. I daresay we will see more cutscenes, more mystery, and playable sections in the days ahead for the Future Day setting. But that day is not here yet. Looking at Shadows in isolation, in its present state, the Animus Hub is wholly disappointing.




I've always advocated for player choice, and I still believe it's the best way to engage with as wide a customer audience as possible. Assassin's Creed as a franchise has experimented with a gender choice for several titles now, with the Evie twins in Syndicate, Kassandra/Alexios in Odyssey, and “Either Eivor” in Valhalla. I like the option of not being restricted to the one gender choice.

This all being said, I do not like how the implementation of the dual protagonist mechanic has been done in Shadows. There were several news articles before the game's release that stated that players could play most of the game as just one character. This is unfortunately not really the case, as whilst exploring the world map I constantly found myself hopping between Naoe and Yasuke, as each of them have their own activities littered around the map that only that specific character can complete. As such I found myself swapping over far too often for my personal taste.

What is worse is that Yasuke is objectively the lesser of the two characters. To be clear, this is not a condemnation on the characterisation or writing for the character. In fact, I quite liked him, along with the performance of his voice actor. However, for gameplay purposes he is inferior to Naoe in most ways. Traversal? His movement/parkour is slow by comparison and he can barely climb. Stealth? He has limited options and often is too big to even hide in bushes. Admittedly, he is the stronger in hand-to-hand combat, and probably edges Naoe on ranged damage too, but that is only a third of what your typical Assassin's Creed protagonist should be capable of doing. In this regard, I really enjoyed playing Naoe so much more, and definitely tried to stay on her character as often as possible.

On the one hand, you could argue that Syndicate's version of having two relatively similar skill sets across two characters might have worked better. However, I know that a number of players have argued that they simply want to stick with one character to help build a rapport and immersion with their protagonist. In this regard, maybe it is time to look at a character creator for the main titles. This has appreciably already been done within the franchise, as those who played the closed beta to Assassin's Creed Jade will attest. Yes, people will point to canonicity issues, but there is no reason that the character cannot have a canon appearance, yet still allow us to make them male/female/white/black/asian etc as we so choose with Animus trickery. For those who have played the likes of games like Mass Effect, that is exactly how the character creator system works there. Players have their freedom of choice, but for marketing and canonicity, there is still a default appearance. Perhaps it is time we tried this model for the next title.



Speaking of customization. From my perspective, it does feel like there is a complete lack of unique outfits across the two characters, especially in Yasuke's case. There just seems to be numerous recolours of the same items time and time again, which feels a little lazy in all honesty. There's probably an argument that we could benefit from a dye system here, akin to Mirage's implementation, but one where we can instead colour the individual parts to our heart's content.

Admittedly there are micro-transaction outfits within the main store, which offer a wider variety of gradiose items that really make your character stand out. Whilst my distaste for putting the best-looking gear behind a paywall continues (especially for a single player game such as this), I am somewhat comforted that we can at least obtain some of these items via the Exchange, which seems relatively easy to obtain currency for - simply by playing the game.

My biggest complaint on customization is our character's head gear though. Why oh why does this completely disappear on cutscenes? I found this so annoying, especially when you have Naoe dressed up like a super secret Shinobi, trying her best to remain incognito, and yet at the first sign of a stranger to talk to, she instantly drops her head gear fully revealing her face for all enemies to see. It's just wrong, and such a shame that players have no control over this as a display option. What's even more galling is that there are a handful of cutscenes where the head gear actually stays on (see above image), so the functionality is clearly there. As a further omission and oddity, if you customise your weapons (such as Naoe's katana), your customisations also do not appear in cutscenes either. Heck, sometimes their equipped weapon changes completely too. It's a great shame honestly, and really killed the immersion that could have been offered by our customised and intended appearances.

In terms of gear, we have to give a mention to the inventory as well. There seems to be a constant prevalent bug that shows a notification to players as having new items, yet there is never anything there to find. We're also missing some standard “Quality of Life” options, such as bulk buy/sell options not being available [Note: this has since been corrected with patch 1.0.2 and has been temporarily removed once again with patch 1.0.3, though the launch complaint is still valid].

It's a little difficult to make any kind of major analysis yet, given that it's quite clear that the overall plotline is going to continue into the expansion Claws of Awaji. We can certainly assume that there will be more revelations in regards to Naoe's mother, and I look forward to seeing how that narrative plays out. We will of course cover that in our future DLC coverage, along with the same treatment for the Modern Day content which is evidently going to be releasing over the next few months yet.

What I will say, is that there was one particular quest that has Naoe talking about going out into the wider world some day. From a personal standpoint, I would love for that to be a hint that she might return in a future title as I thought she was quite a relatable and enjoyable character to play as. Alot of fans would like a mainline release within China, which whilst it is admittedly already being done in a mobile game, is not quite the same. Aesthetically, there are quite a fair bit of similarities between Japanese and Chinese buildings and architecture, therefore it might be a good way of re-using some of the art assets that were created for Shadows in a future China set title. It would certainly be fun for Naoe to meet an elderly Shao Jun perhaps, as their lifetimes do overlap within existing canon.

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In closing then, Assassin's Creed Shadows is a fun game. I enjoyed my time with it. As a representation of historical Japan, it absolutely succeeds. Ubisoft should be commended for pushing forwards the Anvil engine, and taking us into new and vibrant settings such as this. It's so nice to get away from European and North American locations certainly.

This all being said, I do think this game could have been even more legendary had it leaned more on the franchise staples. As we often find with each successive title, it can be two steps forward, one step back - in terms of development. There are features that have been removed from this game that have been prevalent for many years now, and I genuinely do not understand the rationale behind some of their removals. Suffice to say, if this game had a stronger Assassin/Templar plot, more Isu content, and a playable Modern Day section – it likely could have easily been considered as one of the very best releases in the franchise by fans. Whilst the historical tourism is a huge draw to the franchise, let us also not forget that at its heart, Assassin's Creed is still a Science Fiction tale that allows us to experience these historical stories in the first place. As things stand though, Shadows is still a really good Japan set action adventure game, which looks and plays brilliantly.

I award Assassin's Creed Shadows a score of 7.5 out of 10.