I’d like to imagine we all have our guilty pleasure when it comes to those yearly AAA releases. Mine isn’t COD or Fifa or Madden, mine is the Assassin’s Creed series. So, I ended up picking up Assassin’s Creed Shadows for a sale, ready to explore feudal Japan.

I’ve had mixed feelings about the new RPG series of AC games. I found Odyssey to be a drawn-out slog, but I really clicked with Valhalla. Shadows continues the RPG formula, but feels like a step back from Valhalla. For some reason, Ubisoft seems insistent on a control scheme that puts the melee buttons on the trigger, which I’ve learned is a Dark Souls thing, but years of gaming has hard coded me to want melee attacks on the face buttons, so I had to finagle the control scheme a lot to get something that worked for me. I really wished they offered a ‘classic’ control scheme like they did in Odyssey.

I do appreciate the “guaranteed assassination” option returns from Valhalla. That is my biggest gripe with the RPG era AC games. You couldn’t really be an assassin because even if you snuck into a restricted area, every mission ended in combat because you couldn’t actually assassinate anyone. Seeing as Shadows has one character meant to be a sneaky sort, it’s nice they aren’t constantly thrown into combat.

One thing that unfortunately doesn’t make a return from Valhalla is the interesting ‘Strangers & Mysteries’ side quests. In general Shadows side activities lean more towards checklists; ‘kill x amount of bandits’, ‘find x amount of paintings, ‘visit x amount of shrines’. Compared to Valhalla, which had these little vignettes where you’d stop and help someone invent Worcestershire sauce or play baseball. They offered little puzzles or just fun ways to add in some odd history or whimsy that wouldn’t fit in the main campaign. Their exclusion makes Shadow’s Japan feel less lively. Shadows does have a few activities like meditation and archery challenges that are similar to Valhalla’s stone stacking & berserker challenges.

The combat hasn’t changed much in Shadows, so if you’ve played any of the other RPG AC games, you’ll feel at home here. The stealth has gotten an upgrade though. You can now go prone to hide in the grass or shallow water, lighting & sound now factors into your stealth more. I definitely felt more like a seasoned assassin by the end of the game. This is the first game you’ve played as an actual assassin in a while, the last two games had you playing more as mercenaries who occasionally do sneaky stuff.

Shadows sets us down in 16th Century Japan. I did find this a little funny because even as far back as AC 4, people always said, "They'll never do feudal Japan, it's too obvious". I'm glad they did choose it because, as always, Ubisoft does a good job recreating the historical landscape of feudal Japan. It was cool to explore medieval Kyoto, see the mountains covered in snow, or riding through a forest in the fall. The temples and castles were sights to behold. The only disadvantage to this world is a lot of the viewpoints seem to be the top of castles, which are usually restricted areas. The one other annoyance is Japan is a mountainous country, so there were a lot of times I would try to Skyrim my way up a mountain because I either couldn’t find or didn’t want to go around to the actual footpath. It was a lot of trial and error of slipping down mountains and climbing back up.

I have never been a student of Japanese history, but I know the big names, like Oda Nobunaga, Hattori Hanzo, and Tokugawa. The encyclopedia is very detailed, so I was able to learn a lot about different people I met, places I saw, and the general culture of the period. Some entries unlock immediately, others you have to find little data clusters in the world. As someone who likes to engage with the history content, I would have preferred all of the entries unlocked when you entered their respective area. I do know I think this game falls into the pop culture version of feudal Japan where it’s samurai vs. shinobi, when I think the reality is most samurai also worked as shinobi. The main story takes place in 1582, starting with Oda Nobunaga’s attack on Iga and later his death. That’s really the biggest historical moment for most of this game. You do come across other people who historically died in 1582, usually fictitiously because of you, but the next big event you take part in is the attack on Mitsuhide’s forces. I do wish they took a cue from older AC games that had you jumping around years to experience different events. Like AC 3 had you start at the Boston Tea Party and end at the end of the war. When I was reading all the entries about the Sengoku period and wondering, why aren’t I playing through that. The game also starts off with learning about & taking part in a tea ceremony. I thought maybe we’d get a lot of slice of life missions that let us experience aspects of feudal Japanese life, like participating in a sumo match or Noh performance. Unfortunately no, after that mission, most missions are just “sneak in here and get this”.

The fact this game is all canonically set in one year makes the seasons mechanic odd. Mechanically, it’s a fun idea. You get a lot of different beautiful scenery and the seasons effect your stealth. Spring has more rain that reduces visibility, summer has more grass to hide in, which dies in the fall, and winter adds icicles that create additional noise. But again, there’s a disconnect when you go through all 4 seasons 5 times, but the time between Nobunaga’s death and Mituhide’s death is like a month.

Shadows also brings back the two protagonists system from AC Syndicate. One thing they do better than Syndicate is they often have our two heroes working together, showing up at missions as a duo vs Syndicate having two siblings that never see each other for most of the game. You play as Naoe, the assassin in this Assassin’s Creed game, and Yasuke, a historical samurai. I know there were, supposedly, a lot of people upset Yasuke was a playable character since he was a real person or because he was black. I admittedly chalk that all up to the Internet just needing to be upset about something that week. I think Yasuke was a good fit for this role. He is a historical character who falls off the historical record after Nobunaga’s death. Those sort of people with unknown or mysterious fates are where the AC series lives. He is an honor bound samurai who wants to see the best in people. He’s the combat heavy character who doesn’t do the stealth so well. He does have the most weapons available for use from katanas to matchlocks to kanabo. He’s more for when you want to just charge in & start lopping off heads. I didn’t play as him much because I preferred the stealthy approach of Naoe. She is the daughter of a historical person, though of dubious historical authenticity. She is the ninja/shinobi who has a chip on her shoulder. She is more nimble than Yasuke and can use a grappling hook for traversal. She also has the hidden blade and a small assortment of throwable tools.

The main story, like most AC games, sees you taking down a group of evildoers. We are in a game that takes place even after Ezio’s story, so we have the Templars & Assassins instead of the Order of Ancients & Hidden Ones. Though the story does twist it that the main baddies aren’t the Templars directly, they are an organization working for the Templars. And both the Templars and Assassins were imported to Japan via the Portuguese. There’s also a side story where Yasuke hunts down the Portuguese Templars and Naoe tries to learn about the Assassins. Both are sort of after thoughts that make up the epilogue. I would’ve preferred they were sprinkled out better through the main story. There’s also a hundred different side quests where you have to go an assassinate different groups of baddies. Most of them aren’t fun or interesting, just “go to this random place and ice a guy”. It started to drag down my experience. I’d’ve halved the amount of side assassinations and make them unique.

The modern day story is also a complete afterthought. While the modern day story has always been the odd duckling in AC, I do wish Ubisoft would just pick something and commit to it. There’s no mention of the Isu or any pieces of Eden, you only play as a pixely NPC wandering a digital wasteland getting talked at by the Animus AI? Valhalla ended with the big twist that saw Layla replaced with Basim. I was curious to see how that story progressed, but there’s no mention of Basim. I don’t know if Ubisoft decided it was a dumb twist or what, but I just wished they’d either commit to a modern story line or completely drop it, this pussyfooting around is just narratively annoying.

During your initial set up, the game offers ‘immersive mode’ which makes it so the game is in Japanese except for the Portuguese speak their native language. I didn’t select it at first, instead just using the English track. I could only tolerate that for a little while, mainly because Naoe’s English voice actor is very flat in her delivery. She performed every line like she was reading stereo instructions. Yasuke’s actor is good, but some of the other actors are a bit hit and miss too. I decided I didn’t want to go a whole game with these performances and switched to immersive mode. I obviously don’t understand Japanese, but it felt like their performances were much more lively and dynamic. It was also really neat to see Yasuke switch between Japanese and Portuguese when the situation demanded it.

The music is a high point in this game. Instead of going just for a traditional Japanese score, it takes the traditional sound and mixes it with modern techno beats and some surf rock. It feels like it took more inspiration from 60s samurai films than anything. The tracks kick in during the fights and big moments and it felt pretty cool to fight through a castle of soldiers with a rocking guitar. There’s also a haunting flute song that serves as Naoe’s motif. It often appeared in the background of ambient tracks while sneaking through important areas.

All in all, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is another fine entry in the AC series. The stealth gameplay has returned after several games focused more on combat and the world is still fun to explore. The bland mission and side mission structure is what holds this game back. Shadows definitely doesn’t help Ubisoft beat their reputation for making games that are just a bunch of checklists. Valhalla did the side quests the best so far, but if you are someone who like me, still enjoys the AC series, despite it’s warts, or are into Japanese history, I can recommend this game, maybe at a sale.

The game is graphically gorgeous with nice landscapes and greatly build cities and castles. The environment changes as the four seasons shift in the playthrough, which is a nice touch.

Combat is sharp and satisfying, with a great mix of weapon variety. Switching between Yasuke’s raw power and Naoe’s classic stealth style kept the gameplay interesting. Mostly I preferred sneaking around as Naoe, but occasionally going full rampage with Yasuke was awesome.

I like that we finally got a Japanese setting in this franchise, something fans have wanted for years. The timing could be better though, with the Ghost of Yotei coming later this year, sequel to Ghost of Tsushima. I suspect AC Shadows will be forgotten by year’s end because of this.

I thought the mission interface was confusing. I had problems to tell what’s a main quest and what’s just a side activity. This was troubling later on. I borrowed this game from our library, so I had only 2 weeks to finish this. Last days I really needed to just focus on main story to be able to go through it. Which I made just the day before returning it!

Overall, it’s a pretty typical modern Assassin’s Creed experience. I thought it was fun. I divided my rating between 3,5-4,0 and landed in:

Rating: 🌲🌲🌲🌲