Assassin’s Creed Shadows: A Not Quite Review

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a solid game that expands the series in interesting ways without adding or subtracting too much from its predecessors.

Coming in as someone who has played very little modern Assassin’s Creed, I was looking for a story to grip me and a world that would look enticing to explore for hours. I have been getting most of what I wanted out of Shadows with very few hangups to detract from a good experience.

Naoe and Yasuke feel fleshed out in both the story and the variety of approaches to combat. And, said combat is good enough to keep me on my toes and experimenting with different equipment and skills. However, this beautiful take on Japan and the side content spread throughout does not have me giddy to traverse it endlessly.

Gameplay Shines in Shadows

I have played quite a few Assassin’s Creed games despite not being a huge fan of stealth gameplay, which is why I was initially interested in giving Shadows a try beyond the feudal Japan element.

Yasuke gives players, like me, who prefer a direct approach to situations the ability to control an extremely powerful character that even the game’s story treats as a force of nature. 

The game gives you plenty of freedom in how to approach areas of the game and which character you want to play. Despite that, Naoe feels like she is more useful and excels across the game, while Yasuke is left to thrive in combat scenarios or when you want to go loud.

Naoe being the star isn’t a bad thing, though. Sneaking around and striking from the shadows has never been more enjoyable. Using her grappling hook to easily scale walls and then combining it with a staple of classic shinobi tools as you dissect an enemy stronghold is a blast, especially with how fun the combat is for both characters once you draw your blades.

If you are a fan of varied and challenging combat, Shadows will get you your fill. Getting to play around not only with Naoe and Yasuke’s different styles but also an arsenal of weapons and tools that each can use to tackle scenarios is largely what keeps me coming back to play more.

I also want to shout out the seasons mechanic, which gives even more variety in how you can or need to approach different situations. From winter bringing icicles that fall from the rooftops Naoe runs on to spring giving you more foliage to hide in, this was a great addition visually and mechanically.

My biggest complaint with the gameplay of Shadows falls on two areas that are tied to each other, systems and exploration.

The game does a good job of laying out how you can upgrade both characters and easily lets you readjust your spent Mastery Points if you want to change up your style. But the way you go about earning those upgrades ranges from side missions to aimlessly scavenging for resources—and those descriptors aren’t mutually exclusive.

You need to finish side quests to level up your characters or complete objectives on the map to earn Knowledge Points, which then allows you to upgrade their abilities and equip better—if sometimes redundant—equipment. But you also need to explore in order to gather materials to improve that equipment or expand your Hideout, which are both ways to uniquely change your gameplay experience.

You won’t feel the drag start to hit until a few hours after you unlock the ability to use Yasuke, but it hits quickly and will potentially drive you toward the main story over exploring a beautiful environment. The looting and building do have highlights, such as when you get your first legendary weapon, but even that can lose its luster.

Sliced Up Story

The story around Naoe, Yasuke, and some of the side characters in Shadows brings a deep look at feudal Japan and I can appreciate how realistic Ubisoft strived to make the world. But once you go beyond the main story, things start to dry up a bit. 

I haven’t disliked the side quests, but none have stood out to me as anything special. Most feel like you just go to a new area, talk to a few people, and complete a generic objective for a staple of set rewards. I should have expected this from an open-world Ubisoft title, but has still worn me down a bit.

There is a “canon” version of the narrative you can follow without story choices if you want, along with dozens of incredible accessibility options that are toggleable in the game’s menus. I went with the default settings that let you have more freedom, but I wanted to highlight the potential for replayability if you do enjoy the game’s story enough to dive back in at some point.

I still have a lot of ground to cover in terms of side and story content though, so I don’t want to put any definitives on things in case the areas I dislike improve. But I can definitively say that Ubisoft has done a great job with the main narrative and I want to see it all the way through to the end.

Climb If You Want To

I have enjoyed my time in Ubisoft’s take on this era of Japan and spending time as both Naoe and Yasuke. If you like Assassin’s Creed games, Shadows is a game you should enjoy from start to finish because it improves on aspects of the series’ recent entries while giving you more options to approach combat and stealth than ever before.

That said, I am getting the most enjoyment out of Shadows when I jump in for an hour or two as a break from other games, exploring a bit and finishing a story quest before putting it down and repeating the process after an evening of monster hunting or fighting to save the chronoverse. The characters and combat keep me engaged, but I am not sticking around for the open world checklists.

If I had to give a review score based on my current playtime, I would lean toward giving Assassin’s Creed Shadows a 7/10—but I have yet to finish the game so I won’t be assigning a number here. 

Hey, thanks for reading this review/preview/whatever this would qualify as! I wasn’t really planning to do this, but Ubisoft provided a code and I felt like it would be a good place to jump back into writing for myself over here. 

I plan on coming back to BoosterBlogs in a big way throughout the rest of the year, along with jumping back into shivers podcasting. If you want to see more of my work, I’m currently freelancing around, so you can support me by following me on other platforms or subscribing to the blog!

This post was actually meant to be part of a new 500-word or less review program I wanted to start running, though I guess I continue to underestimate my ability to yap even when I outright say I haven’t finished the game yet. Oops.

If you want to read more complete reviews from people who actually beat the game and can speak to more story and late-game elements, I highly recommend Jordan Middler’s for VGC or Jason Flatt over at But Why Tho?

Oh. And if you are one of the individuals stoking hate that have caused Ubisoft to reportedly plan an anti-online harassment initiative and tell its employees to not share they worked on the game—you can screw right off.