After a truly concerning couple of years for Ubisoft,Assassin’s CreedShadowsis a game that can’t afford to be a disappointment. Betweenmultiple game delays,stock prices dropping,layoffs at several studios,buyouts looming, and overall sentiment behind their releases dipping to a debatable all-time low,it’s tough to think of another time that Ubisoft needed a win as desperately as they do today.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows Is Getting A Prequel Manga
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is officially getting a prequel in the form of a manga series!
While it feels a bit unfair that the actual reputation and future of such a long-standing video game-creating giant like Ubisoft is resting on the shoulders ofShadows, this does seem to be the situation they’ve found themselves in. Would this increased pressure create a diamond, or would it lead to a collapse?
With all of this said, I was still excited to jump intoShadowsand see what this iconic franchise had brought to the party this time. Sure, recent entries in the lineage ofAssassin’s Creedhave become a bit bloated and are far from faultless, but with seemingly everything riding on this one,surelyUbisoft would put their absolute best foot forward.
Fans have long desired to see AC venture to Japan, and while the lead-up to Shadows' release hasn’t exactly been smooth, surely, the extra time this one has been cooking had to have been worth it… Right?
With an open mind, I booted upAssassin’s Creed Shadows, ready for Ubisoft to hit me with their best shot. After rolling credits some 50-odd hours later, I can confidently say —Assassin’s Creed Shadowsisnotthe game to get Ubisoft back on track.
As with anything, however,Shadowsis a mix of good and bad. So let’s start with the positives.They’ll be quicker anyway.
A Detailed Recreation Of Japan
To its undeniable credit,the world of 1579 feudal Japan has been recreated beautifully inAssassin’s Creed Shadows. Full of grand pagodas and temples, dense woods full of wildlife, ornate coats of armor and weaponry, and sprawling settlements that dot your path along the way, it’s obvious that the team of artists that worked on Shadows pulled their weight and then some.
My PS5’s storage is absolutely jam-packed with screenshots galore of lush vistas and beautiful architecture collected throughout my entire journey.
…the level of historical detail packed into Shadows is mighty…
I played in Performance Mode to prioritize a smooth frame rate over the crispest visuals possible, and I still consistently thought the game looked great despite this trade off.
While I did bump into an occasional optimization glitch or hiccup, these were limited to things like a Photo Mode filter mistakenly applying itself to my actual game, getting caught on the occasional object, or my objective screen background not loading properly. Minor annoyances, but nothing a quick reboot of the game couldn’t quickly sort out.
Similarly, it’s clear once again that the level of historical detail packed intoShadowsis mighty, with codices full of interesting material, real-life figures from the era making appearances in the game (including Yasuke, one of the two main characters), and a typical reverence for the culture and people of this location and time period that go down to the smallest of details.
If I ever find myself on Jeopardy and need to answer questions about tea-drinking ceremonies in feudal Japan, I can tell you how deep to bow towards your host, how to turn your cup of tea to display its most beautiful sides to other guests at all times, what to wear, and gifts I should consider bringing along.
All of this is an impressive level of detail and immersion that does, for the most part,get its job done extremely well and pays respect to the culture it’s representing.
This goes a step further with the new inclusion of Immersive Mode, which presents the dialogue in a mix of Japanese and Portuguese that is beautifully voice acted and adds another layer of presentation detail that the team can hang their hat on. Contrastingly, the English voice over is a mixed bag, with many characters suffering heavily from one-note, awkward-sounding dialogue delivery.
The soundtrack is impressive, weaving between bombastic orchestral pieces, appropriately peppered in hip-hop beats, and a funky, psychedelic collection of Japanese-infused rock that all would feel anachronistic if not for the fact that the Animus exists in the world of Assassin’s Creed, so really, anything is on the table.
There’s also a definite musical theme present throughout the entire title that just seems like it’sbeggingto be included in The Game Awards' orchestral medley of Game Of The Year nominees in December.
Sadly, however,Assassin’s Creed Shadowswon’t deserve to be there.
Smoke And Mirrors
WhileAssassin’s Creed Shadowsshines from a production standpoint, it fails consistently in one, glaring,damningregard.Video games are supposed to be fun, and this one simply is not.
To be sure, theAssassin’s Creedformula that people have come to expect is definitely still here. If you’ve previously enjoyed sneaking around enemy bases and stealthily picking off guards around the premises, you can still do that…for dozens, and dozens of mindless hours.
At the end of the day, your main objective is still always to travel to a location, sneak around a base, and either take out a target or recover a necessary quest item.
This time around, there are some additional tools at your disposal to make your effortsslightlydifferent. Naoe, one of two playable characters that handles much like the assassins of your favorite pre-existingACtitles, has kunai, smoke bombs, bells, and shuriken to levy against her opponents. Candles and lanterns can be extinguished to provide more shadows to hide in, and dynamic weather can cause noise to help mask her footsteps as she parkours from rooftop to rooftop.
While this all sounds cool,none of these thingsreallyserve to setShadowsapart from any previous Assassin’sCreedtitle. At the end of the day, your main objective is still always to travel to a location, sneak around a base, and either take out a target or recover a necessary quest item.
Plenty of times, I’d simply jump down from a building, grab an item, and sprint back over the castle wall to clear a mission. Rinse and repeat for dozens of other missions just like this.
This can also be frustrating on many occasions, as it’s never really clear what the game will allow you to actually climb. Plenty of surfaces or rock faces make literal sense as to why Naoe should be able to latch onto them, but you’re simply not allowed.
This formula varies a bit with the inclusion of Yasuke, the second playable character, who sheds all sense of stealth in favor of brute forcing his way through objectives. He can crash through gates and take on swarms of enemies at once while wielding larger and heavier weapons such as a long katana, naginata, and kanabo.
If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself choosing to play as Naoe throughout 90% of the game…
The reality of it all, however, is thatShadowslocks you into playing as Naoe for the first 10+ hours of the game after a short intro sequence. After so much time spent with her nimble, acrobatic abilities,Yasuke feels clunky andpainfullyslow in comparison. He can hardly climb anything, so trying to do anything with him at all besides mowing down enemies feels like a genuine chore.
If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself choosing to play as Naoe throughout 90% of the game, unless you’re entering an area you know is going to be packed with enemies and bosses, or when the game takes the option away from you and makes you play through certain sections as Yasuke.
Despite a larger collection of weaponry and characters to select from, combat still boils down to button-mashing your attacks and abilities, occasionally blocking/parrying/dodging a clearly telegraphed counter, hacking away at even spongier enemies thanks to armor you now need to destroy, and repeating the process as many times as needed.
A Slog Of A Grind Of A Chore
Even if you’re still on board for the same oldAssassin’s Creedgameplay loop,Shadows is so bloated with redundant and repetitive quests that it quickly starts to feel like an actual disrespect of your time.
I lost count somewhere above 20 when tracking the number of times you slowly auto-follow an uninteresting NPC as they dump a ton of exposition that I didn’t care about at all. These moments have been present inACgames before, but they feltexcessiveinShadows.
Setting down your controller for an interesting cutscene in a game is one thing, but doing so to simply crawl behind a leader from Point A to Point B to Point Csomany times in one gameplay experience is simply dull.
You’ll encounter a handful of bare-bones chase sequences, aggravating escort missions, fetch quests, and sections that play themselves in addition to the mind-numbing number of “go here, kill this person” quests you’ll complete over and over again.
The map is massive, and its size is not justified by interesting things to do along the way to make your numerous journeys across the countryside more enjoyable.
Just when you think you’re about to complete an exceptionally long objective, think again. The game will constantly pop more and more sub-quests beneath a main objective just to really drive the repetition home.It is entirely too much.
The map is massive, and its size is not justified by interesting things to do along the way to make your numerous journeys across the countryside more enjoyable. you’re able to find temples with hidden scrolls to collect to gain a Knowledge Point, shrines to pray at for temporary buffs, or animals to draw to unlock a new cosmetic for your hideout.
Additionally, Naoe and Yasuke can both happen upon quick-time event mini-games to gain more Knowledge Points that are extremely basic, frustrating, and frankly annoying to complete. I’m not sure who green-lit rhythm-based QTEs in anAssassin’s Creedtitle in 2025, but I’d like to have a word.
All of this would be okay if the map still felt fun to explore, butit’s just not. The game warns you that Japanese forests and mountains are difficult to traverse, so you should stick to main paths instead. While this makes literal, real world sense, this is, again, a video game.
Shadowsis sometimes at odds with this decision itself, with an occasional objective buried in the middle of a forest on top of a mountain surrounded by rocks you can’t climb. In one instance, I tried for a literal hour to reach one of these targets before just abandoning my side quest altogether. These “puzzles” are just not fun.
Without the freedom to explore a map how you please, you’re left with jumping onto your horse, turning on the Pathfinder feature to your next objective, and mindlessly riding across the entire country to your next point of interest, only to arrive at another quest that feels the exact same as what you’ve already done before.
For the first time inAssassin’s Creed, you now have scouts that can seek out the general locations of your targets before you get there. However, you have a limited amount of these, and they don’t replenish until the season changes in the game, or you pay a certain amount of in-game currency to replenish them.
A different game would allow you to interact with nearby NPCs to get any sort of directional hint or distinguishing feature of the person you’re looking for, but not Shadows.
This would be fine if finding your objectives without the scouts wasn’t sometimes such a chore as well. Your quest description and Pathfinder trail can take you to the general location, and your Observe feature can pinpoint a target with a blue dot on your HUD. However, these simply don’t always work, or your directions just aren’t clear enough without your scouts.
A different game would allow you to interact with nearby NPCs to get any sort of directional hint or distinguishing feature of the person you’re looking for, but notShadows. Instead, I had plenty of instances of aimlessly searching an entire section of a city before completely accidentally stumbling upon my target in a random, unassuming house.This is neither fun nor satisfying.
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This isallmade even worse by the stingy leveling system in the game that makes everything feel like even more of a grind. All quests have a recommended level you should be at before attempting them, but quest names will turn from red to black when the game has deemed you close enough in level to give it a shot.
Often,this is still a lie, and you’ll get halfway through a mission before encountering an enemy that can one-shot you with a singlekick, let alone an attack from an actual weapon.
I’m totally fine with level gating in an open-world RPG, and it serves a purpose to make sure the player is still tackling things in an order that makes sense. Still, when so many levels are needed to keep progressing, and you’ve been cleared by the game to finally accept your next story mission, it feelsterribleto be immediately brick-walled by an enemy you can’tactuallyfight despite what the game told you.
Of course, you’ll eventually level up and conquer these challenges, but doing so requires you to take on boring side quests galore to grind your level up.
In a single-player title, feeling like you’re banging your head against a wall to level up sufficiently to simply keep progressing the game is downright painful.
The other option is to make use of the game’s very basic base building mechanic to create a new structure that comes with a 10% EXP boost for the remainder of your playthrough. But again, to collect the in-game resources needed to gain this perk, you’ll need to grind out a boring contract mission or two.
Not interested? Don’t worry, you can also spend $10 in real money to buy these resources fromShadows' marketplace, obviously entirely optional, but icky-feeling nonetheless.
In a single-player title, feeling like you’re banging your head against a wall to level up sufficiently to simply keep progressing the game is downright painful.Offering a “solution” to the issue that can be “fixed” with real money shouldn’t be an acceptable solution, either.
Too Many Loose Ends
So the game gets boring and repetitive to play, traversing the map isn’t fun, and it all ultimately feels like a chore by the end of your 50+ hours to conclude the story. I know what you’re thinking. Surely, there’s a satisfying story to at least keep your momentum and motivation going that makes it all worth it in the end.
Don’t get me wrong, there aremomentssprinkled throughout this revenge tale that rise to mildly interesting levels, but ultimately, there’s just not enough meat on the bone here to hold your investment. Both Naoe and Yasuke have backstories you’ll explore, each with snippets of emotion and value.
At its core, the game is about warring regions of Japan fighting for control of the country, and it’s about as generic as it can be…
There are a cast of allies you can recruit to your hideout that have additional moments of interaction to break things up, but none of their quests are fun, and some tread concerningly close tocampy anime-trope behavior that feels entirely out of place in an otherwise seriously-toned experience. There are a handful of romance options as well, none of which are worth pursuing.
At its core, the game is about warring regions of Japan fighting for control of the country, and it’s about as generic as it can be from there. There are 16 mandatory targets you’ll need to take out to roll credits, andonly a small handful of these have any sort of interesting narrative presence.
Instead, most are simply checked off your list by completing sub-quests to track them down, killing them in a boss fight that feels just like the last one, and moving on to the next.
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Occasionally, you’ll have a dialogue option or moral choice thatseemslike the game is ready to spice things up a bit. But again, this is simply window dressing. In multiple instances, I was presented with what seemed like an important choice, but ultimately led to theexactsame outcome either way.I’m not sure if the intent is to attempt to trick the player into thinking what they choose actually matters, but it typically does not.
The game features a Canon Mode that auto-selects pre-determined dialogue choices for you, and you may as well just to speed the process up.
Aside from all this, the story is presented in weirdly placed exposition dumps and a handful of “plot twist” moments that are rarely shocking or are completely out of absolutely nowhere, so their impact is completely missed.
Despite not being engaged by much of anything narratively throughout my entire playthrough, I still held out hope that by the conclusion, I’d have satisfying resolutions to both characters' stories and closure for the Animus/Templar/Assassin strings that are very lightly pulled upon throughout.
At best, these crucial story beats were hidden somewhere in the bloat of hundreds of side quests that I felt no desire to play, and at worst, they simply are exactly what they seemed — unexplained, out-of-nowhere nonsense.
Instead, the game simply just… ends. Nothing is resolved, nor is it properly explained. At one point in the final hours, I actually laughed out loud as a main character confronted someone about stolen items that were apparentlyextremelyimportant to the story, yet I knew absolutely nothing about them. And I still don’t.
At best, these crucial story beats were hidden somewhere in the bloat of hundreds of side quests that I felt no desire to play, and at worst, they simply are exactly what they seemed —unexplained, out-of-nowhere nonsense.
So much is left unexplored and unexplained by the end that I can’t help but think more answers must be coming in a direct sequel. If this is the case, Ubisoft has apparently decided to holdeverythingback for that game, because this one has no resolutions for its biggest questions whatsoever.
Closing Comments:
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a bloated collection of uninspired quests that quickly turn into a repetitive, boring grind. While the art and history teams deserve recognition for their efforts, it’s all unfortunately wasted on a narrative that goes nowhere, is poorly explained, and has no satisfying resolutions. None of the changes and tweaks that Ubisoft brought to the table move the needle, and the game is ultimately more frustrating than it is fun. This is a game that desperately needed to succeed, and instead, collapses under its own weight. Future Assassin’s Creed releases need to innovate instead of being yet another rehash of games we’ve already played in different locations. There are other open-world games in similar settings that are much more worthy of your time.
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