Assassin's Creed Shadows review: Move like water, strike like lightning

Assassin’s Creed Shadows arrives at a strange time for Ubisoft. The company needs a win after some rough releases that each had their own merit but didn’t quite stick the landing for a variety of reasons. Avatar: Frontier of Pandra, Skull and Bones, XDefiant, and Star Wars Outlaws have all failed to set the world on fire over the last eighteen months.

Good news for Ubisoft, then, as the next game up to the plate and swinging for the fences is Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Finally, the long-running series will have an installment in Japan, something that fans have longed for. The standout mechanic this time is the presence of two main characters that you can switch between, each of which offering vastly different playstyles. It’s interesting, but is it enough to give Ubisoft a badly needed victory?

It takes two to tanto 

Assassin’s Creed Shadows will introduce you to Naoe, the young shinobi girl who witnesses a dark tragedy at the start of the game, and Yasuke, the strange man in a foreign land who inflicts part of that tragedy upon her. This violent nexus is vitally important for the main characters, giving them a reason to exist in the same space, acting as a catalyst for their relationship, and causing their personal development down a shared path. Their fate becomes intertwined through a secret neither one is aware of: the shadowy and mysterious efforts of a cabal of assassins that operates around the globe, always from the shadows and with murky intent.

Naoe is from Iga, a province in Japan that, like all the others, is a target for the vast and insatiable desires of Oda Nobunaga as he seeks to unite all of Japan under his banner. She is trained in the ways of ninjutsu by her father, partially in honor of her dead mother. Painfully aware that the world is a dangerous place, her father teaches her to use the blades, kunai, and throwing stars of the ninja, the stealth and misdirection techniques of the shinobi, and the brutal focus and violent inclination of the assassin. 

Meanwhile, Yasuke ends up in Japan as the slave of Portuguese missionaries, and after inspiring curiosity in Oda Nobunaga, is taken in by him, immersed in Japanese and samurai culture, and becomes a towering powerhouse of blade and bow, a one-man army that follows Nobunaga without question.

That’s all the story specifics I can cover without getting into some serious spoilers, but over the course of the game, I found both characters to be likable, with clear paths of development and a blossoming appreciation for each other's skill and fortitude. They often contrast each other in interesting ways, as Yasuke, the stranger, will be deeply frustrated by an element of society or culture that he doesn’t understand. Naoe, as someone with deep exposure to that same society and culture since the crib, will be frustrated by things that she does understand.

Feudal Japan in 1579 is presented as a period of great intrigue, political upheaval, and social tumult, with the central notion being that the human cost of this period is being paid by people who are likely to gain the least from all the machinations that are leading to such changes. Cruelty is easy currency, and it’s one that both Naoe and Yasuke decide they don’t want to get caught up in. 

Mixed into all this is a shadowy group of powerful lords, merchants, warriors, and samurai that Naoe and Yasuke must overthrow if they hope to right some of the wrongs being inflicted on the people of Japan. Can they achieve their ends while sticking to their newly forged moral codes? That’s the burning question.

You go high, I’ll go low

Naoe offers the traditional Assassin’s Creed gameplay for those who seek it. With a stealthy grappling hook, hidden blade, and eagle (read, x-ray) vision, she is perfectly suited for sneaking in and out of fortified castles, tracking her prey, setting up the perfect moment, and executing them. 

As you build up her skills over time, you will be able to assassinate multiple enemies at once, swim underwater using a bamboo shoot to breathe, dodge incoming damage as if you were plugged into the Matrix, and inflict brutal critical hits on enemies. You will also get access to smoke bombs, distracting bells, and shuriken that can be used to take out light sources and enemy alarms. 

Yasuke is more of a walking tank. There is no stealth option here, and he struggles to get into places and climb heights that Naoe can tackle with ease but can instead take and dish out far more damage. With Yasuke, you go straight up the center, drawing enemies to you and pummelling them with clubs or massive swords, inflicting horrific damage with brutal strikes, powerful kicks, and even violent shoulder charges. 

Yasuke can also use the Teppo, the mighty black powder rifles that shatter armor, or the more traditional bow. While his playstyle lacks the flare and nuance of Naoe’s, it really is a great alternative when you are just not in the mood to go quietly in your pursuit of justice. Yasuke feels incredibly strong, towering above most enemies, a perfect inversion of the smaller Naoe’s battles against the much taller and hundreds of pounds heavier elite enemies that she will run into. 

The style juxtaposition really works, and while I suspect that most Assassin’s Creed fans will naturally gravitate to Naoe’s style, I feel that Yasuke will offer a pleasant surprise for anyone who invests time and effort into his kit and equipment. 

There are, thankfully, plenty of build options across both characters, with multiple weapons and their respective skill trees, as well as all manner of gear to find, color-coded for rarity in the finest RPG tradition, all offering a range of stat bonuses and passive skills, as you would expect.

The all-important third character

Central to the success of any open-world game is the world itself. Assassin’s Creed titles, especially their expansive, open-world efforts, can be accused of cramming a little too much into the map. Shadows does a great job of offering activities that are worth performing while not filling the world with so much to do that it feels overbearing. 

Exploration comes quite naturally as you track down enemies using a combination of vague instructions gleaned from the Objective screen and your own Scouts, which will narrow down the area that your targets could be in. Then you go in, find precisely where they are, and take them out. 

There are some solid elements of smaller world-building, as you might find secret areas where the newly arrived Christianity is worshipped, such as a small cross tucked away in an attic. An overturned cart on the side of the road could yield a letter, or a random character at a shrine could suddenly send you on an expansive quest for vengeance. It’s a nice touch, making the world feel more real, alive, and worthy of exploration.

The beautiful forests, rolling hills, verdant plains, and bustling towns and cities all look stunning, and as the game cycles through the four seasons, you’ll experience all manner of weather cycles. From the deep snows of the mountains to the stunning blooming of the sakura, Shadows does an excellent job of making Japan feel like a deeply immersive, spiritually connected place. There are beautiful shrines and temples hidden among the hills and forests, tiny paths winding through bamboo grooves, and babbling brooks flowing all over.  

To contrast this, prominent forts and castles rise from the hills, inviting you to enter and get up to mischief, murder, and thievery. The land around them is stripped of trees, sometimes cleared by fire, as heavy fighting and upheaval leave scars across the landscape. It’s a stark reminder of the type of destructive potential that can be aimed at the people who inhabit this world, depending on who is in charge.

Activities you can take part in range from meditation, painting, praying at Shrines, archery from horseback, kata with other samurai, and climbing strangely dangerous routes across cliffs. You will get access to buildings and camps called Kakurega, where contracts can be picked up to take out nearby enemies, destroy their supplies, or just plunder some for yourself. 

Those supplies are then used to build your Hideout, a central place from which to plan your resistance, gather and train your allies, upgrade your gear, and generally act as the head of the growing political power that you are attempting to become. I found the Hideout feature to be fun, but it was not entirely necessary. A nice addon for those who enjoy min-maxing their time and efforts, but not something the more casual players will likely feel beholden to, outside of maxing out their number of Scouts and being able to upgrade their weapons and armor.  

The flies in the ointment

Assassin’s Creed Shadows suffered a couple of delays on the way to release, as Ubisoft stated they really wanted to focus on gameplay quality. I would say that this has paid off, for the most part. Playing on PC, with a Ryzen 5800, RTX 4070 Ti, and 32 GB of RAM likely puts me ahead of the power curve of the average consumer's gaming PC, but things ran well even without the trickery of DLSS and Frame Generation. 

I suffered very few issues or major bugs while playing, although there are definitely points that could use more polish. Traversal, particularly across rooftops as Naoe, can occasionally feel clunky and awkward, with the character not quite taking the action you think they should when you come to awkward intersections of roofs or walls. Occasionally, animations can be awkward, as if the game was struggling with them due to some random element of the character models' placement or orientation, and this was especially noticeable when it came to petting cats and dogs.

Combat against multiple enemies can also get a little too rowdy, as offscreen strikes become a big problem, and the camera can be a little annoying in enclosed spaces. Now, a part of this is by design, as Naoe especially should struggle in the face of a lot of enemies surrounding her, as she is not designed to stand and face down a horde. That said, being stun-locked can happen if something flies in from off-screen and staggers you, setting up a chain of subsequent staggers that result in your death, and it doesn’t feel great when it happens.

One thing I noticed early is that doing too many contracts in one region will lead to the repetition of enemy camp layouts that make them very formulaic, and that’s a shame. Guard placement can be the same from camp to camp, which removes some of the challenge.

However, your horse is probably the worst offender for annoying gameplay moments. Gallop too close to a rock or try to cross too narrow a bridge, and your skittish equine friend is going to react in ways that not even the gods of wind and water could predict, so keep that in mind. Most folks I know with exposure to horses would think this is quite realistic behavior, but when you are just trying to get from point A to point B, it’s a little annoying.

I also think it’s a shame that changing characters means the other one is just not around at all. There are moments when you pick between Yasuke and Naoe to decide who it is that will get to dish out some justice, and the other one will just suddenly not be there anymore. It’s a little bit of an immersion killer, although you can understand its necessity. 

Passing judgment

Overall, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a fine Assassin’s Creed game. It polishes the Ubisoft open-world formula in interesting ways and offers a couple of fun surprises, but it mostly avoids doing anything too risky. What it does well is provide an interesting story told against an exciting background and based in an enchanting open world. 

There are enough twists and turns to ensure the narrative doesn’t get boring, and outside a couple of NPCs that I found to be a little ham-fisted for the sake of moving the main character’s development along, I enjoyed the story. There was triumph and tragedy, elation and despair. What more could you hope for from any great epic?

Series fans will find a lot to love here, even if Shadows doesn’t quite take the step of truly challenging itself to be more than what we might have expected it to be. The moment-to-moment gameplay is fun, Naoe and Yasuke are both compelling in their own way, and the backdrop of Japan really does make for a beautiful stage on which everything plays out. 

Assassin's Creed Shadows is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC on March 20, 2025. A code was provided by the publisher for this review.

Aidan O'Brien

Contributing Guides Editor

Hailing from Ireland, Aidan has been conditioned by local weather conditions to survive hours at his PC grinding through whatever game is offering the lowest possible drop rates for loot. He thinks the easiest way to figure out what fans of games want to read is to just be a fan of games. You can normally find him logged into Warframe, Destiny, or a gacha game. You can reach out to him on X @scannerbarkly.