“Shadows” Is My Least Favourite Assassin’s Creed Game

As an avid Assassin’s Creed fan, I was chomping at the bit when I found out the latest entry in the series would take place in Japan. The idea of playing as samurai and ninjas seemed too good to be true … As it turned out, my gut instinct was correct.

I bought it once it went on a slight sale (so about a few months after release) and sunk roughly a dozen hours into it, playing bit by bit to eke through the main story. I finally decided I wasn’t having fun and uninstalled it. But why did it leave such a sour taste in my mouth?

Before I answer that question, you can check out some of my related blog posts below:

World

Normally I fall head over heels for the historical world in Assassin’s Creed – especially in the recent open world entries. Every world from “Black Flag” onwards has been extremely impressive. Sometimes, in cases like “Valhalla” and “Syndicate”, it’s the best part about the game as a whole.

Unfortunately, the Japan depicted in “Shadows” is the first time I’ve been unimpressed by a world in this series in a long time. It looks stunning, don’t get me wrong, and I’m sure it has historical accuracy and merit, but what it has in aesthetic it lacks in functionality.

Maybe it’s just me, but I found the world really annoying to traverse. I’m sure I’ll use many comparisons to “Ghost Of Tsushima” across this critique – where that world was gorgeous and expansive, this one is very sparse and hilly. You couldn’t go two hundred metres in “Shadows” without being blocked by a mountain range.

Also, I don’t know if I’m imagining it but I’m sure the viewpoints were too spread out across the map (i.e. I think other AC games had more of them). They were also all guarded either by tough enemies, within enemy castles or right at the tops of hills that were hard to climb. Either way, the world was too big for its own good. The option to swap characters at these viewpoints was way more drawn-out than it needed to be, as it meant a long trek was in order to return to where I needed to go.

My final gripe about the world is its seasons. Was it just me, or did the changing seasons do absolutely nothing visually? I don’t think I played long enough to make it to winter, in fairness, but even so I was expecting a difference between spring and autumn.

Characters & Story

If I had to summarise the main characters, side characters and story in one word? Boring.

Naoe’s story got off to a decent start, but it’s the kind of revenge story we’ve seen done better with Ezio and Basim. Every single side character she comes across (apart from the kid, maybe) was unbelievably dull. I liked her ninja skillset, though. That’s why this game is set in Japan, after all, so I’m glad the developers at least got that right.

Yasuke, on the other hand, is so out of place in this game it hurts. I didn’t get far enough to experience his story … but I don’t think he had a story to begin with? He’s racially prejudiced, his previous master dies, then he joins Naoe and the Assassins (or another similar organisation shadow-dwellers) for “honour” or something like that. Except this guy just isn’t an Assassin at all! He’s a samurai! His motivation and actions don’t align with the Assassin’s creed, the title of this bloody series, at all!

The stealth / guns-blazing duality was controversial in “Syndicate” but it worked better there. Here, we have one character who’s clearly the protagonist and another doing his best “Ghost Of Tsushima” impression.

Ubisoft evidently didn’t feel confident with their singular protagonist, but spreading the writing over two characters as a result made them both shallow.

Combat

I’m just gonna say it … “Shadows” doesn’t hold a candle to “Ghost Of Tsushima” when it comes to the combat.

I don’t think the combat has ever been good in Assassin’s Creed, to be honest, but I got way more enjoyment out of the combo-style of the original games and the hack-n-slash style of “Origins”, “Odyssey” and “Valhalla” than whatever this is supposed to be.

Don’t bother using Naoe in combat. Her moveset and power are pathetic. Yasuke is the only good fighter of the two, and in fairness there are some cool moments where you tear through enemy forces that would’ve given you grief as Naoe.

… But Yasuke’s moveset feels roughly the same (or even more limited than) the previous RPG titles. How did we go backwards? Why can’t they take a page out of Ghost’s book and have visceral combat that requires real skill?

Stealth

So, the combat didn’t do it for me. Big deal. The Assassin’s Creed games are all about the stealth, so as long as the developers got that right we won’t have any problems.

… Is what I would be saying if these modern RPG titles weren’t so anti-stealth. In previous titles like “Odyssey” it could get quite annoying when you couldn’t assassinate some tougher enemies, but “Shadows” takes it a step further – you can only assassinate the grunt enemies, and the rest of the medium to hard level enemies need you to have at least five or six points of damage unlocked in the assassination skill tree. Basically, you can become a proper assassin for the low-low cost of thirty hours of grinding!

It also doesn’t help that a lot of settlements and wilderness areas aren’t designed for stealth. Every now and again you’d come across a camp with cool perches and grapple points, but they were few and far between. A lot of the areas I saw were wide open spaces with a few thin walls for cover, and any rooftops you do traverse across were too far away from the action.

Again, I have to ask – why label this as a new Assassin’s Creed game at all? The developers aren’t innovating on the stealth gameplay anymore. The only new stealth features I found were Naoe’s grapple hook (kinda like what we saw in “Syndicate” but less cool), the ability to crawl through grass and ponds, and some front-flips when descending from rooftops. These ideas are cool for the first hour of using them but they get old fast.

Other Gameplay

I have more nitpicks beyond the main categories, so I’ll list the rest of my miscellaneous problems here.

The Objective Board is too ugly and hard to traverse. There are way too many missions across the game, comprised of main quests and side targets and various side quests. All of these “side quests” amount to killing a hundred bandits or finding a collection of items in the world. It clutters the Objective Board to the point where it’s an eyesore.

As for the other side content, like the contracts you can pick up in a hideout, they’re all very copy-paste and filler. Some contracts ask you to clear an enemy camp – something you likely can’t do in stealth because the camp is open and there aren’t many hiding spots. Like I said, this can’t be an Assassin’s Creed game when you’re forced to go in guns-blazing as Yasuke. And it’s not very enticing “stealth” gameplay when you have to sneak up on an animal to draw their picture.

I didn’t like the skill tree. Too often I found myself with points to spend but nothing worthwhile to spend them on – my choices were either to invest them in a skill that was specific to a weapon I wasn’t using, or dump them into a percentage increase (such as 3% more stealth damage when it’s dark and raining and you’re wearing a scarf in the winter while playing as Naoe, but only on a Thursday).

My final gripe is the Scout system. What’s the point of them? There are two “uses” for them and I didn’t see the appeal of either one. I get what they were going for with the mechanic to scout an area of the map to pinpoint a quest objective, but that got old fast (and you don’t really need to do it in the first place as long as you follow the navigation instructions carefully). I hated how some larger resources were locked behind the number of Scouts you have, and that you’d have to wait for a new season and venture back into the enemy den if you want to claim those resources. Where’s my reward for clearing a tough enemy camp if I can’t claim the resources afterwards?

If nothing else, I hope this section proves how disenchanted I was with the whole “Shadows” package, side content and all.

So … Is It The Worst In The Series?

I confidently called “Shadows” my “least favourite Assassin’s Creed” game in the title, so I thought I’d wrap this critique up by comparing it to the other weaker entries in the series:

Is it worse than “Syndicate“? For sure. When I played “Syndicate” for the second time I was bored by the filler content and felt the zipline tool was a bit naff for the series, but I definitely had a fun time the first go through. Those open-ended “black box” assassination missions are still fantastic to this day.

How about “Valhalla“, a game most people liked but I didn’t particularly? “Shadows” has similar problems to “Valhalla” in that the world is too big and the focus on open combat feels out of place in this series, but I still maintain that “Valhalla” had an easily traversable world with better side content and a visceral combat system. So yes, “Shadows” would be worse in my estimation.

What about “Rogue“, the black sheep of the franchise and most people’s least favourite? This is the one that I toyed with for a while. “Rogue” is clearly a rough patch for the series – it reused “Black Flag” and “AC3” assets on its shoestring budget – but the story there was actually quite good. And I like those reused assets, as repetitive as they may be. “Rogue” is actually a bit underrated by the fandom, I think. If you treat it as “Black Flag” DLC it works.

… Is it worse than spin-off titles like “Liberation“? Alright, you got me there. “Shadows” can at least claim to be better than those. But those aren’t proper AC titles to begin with!

Conclusion

All in all, this might go down as one of my most disappointing games of all time. An Assassin’s Creed game set in Japan sounds like a slam-dunk but it inexplicably ended up boring me to death.

Like with my “Silksong” critique I don’t want to give an official review score for a game I didn’t finish, but “Shadows” would be coasting around the 4 or 5/10 mark. I genuinely don’t know if I’ll play future entries in this series again – that’s how disillusioned this game has made me.

Aaaaaand that’s my review! You can check out some of my latest (more positive) blog posts below: