Ubisoft finally sticks the assassin RPG landing

I’m a sucker for Assassin’s Creed. The weirdo alien plotlines, the famous historical figures suddenly showing up and offering you a flying machine, all of it. That said, I’ve been willing to forgive a lot of the series’ attempts at switching up the formula ad nauseam—but Shadows feels different.

For years now, Ubisoft has been trying to make Assassin’s Creed a pseudo-RPG. Weapons and armor with different stats, skill trees, increasingly huge maps, all the trappings you’d find in a big, open-world RPG, but wrapped up in some of the familiar AC trappings. And, with the exception of the throwback Mirage in 2023, these games have often felt like those trappings were ill-fitting. I found myself needing to seek out an Assassin’s Creed experience in the stories of a Viking, a Greek warrior, and an Egyptian sentinel. Sometimes, it worked, and a lot of the time, it felt strange, like the game was trying to impress someone who didn’t really like stealth and assassination games in the first place.

Shadows features none of that confusion and hones its hidden blades and katanas with the balance necessary to make the game unabashedly fun.

A game for stealth masters and combat bruisers alike

Shadows is the first game in the series since Syndicate that features dual protagonists: Naoe and Yasuke. Much like the predecessor Frye twins, the game touts the difference in playstyle between the two, but the gulf between Naoe and Yasuke feels even more pronounced.

Naoe, the traditional assassin character and burgeoning shinobi, is fast and excellent at hiding, assassinating, and engaging in quick, rewarding combat. She can get overwhelmed in large groups, however, and even getting hit once by some enemies can bring her close to death. Yasuke, on the other hand, can take and dish out plenty more damage. He’s big, and despite being much slower than Naoe, he hits like a truck, taking on large groups of enemies with ease.

Once you’ve unlocked both characters in the main story, you’re free to switch between the two as you travel through the world, with the exception of some character-specific missions and activities you’ll find along the way. As an Assassin’s Creed oldhead, Yasuke’s playstyle didn’t do much for me personally, but there was a certain satisfaction in pulling off his parries and finishers as I cut through enemies.

It’s in Naoe’s gameplay that Shadows really shines. The much-needed additions to the game’s stealth system breathe fresh life into the familiar “climb up a building, assassinate a guy, and go hide” pattern. The ability to go prone and the light and dark system make every engagement feel malleable as I put out lanterns with kunai and carve myself a new path, unseen by enemy guards.

There’s no bird system to use to scout out an entire enemy fort ahead of time, either. You need to calculate and react in real-time, quickly dealing with threats. And, despite a distinct lack of traditional urban environments featured in AC games, the many forts and castles dotting the landscape offer you plenty of opportunities to show off your parkour skills as you weave between engagements or ghost past enemies to your next chest.

Both characters also have multiple weapon types to try, from Yasuke’s long katanas, rifles, and massive clubs to Naoe’s smaller blades, and my personal favorite is the kusarigama. Combat feels fluid and more difficult than other recent entries in the series, with a renewed focus on parrying timing and some legitimately punishing moments for messing up.

But perhaps most importantly, I don’t need to try to shoehorn Eivor or Kassandra into being an assassin. I simply am one with Naoe. It feels like forever since I’ve been able to say that with a main AC protagonist, and I love it.

A world worth exploring

Particularly in Odyssey, I often felt lost in the world—in a non-complimentary way. Getting places was a hassle. There was so much empty space to deal with. Valhalla addressed this somewhat but still felt overly huge in its pursuit of impressive vistas and a map large enough to justify its price tag.

Shadows has a large map, but it’s not one that feels impossible to conquer, and the activities within it form a pleasing loop of exploration. Clearing out a bandit camp can be followed quickly by meditating at a spot to relive a memory or drawing the local wildlife. There’s peace to be found if you want a break from the action. Or, you can just go to the next castle and pick a fight with heavily armored samurai. It’s up to you.

I also enjoyed the cinematic swings Ubisoft took with Shadows. No, this game won’t be confused with the visuals of Ghost of Tsushima, but there are some really nice touches thrown in there, like the world turning in paper illustrations during meditation settings, the campy black-white-and-red effect that appears on the screen during abilities, or the Japanese-Western stylings of some of the game’s cinematics, the game winking at the golden age when Akira Kurosawa was setting up John Ford-esque frames in his films. In fact, this game’s “bad guys wearing masks” are routinely presented in Western-esque shots. Given Yasuke wields a rifle, you can even shoot them between the eyes if you want.

Between the main quests, castle infiltrations, side activities found exploring the world, and even your own hideout customization, the game offers you plenty—but not too much—to do, again attaining a necessary balance that’s felt missing in the previous RPG ACs.

Shadows does have its own missteps, to be sure, and I’m still on the fence about the storyline at large here. At times, I enjoy the weird Animus mysteries and feudal Japanese epic storytelling, but at other times, the writing falls a bit flat. Yasuke and Naoe’s agreeing to work together, generally speaking, feels a little forced in how quickly it all transpires. It’s forgivable, as the story is still engaging enough to make me want to keep pushing it along, but there’s a small toll every now and then to pay, which is always going to be a knock against a big, epic story.

The game’s visuals are also breathtaking at long and middle distances but certainly don’t stand up to close-up scrutiny on my Xbox Series S. You’ll probably spot some pixelated environments here and there in the foreground. It didn’t matter much to me, but the fact remains the game doesn’t always do its best to disguise some of its limitations.

The same goes for some of the facial animations on display here. They’re mostly competent, even if characters feel a little stilted at times. Graphics are usually not overly important to me, so these were more nitpicks I moved past as the gameplay outside of dialogue sequences more than made up for it.

You’ll find me in the Shadows

While I think Assassin’s Creed Shadows certainly does the trick as a general crowd-pleaser, it’s a game I think longtime AC fans will see as a return to form. I’ll have to give it more thought to see if it could enter into my top five AC games list, but the potential is there for me with Shadows right now. As such, I recommend this one to anyone and everyone—but if you’ve lived and died by the hidden blade over the last 20 years, you definitely don’t want to skip it.