Assassin’s Creed Shadows Is an Exciting Return to Form [Review]

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is an ambitious game with a lot riding on it for Ubisoft and its flagship franchise. After playing around 50 hours and completing the game’s main story and exploring much of its open world, I can confidently say Shadows is a bold return to form for the franchise and Ubisoft’s best game in nearly a decade.

Feudal Japan, Finally Delivered

Assassin’s Creed is a sprawling franchise, which has spanned across continents and nearly 2,000 years of history. The series has been set in some of the most fascinating periods and places across history. Ancient Egypt, the Italian Renaissance, the American Revolution and the age of Vikings are just some of the highlights. However, no matter where the series headed, there was always one setting fans requested the loudest: Feudal Japan.

With Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the developers at Ubisoft Quebec finally delivered on the promise of this setting, and it makes for one of the best worlds in the series. Feudal Japan makes for an absolutely beautiful setting to properly take Assassin’s Creed into the next generation. Ubisoft’s rendition of Japan ends up being a gorgeous open world, even on Performance Mode on a base PlayStation 5. Its dense cities and beautiful nature alike are both made even better by an impressive season cycle with meaningful impact to visuals and gameplay.

Feudal Japan’s architecture also makes for an incredible playground for the series’ famed parkour. Many of the more recent Assassin’s Creed RPG entries have struggled to make climbing walls and running across roofs as viable and fun as it was in the franchise’s glory days. In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Japan’s dense cities and sprawling castles are the perfect place for parkour. Scaling walls and running across roofs to sneak up on enemies or synchronize on Viewpoints is incredibly satisfying, especially with the new addition of Naoe’s grappling hook.

Ubisoft Quebec has clearly taken care into crafting a digital recreation of 16th century Japan, with incredible detail and a desire for at least some authenticity. There are countless places where players can unlock codex entries full of rich history and lore on the locales they’ll explore and the history that shaped them. There are also plenty of non-violent activities centered around Feudal Japanese culture, with tea ceremonies to partake in Shrines to pray at and more. While this ends up not being the best choice for gameplay, it shows that Ubisoft clearly wants fans to interact with and honor the rich culture and history of Feudal Japan, and rewards them for engaging with activities that center their character’s minds over their weapons.

Shadows’ Dual Protagonists Merge Assassin’s Creed’s Two Game Styles

Feudal Japan’s warriors are as a natural of a fit for Assassin’s Creed as its provinces are for an open world. The Shinobi and Samurai embodied by dual protagonists Naoe and Yasuke each have a fascinating storyline, unique gameplay style, and some satisfying shared progression.

Naoe excels at stealth. She wields a hidden blade for quick and quiet assassinations, and has fast and agile movement like the Assassin’s from the series’ classics. That being said, she does struggle in open combat. Thankfully, that’s where Yasuke excels. This towering Samurai has extremely powerful melee attacks and can easily control and cut through crowds of enemies. When you fight as Yasuke, you can feel the Souls-like inspiration in his heavy combat. Melee attacks and blocks are bound to triggers and bumpers on controller. The melee combat here is visceral and violent, and feels like an excellent evolution of the melee combat in the more recent RPG-style Assassin’s Creed games. Fighting as Yasuke is the most fun I’ve had with combat in this series, especially with the addition of an armor perk which increases his damage by 75% while reducing his health by the same amount, making weapons feel appropriately lethal.

Regardless of which character will fit your preference more, the option to choose between protagonists is available far more often than not. At least after the game’s lengthy intro, which sees Naoe taking center stage for about eight hours. After this point, you’ll usually get to experience the play style of your preferred Assassin’s Creed era by picking the character that suits that style. While Yasuke quickly became my favorite protagonist in the game and one of my favorites in the franchise, both characters are worth experiencing in full.

Naoe and Yasuke both have a series of quests called their Personal Story, which are some of the best and most satisfying missions in the game. These quests add so much depth to each character and their relationships to the world and eachother. In the late game, Naoe and Yasuke’s individual journeys lead to mostly satisfying conclusions and house a few moments which are sure to get massive pops from longtime fans of Assassin’s Creed.

So Much To Do and See

Ubisoft is famous for absolutely packing its worlds with content. Depending who you ask, this can be a blessing and a curse. Thankfully, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has learned from its own past as well as recent competition and crafted one of Ubisoft’s best open worlds ever.

I’ve already shared how impressed I am with Japan’s detailed visuals, but its just as packed with things to do. Granted, some of the non-violent activities are more tied to progression than I would prefer. With that being said, aside from a few tedious but optional series of collectibles, most of the content in Assassin’s Creed Shadows feels meaningful, exciting and worth doing.

Thankfully, there’s also far less bloat and checklists than I expected from an Assassin’s Creed game in 2025. Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ map has a fog to it, which needs to be lifted by physically exploring these areas. While you can climb to the top of a tower and synchronize as you’d expect, this gives you leads on other POIs in the area rather than instantly cluttering the region with icons. The HUD is also far less obtrusive, and the game will naturally guide you places at times. There’s almost always loot worth grabbing, a rumor worth hearing or a target to assassinate in areas you’d want to explore anyway.

There are also an abundance of Objective Boards in the game, with many revolving around assassinating groups of conspiring targets. Tracking them down in the world is fairly straight forward; dispatch your Scouts where some clues tell you to look, hear world rumors from NPCs, talk to contacts in the know, etc. While this process can get a little repetitive, the assassinations themselves are an absolute blast and almost always net worthwhile rewards. Whether you choose to assassinate them with a hidden blade or engage them in open combat to trigger a mini boss fight, these are the highlights of the open world and became the sole focus of several of my play sessions. These kinds of missions typically make up the Main Quest in Assassin’s Creed, and still do in Shadows, but I was grateful to have dozens more targets beyond the ones required to roll credits.

Some of Shadows’ New Mechanics are a Swing and a Miss

Unfortunately, there are a few missteps within Assassin’s Creed Shadows. I alluded earlier to some of the non-violent activities and how they have too much of a role in progression, since they’re required to earn Knowledge Points. Knowledge is a new form of progression for Shadows. Essentially, as players earn Knowledge Points, their Knowledge Rank will increase. Skills are locked in tiers behind Knowledge Rank.

While this works initially as you’ll encounter many non-violent activities toward the beginning of a playthrough, they got incredibly tedious and repetitive by the end. I understand the value of having more non-violent activities in the game, but them being so core to progression feels like the wrong choice. If you end up having to grind Knowledge from Shrines by praying at them 2-5 times in order to unlock essential abilities like a double assassination, it’s incredibly frustrating. This also feels out of place with the gameplay and character’s motives since neither of them are ever said to have faith, and I could see how this mechanic would be offensive to those who earnestly practice the religion.

The Hideout (pictured above) is another rare miss in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. While I enjoyed going on occasion to check in with allies, I never wanted to stay long because the area causes some steep frame rate drops. Essentially, The Hideout is a Sims-esque plot of land where your allies and scouts will live, and you can build all sorts of structures to customize it to your liking.

While some of these buildings and ornaments will give you permanent stat boosts or affect the economy and/or gameplay, most are purely for decoration. While many fans are sure to love this mechanic, it never connected with me and often made loot less rewarding. I often took time to stealthily sneak into an enemy base or castle and looted a chest, only to find a decorative item for The Hideout I knew I’d never use. There’s unfortunately no way to sell these that I found, so if you don’t want to spend time customizing your hideout then unlocking these items is just a waste of time.

A New Era of the Animus

In-universe, the Animus is the way people in the modern day are able to access the memories of their ancestors and explore the past. It’s a really fascinating concept, and now Ubisoft is leveraging it to bring the Assassin’s Creed franchise together.

The Animus unifies all Assassin’s Creed titles going back to Origins and will going forward in one application. It’s a place for players to reflect on the series, consume some lore, and earn weekly rewards. It’s a bit of an odd inclusion, but there are specific Animus-based challenges within Assassin’s Creed Shadows that progress something called Projects; essentially, it’s a free Battle Pass.

There are also Keys players can earn to use in the Animus Exchange to unlock rotating items including weapons, armor, and Hideout customization. It feels a bit out of place, and the drip feed of these rewards is entirely too slow to make sense for a single player game with a finite amount of content. I played 50 hours of Assassin’s Creed Shadows across a week, and never really felt like I made a ton of Project progress or earned anything meaningful from the Exchange. The Animus will be exciting to return to with any major updates, expansions, or even new games. However, I just can’t imagine anyone logging into Assassin’s Creed Shadows long after rolling credits to complete some weekly challenges.

For better or worse, the Animus also takes a bit of a backseat in the Assassin’s Creed Shadows storyline. It’s no secret Ubisoft has struggled to find their footing with a modern day storyline in the franchise for quite some time. Assassin’s Creed Shadows attempts to start a new modern day story, but it’s far too minimal to really sink into quite yet. That being said, there’s plenty of potential for it to develop across the next few titles, or even as early as later this year with the Claws of Awaji expansion.

Even with its flaws, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is still a blast to play and delivers a great story in an incredible open world. Shadows is incredibly detailed, and the polish afforded by the game’s several delays was worth the wait. Shadows feels like both an excellent new entry point for new players, as well as a satisfying birth of a new era that still respects Assassin’s Creed’s legacy and lore.

With the amount of content and value on offer here and an incredible open world to sink upwards of 80 hours into, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is an example of what the franchise can be among its best. While not every aspect is perfect, the game’s epic journey makes for the best Assassin’s Creed game in a decade, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for the franchise after seeing Ubisoft can still deliver on its flagship IP in a big way.

Verdict: Exemplary

A review copy for Assassin’s Creed Shadows was provided by the publisher. Reviewed on PlayStation 5.