Assassin’s Creed Shadows Hits a Bullseye

Yasuke and Naoe have a problem. They have to hunt down and kill 12 masked fiends who destroyed everything they knew and held dear, and they have to do a ton of legwork to get there. Fortunately they have an ever-expanding crew of friends and partners to help them, as well as each other. And although they couldn’t possibly be more different, they grow as tight as a samurai and a ninja could—especially ones who don’t fully fit into the tightly restrained, tradition-bound culture of 16th century Japan.

Ubisoft also has a problem. The gaming giant has been in turmoil for the entire decade so far, with a raft of failed launches and underperforming games arriving alongside the exposure of a culture of sexual misconduct. Cancelled games, rampant layoffs, shareholders losing faith in management and ownership, a long-term stock collapse: the company behind series like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and the Tom Clancy games has a bleak and unsure future. 

So Ubisoft once again looks to the past with Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Can the unlikely partnership between an African samurai and a teenage shinobi overcome not just the treachery and betrayals of the late Sengoku era, but also help right the ship for an incompetently run, exploitative billion dollar corporation? Can a new entry in the series that most closely embodies Ubisoft’s creative strengths and failures mark a turning point for the company, or will the game’s lengthy and exorbitantly expensive development hasten its decline? 

I have no idea. I’m no business analyst. But I do know that Assassin’s Creed Shadows marks a return to the extreme maximalism that the always-overloaded Assassin’s Creed games started to embrace with 2017’s Assassin’s Creed Origins, and a shift away from the streamlined approach seen in Assassin’s Creed Mirage—the last game in the series, which came out only 17 months ago. If you prefer an Assassin’s Creed that’s almost unmanageably huge, with an overwhelming amount of story, side quests, and general busy work to wade through, Shadows will feel like the return of an old friend—one who demands pretty much all of your time.

The game’s map is a clear tip off. The first time it appears it’s already carved up into distinct sections, each one with a number representing the experience level you should be at before entering it. Naoe is maybe level 2 or 3 at this point, and the highest number on that map is in the 30s. Most of the other regions have numbers well above 10. Experience should tell you that you won’t reach those numbers simply by following the main story. It doesn’t matter how personal Naoe’s mission of revenge is: she’s going to have to do a ton of unrelated nonsense just to get the arbitrary “experience” necessary to make that goal possible. Because in an Assassin’s Creed game every assassin is basically also an intern.

I’m focusing on Naoe first because that’s basically what the game does. After a brief introduction where you play as Yasuke, the perspective shifts to the young ninja, and she is the sole playable lead for several hours. Naoe plays like an Assassin’s Creed typically does, all speed and stealth, slinking through bushes and quietly killing her prey before quickly scaling walls and castles to make her escape. Playing as Naoe is basically a refresher course in how you play these games, or, for newcomers, an introduction to the series’ core concepts. 

The initial transition to Yasuke’s point-of-view is handled deftly, flowing directly from the game’s story during a monumental moment in Japanese history. If Naoe is a fighter jet, Yasuke is a tank; he has little need for stealth, barreling through doorways and into fights against several enemies at once, capable of hacking his way through a clutch of rival soldiers within a matter of minutes. Yasuke and Naoe play very differently; he’s all strength and power, she’s all patience and secrets, and swapping between the two keeps Shadows feeling somewhat fresh despite its enormous length. Sizing up which character would be better for any given battle or scenario is part of the game’s strategic charm—and then going with the other one is always a fun little challenge. (And if you’re ever in need for a laugh, do an Assassin’s Creed leap of faith with Yasuke—it’s always fun.)

Yasuke and Naoe complement each other well when it comes to the game’s action, but more importantly they’re a wonderfully matched pair of leads. Despite their vastly different origins, they instantly intuit their similarities. Yasuke’s an absolute outsider, an African brought to Japan as a slave by Portuguese priests, who’s welcomed into Japan’s warrior class due to his strength, skill, and willingness to learn. Naoe is a native intimately familiar with the values, mores and traditions of Japan, but constrained by society’s limited roles for women. They’re both trying their best in a world that will never truly accept who they are—how Yasuke was born, and how Naoe has chosen to be. Shadows generally explores this tension with subtlety and grace—two things you don’t always expect from would-be blockbuster games with massive, multi-million dollar budgets.

It’s the strength of these characters and their relationship that keeps Shadows on track even as it gets bogged down in typical videogame drudgery. The ultimate goal is to take down the 12 shadowy lords of the Shinbakufu, but there’s not a direct line to any of them. You’ll have to play through several quests just to learn who a single member of the group is, and then do several more quests before you finally get to confront and assassinate them. Shadows absolutely loves stretching things out, making you do a favor for this guy to do a favor for that guy to do a favor for this other guy in hopes of maybe finding out which local despot is behind one of those 12 masks. Sometimes you’ll have to wipe out entire groups of mini-bosses as one step on the journey towards uncovering a single Shinbakufu. A typical quest line starts with you having to send a scout out to a specific part of the map just to figure out the general vicinity of where a character you need to meet is hiding. You then have to go there and search the area looking for them before the quest actually begins. And if they’re in a part of the map that you can’t fast travel to yet—courtesy of those trusty eagle towers that might be Assassin’s Creed’s (and, indeed, Ubisoft’s) most defining mechanic—you’ll have to spend several minutes running or riding your horse there to start the search. Add in the unrelated side quests and other ancillary tasks you’re strongly encouraged to perform—you’ll need to not just for the experience points but also for resources to upgrade your base (you have a base now)—and you’re looking at a game that takes dozens of hours to finish. Assassinating is a commitment—or, depending on your perspective, a black hole of time.

About that base: throughout the game other wayward souls gravitate towards Naoe and Yasuke, and certain ones can become a permanent part of your circle after finishing their own dedicated quest lines. These friends will all shack up in your secret headquarters at the middle of the map. Some, like the blacksmith Heiji, serve a vital role at your base; others, like the warrior monk Yaya or the thief Gennojo, are assist units that can be called into battle. Sometimes you can romance them. They all hang out at your hidden compound, which can be expanded and upgraded with various buildings that provide in-game boons. You can also just hang out with them between missions, and although they’re all clear variations on stock types, Shadows is well-written and acted enough to make you actually want to spend time with your allies. If you really want to go down the base-building rabbit hole you can also tweak everything cosmetically, changing the appearance of your buildings and even the grass itself. 

(One crucial bit of advice: make sure you set the game’s audio to “immersive” mode, which uses Japanese and Portuguese for the voice-acting. You’ll have to read captions, sure, but it sounds much better than the English voice-acting, and really sells the game’s commitment to verisimilitude.) 

So, yeah: you aren’t going to polish this one off in a weekend. Shadows gets back to the overbearing size and scope of Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla—absurdly, crushingly huge mega-epics intentionally designed to suck as much time out of your schedule as possible. If you judge the value of a game solely on how long it takes to complete it, Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be the bargain of the year.

The good thing is so much of that game is worth playing. I always admit to being a sucker for Assassin’s Creed, from the detailed recreations of bygone cultures and societies, to the awkward, conspiracy-minded metastory that serves as a framing device (which recedes even more into the background with Shadows). I enjoyed Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla despite their untenable size. Shadows is the best of the bunch, though, with the best leads the series has seen in at least a decade, two palpably different combat styles that vary up how it feels to play the game, and a complex, well-written story that is always able to balance the personal with the historical. If you enjoy a good adventure, you’ll want to make Yasuke and Naoe’s problems your own. 

Assassin’s Creed Shadows was developed by Ubisoft Quebec and published by Ubisoft. Our review is based on the Playstation 5 version. It is also available on Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.