Assassin’s Creed Shadows review: stealth and steel

Assassin’s Creed Shadows seems to have benefited from its extra time cooking in the fire, as developer Ubisoft Quebec has created an excellent new entry in the action open-world role-playing game line of its behemoth stealth series.

It has all the right ingredients to make it a delicious large-scale experience, from rewarding exploration of a beautiful world to some exquisite combat that’s the best in the whole series. That’s on top of its dual protagonist system, which offers the best of both worlds on a gameplay front.

But one word I kept coming back to in particular while sinking dozens of hours into Shadows was ‘balanced’. For example, the balance between protagonists Yasuke and Naoe’s styles, skill progression, and landmarks discovered via exploration constantly tempts you to play further.

As a result, Assassin’s Creed Shadows hits the mark in an awful lot of ways and is right up there when it comes to the best Assassin’s Creed games. Yes, its story darts about all over the place to its detriment (although it earns credit for deviating from the obvious means to tell a narrative) and peters out rather, and the Hideout mode demands a fair bit of resource grinding, but these minor quibbles never halted my enjoyment of roaming Feudal Japan and unraveling its many mysteries.

A world worth waiting for

One of the stars of the whole show is the setting of Feudal Japan in the 16th century. In short, it’s perfect for the lore and gameplay of an Assassin’s Creed game. This rendition of the period is an absolute beauty with breathtaking vistas, varied and eye-catching typography, and exquisite landscape features from water courses to lush vegetation and a wonderful utilization of Japanese landscapes, architecture, and gardens.

The environmental and weather effects are both visually and audibly varied too. There are snow blizzards you can’t see through, pounding rain that makes the ground muddy, a distinct hazed redolent of that which often sits on the Japanese landscape, and gusts of wind lightly rustling brilliantly blooming cherry blossom trees.

Not only that, the world is filled with plenty of things to discover, stumble upon, and do. From tombs and parkour paths to find loot in, strongholds to clear, meditation and temples to gain knowledge points from, to painting wildlife and completing contracts, there’s loads to sink your teeth into. While many of these would feel at home in the likes of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, for example, the slightly smaller map size helps to keep it all in check and creates an emphasis on quality over quantity.

There are plenty of viewpoints to climb and get vantage across the land – no AC game would be complete without them – but climbing them doesn’t automatically reveal everything in a region. It’s no longer a one-stop show-me-everything trick. Instead, a few question marks and maybe the next nearest viewpoint or two will appear on your map, but the emphasis is on inspecting the world and identifying the places you want to go to next.

This change in exploration ensured I was immersed in the world and I loved the sense of discovery. The shift to putting the onus on you to actually go to places or find locations is something I’ve wanted from the open-world line in the series for a while – and it works. This also works on a micro scale when looking for evidence or people during missions; you really feel like you’re snooping about and every discovery feels a little more earned.

Thus, even the world itself has a nice balance to it. Its overall size, the amount of things within it, and the distance between those locations and activities make for a well-filled world that reveals itself and can be explored at your own pace.

Dual blades

As a long-time fan of this series, I was originally unconvinced about the dual-protagonist setup in Shadows. However, after previewing the game at the Quebec studio, and now spending dozens of hours with it properly, I can say that it really works.

Naoe and Yasuke are incredibly specialist and feel honed to their specific niches. It’s still worth remembering, however, that this dual protagonist setup is not like Assassin’s Creed Syndicate for example, where both playable characters are members of the Assassin brotherhood; here, we’ve got one stealth-attuned assassin and one bombastic samurai who’s best suited to all-out combat.

Despite their distinct styles, playing with either has one thing in common: some of the best combat in the series. Whether I was implementing quickfire attacks in one-on-one combat with a Kusarigama hook-and-chain weapon as Naoe, or smashing through doors and mowing down gaggles of goons with Kanobo with as Yasuke, both characters are a blastic.

Shinobi Naoe is a true assassin, and, in a strong field, possibly one of the best to play as yet. She’s fast, lethal, and stocked with stealthy tools. Lurking in the shadows, utilizing her slick parkour moves, and infiltrating places unseen feels excellent. There’s something satisfying about mastering her vulnerability and high-risk one-on-one combat too; Naoe almost feels underpowered when out of stealth, and this successfully balances out her efficacy.

On the other hand, Yasuke is built for head-on combat. Focusing on all-out damage, he can wield the biggest weapons and create the largest devastation, and take the most punishment. Seeing baddies go flying from huge ground attacks or massive kicks brought satisfaction to combat when going big, and every hit felt impactful and spectacular.

Equally, the limits on Yasuke’s stealth abilities feel about right: he’ll get seen when trying to hide behind cover, he’s rubbish at parkour, and his assassinations are deliberately non-stealthy.

I did find myself playing as Naoe an awful lot more due to the excellence of stealth and assassination, but knowing I could rely on changing to Yasuke to go all out with a Kanobo club was a joy – even if the act of changing between them could be a little more seamless than having to re-enter menus.

The balance of the game comes to the fore again, but three-fold: first in the balance between what Naoe and Yasuke offer in style, second in the way that each is balanced in terms of capabilities, but third in terms of progressing both and their skill sets. For example, if you identify skills you want then you can act accordingly, pivoting away to gather specific knowledge points that unlock levels of skills rather than just encouraging you to hoover up one-dimensional skill points.

A story that fades

Sadly, I can’t rave in the same way about the story as much as I can about everything else.

Told through a mix of flashbacks, main story-adjacent missions, and some linear moments, I appreciate the series trying to weave the narrative in a different way, but it all feels a bit scattershot.

However, there are redeeming qualities that do go some way to mitigating the otherwise spotty narrative. The performances, cinematography, and attention to detail in cutscenes – I was always taken by the characters’ eyes and the level of eye contact between them – is excellent and leads to a wonderfully cinematic feel. This helps to present the story and cutscenes in an engaging and sometimes gripping way – it’s just a shame that it never really got its hooks into me.

It’s worth mentioning that playing the main missions and going after the main targets often culminates in wonderful segments that focus on killing the right person in a sprawling, dangerous location, and then getting out.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find sub-groups and organizations of evil schemers that meant satisfying investigations and assassinations were not limited to one main group of big bads. Complementing this, main targets or not, were the kill screens which were an excellent artistic touch throughout, with the screen changing to black and white splattered by the bright blood of your victim.

Filling out the experience

Assassin’s Creed Shadows also brings some new facets to the series with it.

The Animus Hub greets you when booting up the game. On one hand this is a functional launcher-type screen that can act as simply the home screen for Shadows and the most recent AC games (from Origins onward). On the other, it actually handles the modern-day stuff well and provides a good launchpad for jumping into any of those games. A nice, apt base for the whole Assassin’s Creed experience.

Personally, I wasn’t drawn much to the new base building-like Hideout mode and it does take some time in the main game to gather all the materials needed to build and upgrade everything. In terms of adding buildings to your settlement, there are tangible benefits to be gained such as more scouts that can reveal clues and locations on the map for you, adding engravings (upgrades) to weapons, and being able to remove regional wanted statuses.

In this way, it feels like an evolution of the Ravensthorpe settlement concept from Valhalla. However, I preferred the implementation in Eivor’s adventure which was simpler and wasn’t trying to be a whole new game mode.

Even so, Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ various delays have clearly been worth it, as it’s some of the most fun I’ve had in the series in a long while. It takes all the best bits of the RPG line of games in the series and refines them, but also throws in some excellent stealth, combat, and exploration which makes for a memorable experience throughout. Its drawbacks are relatively small in comparison to its strengths and I am already committed to exploring all its nooks and crannies, well after rolling credits.

Should you play Assassin’s Creed Shadows?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

Ubisoft’s modern suite of strong accessibility options is available in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. There are multiple difficulty levels (all of which are described in full) that affect combat and stealth, and you can also change the game to have one-hit assassinations. If you want to make exploration easier, you can turn on guidance for that to make discovery more straightforward.

There are options to change or turn off graphic effects such as blood, as well as alter the camera, and change inputs for actions. There are also plenty of options for subtitles, text size, background color for text, and language options. The game also features modes to cater to Red-Green and Blue-Yellow colorblindness.

How I reviewed Assassin’s Creed Shadows

I’ve played Assassin’s Creed Shadows for more than 40 hours for this review, going through the main storyline, undertaking a host of side quests, and taking time to explore the vast world. As well as thoroughly exploring the main game as both Naoe and Yasuke and using as many weapons for both as I could, I dedicated time to having a poke about the Animus Hub and spending time in the Hideout mode too to explore what both have to offer.

I reviewed Assassin’s Creed Shadows on both my PlayStation 5 setups testing on a PS5 Slim and PS5 Pro and using an Acer X32QFS gaming monitor and Samsung Q6F 55-inch 4K QLED TV for display, and a Yamaha SR-C20A soundbar and Samsung soundbar for audio. When using a headset, I adopted a SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 on the PS5 Slim and a SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless with my PS5 Pro. I used a regular DualSense Wireless controller on both consoles, and I also played Assassin’s Creed Shadows on my PlayStation Portal.

The game offered me two or three graphics modes depending on the display I was using. The standard, default two of Quality and Performance are present – with the performance mode being preferable on 60Hz displays – while a Balanced mode is available on HDMI 2.1 displays offering something akin to a quality-meets-40-frames-per-second experience. My preference by far was the latter and found it to be an excellent mix of both performance and overall image quality.

First reviewed March 2025