Assassin’s Creed Shadows review: Shōgun the video game

Assassin’s Creed Shadows brings the franchise to the shores of Japan. After almost 20 years and 13 mainline games, Assassin’s Creed — the series about using flashy gadgets and techniques to murder your enemies undetected — has finally been set in a place famous for assassins who use flashy gadgets and techniques to murder their enemies undetected. I don’t know why Ubisoft waited so long. But I do know Ubisoft is in dire need of a hit, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows is poised to be one.

Ubisoft isn’t out to reinvent the formula with Shadows. In fact, there’s nothing mechanically (or even narratively) that separates this game from its predecessor, Assassin’s Creed Mirage. It’s just moved the game to a new location, with new characters and storylines. The strength of the game comes from whether Ubisoft can make those things pop.

Shadows revives the dual protagonist system introduced with Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. To start the game, you play as Naoe, a young woman from Iga, a province of medieval Japan known for its shinobi. After her village is destroyed and her father is murdered, Naoe swears revenge on the shadowy cabal of masked individuals responsible. Her quest for vengeance brings her into contact with Yasuke, a former enslaved man searching for his place in life as a samurai in the service of Japan’s premier warlord of the time, Oda Nobunaga.

After about the first 10 hours of the game, which are focused on Naoe, players are allowed to swap freely between Naoe and Yasuke and their wildly different styles of gameplay. Naoe is the stealth character; she’s quick and light on her feet, able to scale buildings with the use of her grappling hook and assassinate her enemies from the shadows (heh) with her hidden blade. Yasuke is the bruiser, able to take a beating and dish one out in turn with massive heavy weapons like the naginata, long katana, and musket-style firearms known as teppo.

Ubisoft did a good job of tuning both character’s skills and abilities such that both have elements that make them appealing to play. I really liked how Yasuke and Naoe, in addition to being engaging characters with narratives I enjoyed watching develop, are suited for specific jobs and my moment-to-moment moods. If I’m short on patience or I know I’m going up against elite enemies with chunky health bars, I’ll barrel them over with Yasuke, teppo blazing. But if I don’t feel like knock-down, drag-out fights or I’m after a tasty bit of treasure well guarded by a swarm of enemies, that’s a job for Naoe, who can get in and out without rousing any alarm.

But just because Yasuke and Naoe have their own strengths doesn’t mean they can’t play to their weaknesses. It was just as satisfying, if not more so, to make the burly Yasuke pop out of a bush to stealthily stab a guy (although, with him, it’s less of a light stab and more like an impalement) or have Naoe hold her own against the tough bosses. I had a very hearty laugh when I made Yasuke do his first leap of faith, a well-known Assassin’s Creed staple that has characters trust-fall from high-up observation points into bales of hay or other soft landings.

For both characters, combat is a simple, standard affair, wherein players can string together light or heavy attacks interspersed with special abilities specific to their character or weapon. In particular, I was surprised by how brutal Yasuke’s combat was. In trying out the naginata for the first time, I was shocked by the violence of his finisher that has him stomp on his enemy’s head, as though running him through the chest the moment before wasn’t enough to get the job done. It was a level of goriness I associate more with Mortal Kombat than Assassin’s Creed.

There was another jarring moment very early in the game that highlighted the tension between Shadows as a product designed to make money and an artistic endeavor. Within seconds of starting the game, it presented a gallery of assassins from previous titles. I thought each entry would play a cutscene that would summarize the game’s story. Instead, selecting any of the entries kicked me out of Shadows and into the PlayStation Store, where I was prompted to buy the game I wanted to learn about. (Ostensibly, if you own the game, selecting its entry would launch it.) I thought it was a bad omen, setting the tone for a game stuffed with the kind of nickel-and-dime live-service bullshit that Ubisoft is known for.

But with Shadows, I finally get the franchise. I’ve never liked open-world games. With few exceptions, I find them tedious and overwhelming, especially Ubisoft’s particular flavor of them that are littered with side quests and activities that are little more than busywork. Shadows is similarly constructed. It’s the same kind of gameplay in the same kind of open world — with a map so cluttered with things that looking at it made me anxious.

Yet, I didn’t mind any of that. Partly, it’s the narrative: I find Yasuke and Naoe’s banter to be sweet and funny, and their story of learning to work together makes for a perfectly fine Odd Couple-style narrative. But even that’s not enough. It’s the world.

As with previous Assassin’s Creed games, Ubisoft has invested time into recreating this era of Japan with exacting detail. Locations are rendered from their real-life counterparts and given codex entries that delve into their stories with a historian’s level of specificity. Quests that touch on cultural elements, such as the tea ceremony, are similarly reconstructed with the same level of gravity. The locations and events are not treated as mere set dressing, but as living, breathing entities invested with the same weight and respect as they are in real life. When you encounter the first torii gate, the game warns you to respect what the structure represents by not climbing all over it, and it feels good honoring that request. That level of care is why, 35 hours in, I haven’t grown tired of what is, on pixel, unforgivable tedium.

I enjoyed traversing the way-too-big map, finding all the little activities I could get into while on my way to the bigger story quests. I was thrilled every time the seasons changed and I got to see the land transform. Every bit of scenery is rendered with such detail that I felt transported to an era of Japan that, despite being covered to death in media, nevertheless remains endlessly fascinating. I was enthralled by the game’s deep and detailed codex that covered everything from the history of the era and its notable figures to the minutia of daily life as a Japanese peasant. Sure, popping out and killing ninjas is great, and I’m genuinely interested in how Yasuke and Naoe achieve their goals. But more than anything, I wanna visit the top of Mount Hiei and learn about the warrior monks of its Enryakuji Temple. We all watched Shōgun deservedly carry away all the awards. Playing Shadows felt like experiencing that show all over again.

_{Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC on March 20th.}