This review is being powered by Novelists, a french metalcore band. There’s a significance in this statement with the review, trust me.
After some ups & downs when attempting to play AC: Shadows (through no fault of Ubisoft, for once), I finally was able to sink some real time into the game.. And I’m glad I did. For the most part.
Out of the library of modern Assassin’s Creed titles that have been released, I have fond memories of both Origins and Odyssey. I had an “eh” to “decent” time with Valhalla, and positively hated Mirage.
Thankfully, AC: Shadows leans more towards the Odyssey-side of the series than Mirage, but there are some pretty significant warts to go along with that relationship, for sure.
Let’s get started with a top-level overview of the game before we do the leap of faith down into the haystack that’s potentially filled with needles.
If you want a TL:DR; version, I’d say this: AC: Shadows is like if AC: Odyssey and Ghost of Tsushima had a baby. If you want more details, keep reading; I’ll try to keep the important stuff towards the top here.
In it you play 2 characters - and yes, you have to play both characters - Naoe and Yasuke. Naoe is a young Shinobi (this is the character you’ll be spending the most time with if you like stealthy gameplay), and Yasuke is a former slave who is now a Samurai (the character you’ll play if you prefer more direct combat). Oh, and fuck off if you’re here to bitch about historical accuracy, wokeness, etc. I like inclusivity.
As you progress through the story, you’ll uncover members of a secret cabal seeking to shape the region into their liking.. Standard Assassin’s Creed fare, the same plotline that’s present in nearly every single title in the series.
What’s interesting is each character is a little more different than you expect; Naoe can do her own version of the classic “Eagle Vision” (closer to an X-Ray vision in this case) and has the hidden blade, while Yasuke can plow through some obstacles and deal some heavy damage in combat (not to mention is a tank).. But it goes further than that. Naoe has the nimble maneuverability of a classic AC character, while Yasuke is about as steady as a newborn calf when you fast travel to a leap of faith point and find him balancing precariously on a branch that seems like it probably shouldn’t be able to support his weight (not saying he’s fat, but let’s just say I lick my lips a little bit when I say he’s.. ahem.. Muscular. Happy Pride month).
Each also has their own skill tree and equipment; You’ll be crafting builds for both as you go, and the RPG mechanics are pretty standard. In Shadows you’ve got 6 tiers of skills, and you unlock each tier by performing activities around the open world that earn Knowledge Points. Once you reach a certain threshold, a tier unlocks. It’s not a bad system overall, and the skill point requirements at higher tiers do negate some of the methods of gaming the Knowledge Point system in order to progress faster than you should.
Additionally, you don’t have to worry about being under-leveled as you progress with one character, neglecting the other. Both will earn the same amount of separate skill points (and crafting materials - more on that later) as you go no matter which character you’re playing with.
The storyline progression itself is - as I noted - pretty standard. It does evolve a bit further than previous titles, having offshoot quests that are akin to side-quests, yet are necessary to progress the main story. This includes bits about companions, your own characters’ history, or dealing with a sort of mini-cabal that you’ve got to eliminate in order to be able to unlock the identity of one of the bigger bads. This itself actually ends up pretty interesting, aside from being forced to play as Yasuke (yeah, I know, I was licking my lips earlier, but I prefer stealthy characters and don’t play games to add to my spank bank) on occasion.
The overall immersion is there, too, aside from a few things I didn’t like. First, the music: AC Shadows tries to blend a classic lore-friendly soundtrack with more modern music (see, I did have a reason for mentioning the music I was listening to earlier). This can be done well; One of my favorite movies is Moulin Rouge, which does an exceptional job of bringing modern music into an older setting.
AC: Shadows implementation, while not as bad as the modern film version of The Great Gatsby (seriously, they fucked that one up bad.. And it had way too much goddamned heavy breathing for no reason whatsoever), does fail to really hit the mark. I actually had a couple instances where I was stealthing through a region after taking out a couple baddies and it was still stuck in the metal combat music mode, killing the immersion.
I obviously like numerous forms of metal music, but contextually? It just didn’t work in AC:S.
The second point of contention I want to mention here as far as immersion-killing goes is the lack of facial expressions outside of cutscenes; You see, there’s a number of instances where your characters are auditorily-emotive, yet if you go into photo mode, their expression is more blank than a Noh mask. Seriously, they don’t have any facial emotes at all.. Even when Yasuke is screaming as he flails from taking a leap of faith (funny the first time, until you realize he has no expression to go with his scream).
This leads me into the rest of my complaints with AC: Shadows.
I have more than a handful of complaints about the game, but we’re going to focus on just a handful here.
First off; AC: Shadows has brought back the materials grind that was present in Odyssey; Both for managing upgrades to your base (thankfully relatively minor), and in managing your gear (this is what ended up pissing me off).
If you’re like me, you like to experiment with builds. Well, if you do that, that means being really focused on making sure you loot the entire area, and prioritizing extra side-missions that provide necessary materials for upgrading your gear to match your level. It gets exceptionally costly to keep two sets of equipment upgraded if you like to change things up, and this is one situation where they took a massive step backwards over AC: Valhalla (which had a gear upgrade system, but was much simpler and less grindy).
Next up is some equipment that’s relatively OP, which can be obtained primarily through microtransactions; While they did provide a method for unlocking this gear via a weekly rotating rewards system that you need to grind special currency for in a secondary XP system tied to the Animus - yes, it’s that fucking complex and dumb - It’s obvious they would rather you spend money to get that gear.. Especially since you may be waiting a while for your preferred piece of kit to come up in the rotation. It’s basically as if Ubisoft combined Ghost Recon Breakpoint’s early faction missions grind with Far Cry 6’s Special Operations/Insurgencies, further exemplifying Ubisoft’s philosophy of “Let’s just take mechanic X from Y and put it in Z and see how it works”.
I also alluded to the similarity to Ghost of Tsushima in the introduction of this review; that is absolutely still a thing here. Here’s just a handful of things similar to Ghost of Tsushima: Smoke bombs, wind chimes, a fucking grappling hook, an attack suspiciously similar to Heavenly Strike, and a bunch of mini-games requiring pressing buttons in specific, sometimes timed sequences as part of a skill challenge.
Seriously, with how much they ripped off from Ghost of Tsushima I’d expect to see a certain favorite companion die in the story.
And that story? It honestly gets a little old. There’s nothing fresh here. The AC series has been dying a slow death for a while now, and AC Shadows isn’t really changing my mind on that front.
Speaking of death, let’s wrap things up.
Overall, I liked it. If I had to give it a numerical rating, I’d say.. 7/10, sometimes 6.5/10. It’s not bad, but the AC series has gotten a bit long in the tooth. It’s about time to consider retiring it and doing something different.
From a specifically nerfed gamer (read: handicapped) perspective, overall I found the game mostly accessible. I got a 97% match on Able To Play (which you should absolutely be checking out if you’ve got accessibility concerns in gaming), and only had to take a break for a while due to a new nerve problem manifesting itself alongside using a crappy controller.
If you liked Odyssey, I’d say pick Shadows up when it’s on sale; I don’t really feel like it’s worth the $70 price tag, especially given how things tend to get stale the longer you play.