Assassin’s Creed Shadows Review in Progress – A lush vision of Japan with a fresh take on old stealth

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Assassin’s Creed Shadows might be the latest installment in Ubisoft’s long-running series and the fifth game in what you might call the “current era” of Assassin’s Creed game design, but it’s rather fresh to me. That’s in part because the last Assassin’s Creed title I played to completion was 2015’s Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, before the pivot into action-RPG territory that came with Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla. With those latter three, I spent short flings, each time bouncing off, intimidated by their sheer scale and relegating them to “will finish someday” jail. But though I’m far from done with this massive game, if the opening hours of Shadows are representative of the whole experience, I anticipate I won’t want to push it into the backlog for a good while yet.

the birthplace of the popular idea of ninja.

And a ninja game it is, at least going by the game’s first impressions. Though much of the marketing for Assassin’s Creed Shadows focuses on the contrast between its dual protagonists, the hulking samurai Yasuke and the lithe shinobi Naoe, the game is solidly front-loaded with Naoe-focused content. Things open with Yasuke, starting with his arrival as a an enslaved African in the court of real-life warlord Oda Nobunaga, but once the basic tutorials are over, things shift almost entirely over to Naoe’s point of view for the next several hours and through the game’s opening region. In fact, at the time of this writing I have yet to experience more Yasuke gameplay, making this review-in-progress Naoe-exclusive. 

Naoe happens to be a warrior of Iga, the famous Sengoku-era Japanese province whose guerilla resistance to Nobunaga’s conquest in real life served as the popular origin point for many concepts about the ninja and shinobi. Naoe also happens to be connected in some way to the Assassin Brotherhood, and is this game’s signature Assassin’s Creed hidden blade-wielder. After her mentor and father is killed by a mysterious group working outside the bounds of both Iga and warlords like Nobunaga’s organization, Naoe resolves to uncover the conspiracy and exact revenge, founding an organization dedicated to rooting out the hidden threat that stokes the chaos roiling Japan. 

It’s a setup that should be familiar to those who’ve had even passing experience with the modern Assassin’s Creed games. The early writing on Assassin’s Creed Shadows seems less willing to lean in on the background fiction of a history-spanning shadow war between Assassins and Templars, and settles for using the conspiracy angle to raise up a convenient set of villains that can be taken down without having lasting consequences on history as it actually happened. Seeing this setup repeated, at least in general shape, from Odyssey and Origins, I find myself somewhat missing the older days of Assassin’s Creed that played more fast and loose with historical influence, where you could, by the end of the game, believe that a guy in a flashy hooded outfit came this close to violently murdering Pope Alexander VI back in 1499. My one caveat is that as mentioned, I haven’t seen the full story yet, so that stuff could be in store for me once the game opens up further, particularly with Yasuke given his positioning in Shadows as someone with a close personal relationship to Nobunaga.

If the main details of the story aren’t quite grabbing me at the moment, the way it’s presented is. Assassin’s Creed Shadows demonstrates a sense of stylishness that I don’t think I’ve ever seen from the series before, at least not packaged the way it has been here. While the series has always pushed the limit of realistic graphics tech to deliver lush visuals, the framing, particularly in cutscenes, feels far more cinematically inspired than earlier games. Even the early game contains moments set to modern Japanese music, montages and sequences that feel less from Assassin’s Creeds‘ typical epic adventure framing and more of a piece with popular film. In these moments, isolated though they are, the game feels more directly inspired by Japanese film than even Ghost of Tsushima, which had a whole “Kurosawa mode” that filtered its sound and visuals through the legendary director’s black-and-white period. 

My only gripe with the presentation is in its less cinematic cutscenes and normal conversations, which are far too woodenly animated. I’ve a particular bone to pick with its lip-syncing, which appears to be automated to some degree and drops nearly every character that speaks deep into the uncanny valley, especially if one’s picked the new “Immersive Mode” option that has characters speak their native languages. The lip-syncing tech works better for the all-English dub, but comes across as excessively robotic in Japanese and Portuguese (Naoe and Yasuke’s native tongues), and feels like it does the voice performances a disservice.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is also a gorgeous-looking title. Playing it on a PC that meets the recommended system requirements, Shadows delivers a terrifically lush, stylized vision of Sengoku-era Japan. The game covers a large slice of the modern-day Kansai region of the country, a place that features some of Japan’s most historically significant places, including the capital of Kyoto, the bustling city of Osaka, Oda’s stronghold at Azuchi castle, trading centers like Sakai, and the temperate rainforests of the Kii peninsula. 

Unlike the grassy expanses of Ghost of Tsushima’s Mongol Invasion or the bustling urban centers of Rise of the Ronin‘s Bakumatsu, the Japan of Assassin’s Creed Shadows – at least, the one rendered in the game’s early provinces – is a haunting land of narrow valleys, small clearings, and dimly lit paths surrounded by steep hillsides covered in dense, almost impassable forest swaying in the wind. Outside of the various towers and high places available as synchronization points, long sight lines are rare, lending the map, particularly its early regions, a closed-in, almost claustrophobic feel despite its sheer scale. With this kind of terrain, it’s no wonder why so many Japanese films and stories bring up mysterious or violent encounters occurring just off the road. The difficulty of navigation also makes the game’s optional “Pathfinder” feature that draws a helpful guideline to wherever you’re going a useful tool.

Elsewhere, Shadows has embraced allowing players to try finding their own way. Even with the full user interface on, the game’s missions were set up so that I had to follow clues to find my targets, even forcing me to spend “Scout” resources to uncover their map markers. It lent a sense of discovery to the otherwise scripted missions that was quite a welcome compromise between the need to guide a player and the thrill of letting one get a bit lost.

Also welcome is the newly reworked approach to stealth. For the first time in the series, Naoe and Yasuke can go prone, with visibility now based on light and exposure. In other words, enemies are that much more attentive when you’re sneaking around in broad daylight or in well-lit areas, and getting out of sight isn’t as simple as crouching in a bush anymore. Naoe in particular emphasizes stealth, as direct combat is quite the risk. 

Unlike a brawny samurai, Naoe’s weapons are rarely capable of piercing enemies’ armor, forcing her to use assassination techniques and tools that I never recalled feeling like I needed in Odyssey or Origins. I even dreaded fighting more than a couple of enemies at a time, a marked contrast even to the older games, where the counter-kill system had me as more of a human blender by Syndicate. Even a routine infiltration of a castle or strongpoint to mark treasure for my hideout (a new home base that can be built out and designed to your liking) had me considering patrol routes and stealth like I was playing Metal Gear Solid V again. In a series that hasn’t felt like it was about stealth in some years, the reworked stealth mechanics of Assassin’s Creed Shadows feel like a breath of fresh air.

Though I can’t say for certain how fresh Assassin’s Creed Shadows will still be in forty or fifty more hours and after half a dozen more regions, or if its occasionally well-presented story will pay off, what I can say in these early moments is that it’s a joy to play, and so far fills this longtime (if somewhat lapsed) Assassin’s Creed fan’s old wish for a proper ninja-themed entry.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on March 20, 2025 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. This review in progress is based on a PC copy of the game provided by the publisher.

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2025-03-18 21:01