Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Claws Of Awaji DLC Review – Same Old, Same Old

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Assassin’s Creed games usually explore a single, strong idea throughout their stories. For instance, *Odyssey* heavily focused on the idea of legacy, and *Valhalla* centered on fate. *Assassin’s Creed Shadows* feels different; while the core story of Naoe and Yasuke in 16th-century Japan revolves around the bonds of chosen family, it also touches on themes of revenge and honor. This makes the game’s overall message less clear and a bit weaker compared to other recent Assassin’s Creed titles, especially because the main story loses direction in its middle section.

The problems players experienced in the main game continue in the ‘Claws of Awaji’ expansion for Shadows. While the gameplay is a bit more fun thanks to some improvements in how you hunt and eliminate targets, the story still falls short, especially when it comes to the conclusion and the character arc of Naoe, leaving it feeling incomplete.

Claws of Awaji continues the story after the main events of Shadows. If you haven’t completed the Shadows campaign yet and want to avoid spoilers, it’s best to stop here.

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The main storyline of Shadows feels incomplete. While it reaches a conclusion, it’s widely considered the weakest ending in the series. Naoe discovers her mother, missing for fourteen years, is alive and part of a group called the Assassin Brotherhood. Simultaneously, Yasuke learns the Templar Order that once enslaved him is plotting against Japan, leading him to declare war. However, both characters only manage to locate two of the three key items needed to safeguard the country.

That’s when the game suddenly ends. We never find out what happened to Naoe’s mother, and Yasuke doesn’t finish tracking down the remaining Templars in Japan. The main goal is left only about two-thirds complete. It’s a frustrating and unsatisfying ending to an otherwise good story, as the game just stops unexpectedly.

Claws of Awaji finally wraps up the three main storylines that were left hanging. This makes it feel less like optional extra content and more like the true ending to the game – one you have to pay for if you want to see how Naoe and Yasuke’s story ends. I’m not sure what happened during development, but the way their stories were ultimately presented feels strange. Ending a game on a cliffhanger can be effective, and some Assassin’s Creed games have successfully teased future content after a satisfying conclusion. However, Shadows’ ending didn’t feel exciting – it felt incomplete. Releasing the conclusion months later as paid DLC feels unfair, no matter the developers’ original plans.

Putting emotions aside, Claws of Awaji is a solid addition to the game. Naoe learns the location of her mother and travels to Awaji Island with Yasuke. They find her alive, but she’s been captured by the daughter of a Templar enemy Yasuke defeated earlier. This woman has taken her father’s place within the Templar Order and has been torturing Naoe’s mother for over ten years, hoping to find out where she hid a crucial artifact that Naoe and Yasuke are searching for.

Naoe and Yasuke need to break the Templar’s hold on Awaji Island. She controls it with the help of three powerful followers: a spy, a samurai, and a ninja. Taking them out is similar to the second part of the main game, letting you choose who to go after first. However, this time the process of hunting them down has been made much better.

Three Templar lieutenants each oversee sections of Awaji and are tasked with tracking down Naoe and Yasuke to prevent them from reaching Naoe’s mother. As long as the spymaster remains alive, his network of agents will blend into villages and towns, ready to ambush Naoe and Yasuke with concealed weapons. Furthermore, if Naoe or Yasuke send scouts ahead, the spymaster will immediately reinforce those areas, making stealth nearly impossible. The samurai, while alive, will deploy seasoned soldiers to patrol roads and set up roadblocks, hindering travel. And the shinobi will use hidden ambushes – employing smoke bombs, poisoned blades, and traps – to ensure Naoe and Yasuke can’t avoid detection by using backroads or seeking cover in the wilds.

The game’s enemies are built around challenging Naoe’s core abilities – stealth, combat, and parkour – and, by extension, Yasuke’s. As Naoe, when you’re sneaking around and leaping across rooftops, you need to watch out for enemies below who might be setting traps for when you come down to blend into the crowds. And when playing as Yasuke, be careful around the same bushes you’d use for cover as Naoe, and be prepared for a fight when passing under trees or ledges where Naoe might normally perform an aerial takedown.

While it doesn’t quite recapture the intense thrill of the old Assassin’s Creed player-versus-player battles, this system gets remarkably close. The constant switching between hunter and hunted creates some genuinely tense and exciting moments in the game. What makes it even better is that your actions have a clear and lasting impact – eliminating a samurai, for example, makes traveling the roads much safer, and taking out a shinobi stops her agents from ambushing you. This not only makes the island safer for the people living there, but also noticeably improves your own gameplay experience. It’s a fantastic system that would have greatly enhanced the main story, so it’s disappointing it’s limited to this smaller piece of content.

Unfortunately, most of the boss battles against the Templar and her leaders aren’t very engaging, with one exception. Two of them are simple one-on-one fights – one where you *must* play as Yasuke, and another where it’s strongly suggested. These fights feel repetitive, especially since you’ve already faced similar enemies many times in the main game. They’re even more drawn-out now because Yasuke’s opponents have attacks that are hard to block and a lot of health. You end up spending a lot of time just dodging, getting in a few hits, and repeating that process for nearly ten minutes – and that’s on the Normal difficulty setting!

The fight against the spymaster is somewhat unique, requiring Naoe to go undercover and gather information to outsmart him. However, it’s surprisingly simple. It’s notable because even newer Assassin’s Creed games haven’t matched how well 2012’s Liberation used disguises in its missions.

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The fight against the shinobi is particularly well-done. Naoe faces an opponent who is equally skilled, in a murky swamp environment. This enemy taunts Naoe and attacks with a rifle. As Naoe, you can use your senses to roughly pinpoint the enemy’s location when she speaks, and deliberately triggering her traps can mislead her into firing at a false position, potentially revealing where she’s hiding. The arena is filled with distractions like statues and traps, along with platforms and bushes for both fighters to use. You need to figure out where the enemy is, sneak up on her undetected, and deliver a fatal blow. This process repeats as she uses smoke bombs to escape. It’s the best part of the DLC and represents Assassin’s Creed’s most successful attempt at a stealth-based boss fight.

Naoe gains a new weapon in this DLC: the bo staff. It offers three fighting styles – a balanced stance for standard attacks, a low stance for sweeping attacks that can knock enemies off balance, and a high stance for fast, precise strikes that can interrupt enemy moves. While it doesn’t drastically change the combat, the bo staff is incredibly enjoyable to use – there’s just something satisfying about defeating enemies with a few well-timed hits. It’s quickly become my favorite weapon in Shadows for that reason. Yasuke, however, doesn’t receive any new abilities and feels even more like a supporting character in Claws of Awaji than he did in the main game.

This downloadable content further convinces me that the story should have always focused solely on Naoe. This is especially true considering the writing of the two new key characters: Naoe’s mother and the Templar who held her captive. It’s surprisingly flat and disappointing how little Naoe and her mother actually talk to each other. They barely exchange words, and when they do, Naoe doesn’t address the fact that her mother’s commitment to the Assassin’s Brotherhood indirectly led to her decade-long imprisonment, making her believe she was utterly abandoned after her father’s death. Her mother shows no remorse for missing her husband’s death and only attempts to reconnect with Naoe in the DLC’s final moments. Naoe spends the ending processing the revelation that her mother is still alive, but when they finally meet, their conversation feels strangely casual, like two old friends catching up. And she doesn’t even acknowledge the Templar who held her mother captive for so long that everyone presumed she was dead.

The story feels strange until you realize it constantly considers the possibility that players will be controlling Yasuke more than Naoe. Because of this, Naoe’s story conclusion feels rushed and lacks emotional impact, ensuring both the samurai and shinobi experiences feel similar. While the ending of ‘Claws of Awaji’ is more definitive than ‘Shadows,’ it still feels disappointing because it doesn’t deliver on the promise of Naoe’s storyline cliffhanger.

Claws of Awaji is a bit of a mixed bag, but overall I’d recommend it. This downloadable content finally finishes the story threads left over from the main game, and cleverly flips the gameplay – you’re now the one being hunted instead of doing the hunting. While Yasuke’s character still isn’t great and unfortunately weakens the emotional impact of Naoe’s story, Naoe’s journey as a shinobi remains one of the best parts of the Assassin’s Creed series.

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2025-09-17 21:41