I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed titles since the first Assassin’s Creed game came out in 2007. Like most fans, I eagerly voiced my desire for an Assassin’s Creed game based in Japan.

After so many years of seeing the franchise have its ups and downs, it almost felt like we may never see a title based in Japan. It’s been 18 years waiting for this game and since then we have received titles like Ghost of Tsushima who did it so well. Can AC: Shadows really hold up to the expectations we’ve placed on it?

Story

Assassin’s Creed Shadows follows the story of Naoe and Yasuke. Without spoilers, they are both on their own path of vengeance. They both struggle in their own ways dealing with the weight of revenge vs vengeance.

This is important to point out because there is an option before you start the fame to make decisions or play in canon mode where you make none of the choices in dialogue. If you asked me a year ago, I would have said go canon, on fact, I was thrilled to see the option there. Luckily I didn’t choose it.

Time and time again the morality behind each Naoe and Yasuke’s actions are tested. Having a choice to choose what kind of Naoe and Yasuke you want to see is important to players preference.

I’m personally the kind of person who wants to go with vengeance. “Kill the damn Joker already Batman!”. But the game offered so many varying situations that I found myself sparing people more than I thought.

The main goal of the game is to assassinate all members of the Shinbakufu. Those familiar with the franchise will find the screenshot bellow similar to that of what they saw in Odyssey. Side quests will also provide smaller circles of assassination targets.

Each target comes with its own story, side quests, and locations. If you wanted to do everything surrounding each target, that could be worth more than 4 hours of content. Mainlining the quests would take a little of a couple of hours for each target.

While the story didn’t necessarily do anything revolutionary, it provided a great variety of different stories that held my interest. Some I loved more than others, while some struggled to hold my interest.

Narratively speaking, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is one of my favorite stories in the franchise along with Yasuke being one my my new favorites up with Ezio from Assassin’s Creed 2.

Yasuke’s story was well fleshed out and explored so many different angles. His character is a testament to everything the Creed stands for. The polar opposite of Eivor from AC Valhalla.

The love and care for this franchise shines through in Yasuke’s gameplay. He is a samurai, NOT an assassin. When he does a leap of faith, he jumps like a normal human being and flops out of the haybale complaining about the toll that took on his back.

Climbing buildings is not his specialty, he can do it, but slowly. If you find yourself trying to walk a tight rope as him, the rope will snap from his weight and he will fall. Assassinations aren’t a thing with him, there is only brutal executions that make the enemy fear him. Which is a great segue in to his combat.

Combat

You can equip 5 different weapons, a Teppo, Bow, Long Katanna, Pike, and Club. Each with their own skill tree. With both characters you can easily reassign skill points at no cost so you can explore all weapons.

Yasuke is unlocked towards the end of the first act and you realize very quickly how much of a tank he is. Mowing down your enemies through castles will become your new favorite hobby.

As for Naoe, she is your standard Assassin. She is everything you come to expect from playing an Assassin’s Creed game. Good at parkour, stealth, and using eagle vision to get a lay of the land.

Naoe has 3 types of weapons, Katana, Twin Blades, and Kusarigama. Each offer their own skill trees with perks that improve upon the stealth gameplay. Such as closing a distance with your kusarigama to perform an assassination.

Naoe was my favorite to play as, she is very versatile. However, challenging to play when you get caught. Two enemies can feel like fighting 10 with Yasuke.

The combat in the game goes deeper than a simple hack and slash. You will need to dodge unblockable attacks, parry quick strikes, use every tool at your disposal, and know when you use a heavy attack for a finisher.

With both character I continuously felt challenged as I leveled up. With previous titles, it could feel a little repetitive. I constantly felt that there was new ways to explore combat scenarios where it felt fresh even after my almost 100 hours with the game.

My biggest nit pick of the combat was that I simply wish there was more finishers and execution animations.

Activities

The map in Assassin’s creed Shadows is comparable to Assassin’s Creed Origins in size. There is a vast amount of things to do in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

You can visit temples and shrines to find scrolls that increase your stats, horse archery challenges to unlock more horses, explore secret caves for loot, and navigate your way through Hidden Trails to find treasure.

There are also two activities called Kata (for Yasuke) and Kuji-kiri (for Naoe). Kuji-kiri is an activity where you will need to use your rhythm skills to meditate and Kata is where you will follow timed prompts. Both activities go towards unlocking more knowledge points. It is worth noting that these activities become increasingly difficult and can be set to auto complete upon arrival of their locations.

Everything I just listed is under an orange icon that unlocks knowledge points along with other things. Knowledge points are not the same as skill points. Their are 6 ranks to unlock if you want to unlock most of the skill tree skills. Those skills will then need to be purchased with skill points, but some activities will unlock both. So don’t be overwhelmed by that factor.

After you reach rank 6, you can then upgrade your stats the more you upgrade your knowledge. Reaching rank 6 is not an overwhelming task and is ultimately the thing you want to achieve to unlock all the skills you want.

Naoe’s skill tree features 3 skill trees for her weapons along with 3 other skill trees that feature assassin, shinobi, and tools. Tools upgrade her capacity and utilities used in combat and stealth. Assassin upgrades damage and skills for stealth players. Shinobi will unlock combat and stealth combat skills.

Yasuke’s skill tree features a skill tree for each of the 5 weapons he can hold and 1 for samurai. Samurai skill tree will unlock abillities that can buff any kind of weapon you choose to wield.

You can equip two skills to each character on top of one more skill from the samurai tree or the assassin and shinobi trees. Like I stated earlier in the review, you are able to re-stat your skill trees easily at no cost. So you can constantly be trying new loadouts.

Castles

One activity I have yet to mention, and is by far the best one, are castles. Castles will contain Samurai Daisho who you will need to locate and assassinate in order to collect the treasure on top of the tower at the center of the castle.

The loot you will obtain from exploring and completing the towers is by far the most rewarding thing you will do in the game. Any and all recourses you could possibly need is rewarded through this activity.

Most castles are surrounded by motes and guards. You will need to use your eagle vision to help you locate the Samurai Daisho and plan your route to a successful mission. This is where its open world dynamic can come in very useful. The way you approach these castles are almost limitless and you can complete them any way you see fit.

If you are feeling lazy and violent, switch over to Yasuke. Sprint to the gate bashing the doors down and start mowing through your enemy. The downside to this tactic is you won’t have eagle vision. So you will need to search every crack and crevice of this castle to find your targets.

The Brotherhood and Your Headquarters

Along your journey you will meet different characters that you can recruit in to your brotherhood. Calling upon them to distract your enemies in a variety of ways. By going in loud with a club or teppo to going in stealth with poison or hidden blade.

Each person you recruit will come with their own side quests and even romance options. These aren’t simple fetch quests. They have great stories with the chemistry to match. I found myself caring about these characters towards the end of the game.

The headquarters is unlocked early in the game. It houses your allies as well as horses. You will encounter recruits and allies that open shops in you base.

You can add buildings, scenery, and displays of your treasures you collect along the way.

Scouts are used for a multitude of things. Scouts can be used to gather resources, take down wanted status, and if you opted in for a less guided experience, you will need them to help you locate objectives.

Visuals and Art Direction

This game is absolutely stunning. I will be surprised if it isn’t nominated for best art direction at the end of the year. Its not just that its a technical marvel, but its style. When performing a finisher, it sends you in to a black and white style animation effect that gives you the feeling of watching a samurai movie.

While exploring the world, you will be able to automatically have your horse travel to your destination enabling you to just take in the sights. In fact, there are even activities such as painting art that you can display at your base.

Accessibility

While I can’t go in depth on details for people who need accessibility options, I think its important to highlight the options in this game. If you have read carefully up till now, (thanks for that by the way)you might have noticed you can turn off some pretty big things.

This game is a prime example of, “if you have a complaint, the solution is most likely in options.”. From the second you start this game you will be asked if you want a more guided experience, where you will be given clues as to where your objectives are. You will need to use scouts to help you located the objectives as well. You can simply turn this feature off and have a classic experience with the game.

Canon mode enables you to not have to make narrative decisions, auto-solve puzzles enables you to not have to do certain activities, and the HUD is completely customizable to your likings. My personal favorite is the ability to have instant kill on assassination instead of doing partial damage.

The difficulty is equally customizable as everything else in the game. Hate stealth? Drop it down to easy while having combat on hard if you still want a challenge.

You can also have immersive mode turned on where the game will be spoken in its original language. This game can be fully tailored to the way you want to play with the game.

Naoe and Yasuke ease of accessibly was phenomenal. My concern going in to this game was that it would be a whole process to switch characters. They make it incredibly easy to switch throughout the game. You finish a cutscene, fast travel, or about to make an important decision. You will be given a choice to switch characters each time you do one of these options.

Final Thoughts

Like I mentioned at the start of this review, its hard not to look at this game through the lens of a longtime fan who has requested this game for over a decade. Not only that, but Ghost of Tsushima did a very similar thing. In fact it did it so well, it made it hard to believe Assassin’s Creed Shadows could compare.

I am beyond happy to type this in confidence, that this game is everything I ever wanted from an Assassin’s Creed game based in Japan.

The number 1 thing you need to take in to consideration with this game, is that it is an Assassin’s Creed game. If you play this game looking for a revolutionary new experience, you won’t find it. You will find a game true to its roots. That is a good thing. I for one am glad they didn’t try to copy and paste what other developers are doing.

Any nit pick or complaint I’ve had in that past titles has been fully fleshed out in this game. It feels like the development team behind this game fully loved and appreciated this franchise for what it is. That shines through in nearly every aspect of the game.

Between its open world design, narrative options, variety of activities, challenge and combat accessibilities. You will find that this experience is whatever you want that experience to be, making it one of the best titles in the entire franchise.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows was reviewed on Xbox series X/S and Xbox Cloud Gaming. The game released March 20th, 2025 and is available on Xbox Series X/S, Playstation 5, and PC.