Assassin's Creed Shadows has one trick up its sleeve to set it apart from Ghost of Tsushima

Before we could start the demo, we were shown a little video message from the developers. In the video, it was mentioned that Feudal Japan has long been one of the most requested locations among fans of the Assassin’s Creed series.

The sword-wielding elephant in the room, however, is that Ubisoft was somewhat beaten to the punch on that idea by a studio called – fittingly enough – Sucker Punch.

In the summer of 2020, Sucker Punch released one of the great pandemic-era games. Ghost of Tsushima, set in Feudal Japan, boasted a beautiful open world and no shortage of action-packed assassinations. To some, it was an Assassin’s Creed game in all but name.

The shadow of Tsushima looms large over Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which will finally deliver AC fans with their Ubisoft-approved Feudal Japan Assassin’s Creed game this March (after a couple of delays for quality control purposes).

However, now that I’ve spent a few hours with AC Shadows, I’m pleased to report that it has one huge point of difference — one trick up the silky sleeve of its samurai robe — that sets it apart from Ghost of Tsushima (and, we assume, its upcoming sequel Ghost of Yotei).

To start with, sure, you might see similarities between the two games. You can’t see a gorgeous scene-setting subtitled cut-scene, stuffed with personal trauma, without thinking, 'Hey, wasn’t the Ghost of Tsushima guy motivated in a similar way?'

You can’t dash onto a fiery battlefield in a distinctly Japanese-looking village without thinking of similar sequences from Tsushima.

Nor can you ride on horseback past some eye-catching cherry blossom without thinking about that luscious open world environment that distracted you from COVID-19 back in the day. You might even miss the foxes that you followed back then.

But, thankfully, AC Shadows has something that Tsushima didn’t — it has two playable protagonists that approach the game completely differently. By the end of my preview session, I was thinking more about that than I was about Tsushima.

Shadows essentially has two prologues: the first one, boasting some serious Shogun vibes (one of the best TV shows of last year if you haven’t had the pleasure), introduces you to a powerful African warrior named Yasuke; the second prologue shows the (somewhat predictable) backstory of a stealthy assassin named Naoe.

What’s really impressive is that they don’t just feel like two different skins masking the same basic gameplay. Rather, they have their own unique strengths and weaknesses, and you can swap between them at will (as long as you’re not actively in combat).

Naoe is your classic Assassin’s Creed protagonist, which is fitting, because her backstory seems more connected to the overarching story of the Animus and the Creed and all that. (Speaking of the Animus, there's now a special Animus menu screen where you can swap between different AC games — pretty cool!)

When you’re playing as Naoe, you have far greater manoeuvrability — she has a grappling hook that makes climbing tall buildings easy, her combat is acrobatically pretty, and she’s well suited to sneaking in the shadows.

Yasuke, on the other hand, is a total tank. He towers over opponents, can handle bigger weapons, and he can even run point blanc through locked doors. (The animation for this is unintentionally funny, though — he barely has to break into a light jog in order to smash through solid oak.)

Different players will have different favourites between Naoe and Yasuke, but it feels like most of us will have to switch between them fairly regularly.

After all, neither one of them is perfect for every scenario. Naoe doesn’t fare amazingly in out-and-out combat, and your dodge/parry timing will need to be pretty good if you want to use her against a big group of goons.

On the other hand, Yasuke doesn’t have the grappling hook, so he can’t climb tall buildings as easily — this can be a problem if you’re looking to synchronise!

Also, I found this to be a very fun little detail: Yasuke, being larger and adorned with heavier armour, cannot sneak around on tightropes. If you try to shuffle him across a rope that connects two rooftops, the rope will snap and you’ll drop to the floor — sometimes landing straight into a combat scenario.

The duality of these characters presents the player with a different sort of challenge to Ghost of Tsushima and even the previous Assassin’s Creed games. You have to think about which character is best for which scenario, and which one is better suited to your own combat methods, and switch around accordingly.

One comparison that comes to mind is the brilliant Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which gave you the choice between Peter Parker and Miles Morales, each of which had different abilities and their own stories.

Our preview event for AC Shadows didn’t dwell too much on story details, beyond the initial prologue introductions for Yasuke and Naoe. We were skipped past the scene where they decide to team up, but we got to see glimpses of an interesting relationship between the two of them.

They definitely feel like a reluctant pairing working towards a shared goal (to bring down the creepy, mask-wearing baddies of the region), and it’ll be interesting to see where they end up. We didn’t catch any hint of a romantic connection, but hey, you never know.

In a similar way to Spider-Man 2, it does feel like AC Shadows could have been a co-op multiplayer game, with each player taking one of the main characters. Instead, you see them together in cut-scenes, and you can occasionally call on the other character to help you out in certain scenarios.

The AC Shadows map looks pretty large, but we’d hope it’s a little more contained than the daunting sprawl of Valhalla. In the preview, we saw our heroes working on a chain of interconnected quests to gather intel, locate targets, and bring about positive outcomes for the people you’re meant to be helping.

AC fans will be used to the fact that many of these scenarios can be approached with outright violence or sneaky stealth, with the added bonus here that you now have a specialist character for each of those options.

One cool feature is the fact that AC Shadows doesn’t want to make things too obvious for you – for large stretches of the game, this time around, you won’t just be blindly following a yellow marker on the map.

Instead, you’ll have a clue like ‘the target is in the east of this town’, and then you’ll have to manually find the right place, look around and identify them. This took a bit of getting used to, but feels like a positive move that will force you to appreciate the setting and play in a more tuned-in way.

Feudal Japan may have already been seen in a big AAA game, but it certainly feels like Assassin’s Creed Shadows has plenty of original ideas.

After the first couple of hours, we expect that you won’t be thinking about any other games.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches 20th March 2025 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Amazon Luna. You can order your copy here.

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