Assassin's Creed Shadows review: A balancing act that teeters toward brilliance

As AC fans have come to expect over the last few years, this is an open-world adventure game that loads you up with assassination targets and allows you to approach those killings however you like. If you’re into sneaking around on rooftops, Naoe is your best bet. But if you like brute force combat, Yasuke’s your man.

The game opens with a dramatic prologue that introduces you to both characters and the general gist of the story. Basically, all you need to know is that there’s a group of masked baddies that both of our heroes will eventually start hunting down.

Once you’re into the swing of things, Assassin’s Creed Shadows really sings. This game has a vastly engaging open world, some really strong combat, and a couple of cracking central performances from the Assassin’s Creed Shadows cast.

Masumi Tsunoda brings an amazing emotional range to the character of Naoe, balancing occasional moments of massive tragedy with enough levity to keep you invested in the character.

Tongayi Chirisa also has a balancing act on his hands with Yasuke, and he does marvellous work balancing the straight-faced stoicism of the character with lighter, sillier moments when appropriate.

Zooming out to look at the game as a whole, tonal balance isn’t always struck perfectly. You could argue that Yasuke didn’t need to be quite so comically bad at the stealthy stuff, with his wobbly movement sometimes verging on Charlie Chaplin levels of comedy.

This does pull you out of the action sometimes – there’s even a trophy for seeing what happens when Yasuke does his own bumbling buffoon version of the iconic 'leap of faith' moment, which literally pulls you out of the game with a notification popping up.

Another moment of tonal imbalance comes with the random playing of a modern rock song over a deathly serious Naoe flashback.

Also, every now and then, the game remembers fleetingly that it wants to look like a samurai movie, giving the overall game a lack of consistency in the way that cut-scenes are shot.

Once every few hours, a scene will be directed with extreme close-ups on the eyes, for example – this looks cool in the moment, but it also feels a bit jarring when so many scenes are staged in a less showy, less intrusive manner.

Pacing is another issue. After attending a preview event that featured both Naoe and Yasuke from the off, I was surprised to learn that – after the prologue – it can take up to 8.5 hours to unlock Yasuke.

You need to complete Naoe’s first two assassinations, and then the next main story mission after that, to get your second playable character.

There are also points when the pacing seems to be overly punishing, forcing you to assassinate a bunch of side characters before you can move onto the next main kill.

These annoyances occur very rarely, it’s worth saying. For the most part, there’s nothing but joy to be had as you explore Ubisoft’s version of Feudal Japan and gradually uncover all of the wonders that it has in store.

This is an open world that really pulls you in. You know an open-world game has really succeeded when you find yourself organically exploring and willingly jumping into side activities, rather than rushing to your next objective marker.

In fact, the game goes to great lengths to stop you from chasing an objective marker around. Rather than simply pointing you towards your next target, the game opts to give you clues like 'they’re in the west of this village', 'they were seen with an umbrella', and so on.

This forces you to look at the world with your own eyes, to build an understanding of the geography around you, and to immerse yourself fully in the gameplay.

You can recruit scouts and send them ahead of you, too, so you don’t have to go in completely blind to each area.

The side activities in the open world are nicely varied. You can meditate to unlock flashbacks, you can take on powerful enemies, you can search for powerful loot, you can partake in some light platforming, or you can recruit new people for your base.

That’s right, the game has a base-building system! You can recruit your own forge-master, for example, and build them somewhere to work from in your HQ.

You can pop back here between missions and design it however you like (as long as you have the right resources, of course). This is a fun distraction with some impressive depth to it.

As for the core action gameplay, we found it to be tailored pretty much perfectly. Playing on normal difficulty, there was some challenge involved if we wanted to stay out of sight. The game will forgive some little errors, but you do need to use your noggin.

We didn’t get stuck on any single fight for too long, but there was an element of challenge to the bigger confrontations. Dodging is your friend, and a little more forgiving than the parrying, in our experience.

All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed our time with Assassin’s Creed Shadows and we’d recommend it to any fan of the franchise, or fans of the TV show Shōgun, or general Japanese culture fans, or fans of open-world action games in general.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a balancing act that teeters towards brilliance, despite the occasional wobble.

Assassin's Creed Shadows launches 20th March for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. We reviewed on PS5. You can order your copy now.

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