Ubisoft's vision of feudal Japan in Assassin's Creed Shadows is as immersive as it is addictive.
Ubisoft’s latest open-world game needs to be a triumph, at least by its own shaky standards. Its last three blockbuster open-world titles – Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Skull & Bones, and Star Wars Outlaws – were all varying degrees of disappointing by critical and financial metrics, so a lot is on the line for Assassin’s Creed Shadows to succeed. To its credit, Ubisoft seems to have recognised this fact, having delayed the game from 2024 into 2025 to give it more time in the oven.
Thankfully, that delay seems to have paid off. Assassin’s Creed Shadows sees Ubisoft keen on reminding players that it used to be on top of the open-world genre for a reason; the game’s breathtaking environments, snappy gameplay, and mass of activities kept me hooked for tens of hours, even after I had completed the main campaign. While Naoe and Yasuke’s story might take time to grow on players, it’s the world that Ubisoft has crafted for this game that truly steals the show.
Naoe and Yasuke in feudal Japan, K-I-L-L-I-N-G
Assassin’s Creed Shadows sees Ubisoft finally exorcise the franchise of its floundering modern-day sci-fi storyline, opting to lock the overarching plot behind its new Animus Hub. This means that Assassin’s Creed has finally completed its shift towards becoming a purely historical franchise, albeit featuring heavily dressed-up versions of real-world events and people, and thus allowing players to simply dive into what these games have always done best: providing a playable snapshot of a land lost to time.
Shadows is set in feudal Japan, roughly around the late 1500s, during a time of rapid change for the country. The Sengoku period – a bloody time marked by civil wars and tumultuous politics – is nearing its end, and foreigners like the Portuguese and Jesuits are looking to bring overseas advancements to Japan with new technology, religions, and trading opportunities. There’s beauty and blood as far as the eye can see, with war and infighting staining the land's blooming cities and culture.
Amid this chaotic backdrop, you’ll play as dual protagonists Naoe and Yasuke, who each enter this story from very different places. Yasuke is an African samurai who was taken under the wing of Daimyo Oda Nobunaga after the latter picked him out from a group of visiting Jesuits. Naoe is a shinobi, hellbent on revenge against a mysterious clan of evildoers who committed a cruel atrocity in her hometown. While the game eventually allows you to freely swap between both characters, it should be noted that I was only able to do so a solid seven hours into the game – after rushing through a few story missions, no less. Calling it a slow start would be an understatement.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ main campaign diverts a little from the typical Ubisoft formula by giving players multiple objectives to pursue in order to progress in the main story – but it’s a formula nonetheless, and it certainly feels as much after the first 20 hours or so of gameplay. Each story mission is typically divided into three parts, wherein you collect various allies by solving problems for them, and then go storm a castle together as the climax. Rinse and repeat for a few story acts, and you’ve got your main campaign. Progression is tied to the player's level, so there is a linear path to take here despite the illusion of choice.
Naoe and Yasuke themselves are compelling enough protagonists. The bond they share is the story’s main saving grace. Watching them shoot the breeze over drinks, unfailingly show up for one another in their lowest moments, and tag-team Japan’s most notorious evildoers is genuinely heartwarming, even if it does feel like their fellowship is set in stone a little too quickly to be believable. The game’s facial animation is a bit of a sore spot here, too. At times, it looks perfectly fine and in line with the game’s more moving cinematics. During certain sidequests however, its robotic stiffness and poor lip sync make these characters look an entire generation behind modern RPGs.
About all the pre-launch controversy
Much controversy has been stirred up over Yasuke’s inclusion in this story, the most frequent topic of conversation being this game's lack of Japanese representation, seeing as Yasuke is a black samurai and Naoe is a female shinobi. However, the game does not shy away from Yasuke’s fish out of water-like presence in the story. The foreigner, who was only reluctantly let go by Jesuits who kept him in their service, only finds freedom in servitude to Oda Nobunaga due to the colour of his skin. He rises to the top of imperial ranks arguably by chance, despite his strength and stature making him more than worthy.
Naoe is arguably the main protagonist of this story, however; the campaign is driven by her thirst for revenge over a clan of mysterious warriors. Yasuke can come off as a deuteragonist because of this, lacking the agency to push this story’s events forward by himself. Granted, players can side with Yasuke when making (often inconsequential) story decisions, but this is Naoe’s story first and foremost. That should please anyone looking for Japanese representation, unless there's a more insidious reason behind all this controversy. There couldn't be, right…?
Naoe taking centre stage might not diminish the story on its own, but it’s safe to say that between Ghost of Tsushima and Shadows, the games industry might have lost sight of the many ways there are to tell a Japanese period drama without resorting to revenge tropes as a crutch. After each key assassination, we see Naoe and Yasuke reflect on what it means to save a country by robbing it of human lives. However, their debates hardly have time to hit home, being short and shallow as they are, because the ultimate choice to spare or end lives is left to the game, rather than the player.
This game’s weakest point narratively, by an absolute country mile, is its incredibly inconsistent voice acting. I can only speak for the game’s English language cast here, but it has been a long time since I have played a game with such peaks and valleys of voice performance. Yasuke is brought to life with charm and vigour, in a performance that is bound to win over naysayers of his very inclusion in the story. This is not to say that Naoe is lacking in these qualities, only that she does not convey them with nearly as much nuance. The shinobi is given plenty of emotionally heavy material with which to pull at the player’s heartstrings, but her delivery falls flat every time, robbing key scenes in the story of their full impact.
Her struggle to emote extends to the rest of the game’s cast, as well. Some of these actors furnish the story with compelling and memorable performances, while others can bring it to a juddering halt with unconvincing portrayals of side characters, random NPCs encountered on the streets, and so on. That being said, the writing often does not help here – even Mackenyu (One Piece) fails to stand out, when he’s relegated to playing one of the worst male love interests I have encountered in recent gaming history.
Whipping out the Hidden Blade
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s obstinacy in turning Viking warriors into stealthy assassins made one thing clear as day: this franchise is having an identity crisis. The franchise has bent over backwards to make their protagonists wield Hidden Blades in total defiance of the time period, and it’s beginning to feel like Ubisoft can’t keep having their cake and eating it too. In feudal Japan, two combat fantasies present themselves – either players can take on the role of a stealthy shinobi, or a fierce samurai warrior.
Instead of stretching a single character beyond the point of believability to fill both roles, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has finally done the obvious thing and introduced dual protagonists. Both Naoe and Yasuke offer distinct playstyles, cosmetics, and gear of their own – as well as individual storylines to pursue in the game’s mess of story quests and side activities. Naoe adeptly fulfills the shinobi fantasy, and feels like a throwback to early-era gameplay for this franchise. You can scamper up tall pagodas and commit stealthy assassinations in broad daylight – but you won’t be able to take on a samurai army by yourself.
Yasuke, on the other hand, is more than capable of fending off legions of samurai on his lonesome. He feels like an absolute tank in battle, wielding lengthy naginatas and chunky kanabos to crush enemies like blood bags in the heat of battle – but he’s hilariously awful at parkour and stealth assassinations. Thankfully, both characters aren’t as boxed in as they sound – Yasuke can stealth through an enemy base, and Naoe has plenty of weaponry (from kusarigamas to tantos) to fight with, but it would be wise to play to their true strengths nonetheless.
This is the most tuned in I’ve been to an Assassin’s Creed game in a while. There’s just something about stealthily looting entire imperial castles for gear and upgrade materials that scratches that open-world itch in my brain to satisfaction. Yes, Ubisoft is playing with a time-honoured formula of enemy encampments and throwaway gear systems here, but this is still the most fun I’ve had with it since Far Cry 3. Swapping between Naoe and Yasuke keeps things feeling fresh, depending on my inclination for stealth or all-out combat, and despite the absurdly dumb enemy AI, I found great joy in picking these bases apart on repeat.
It’s cheaper than a tour package
I played this game on the PlayStation 5 on the Balanced graphical setting for the most part, trading in graphical improvements like ray tracing for 60fps gameplay. After a string of broken releases (see Skull & Bones and Star Wars Outlaws), I’m pleased to report that the game’s recent delay seems to have done it some good. I ran into one random crash during my playthrough that did not result in any lost progress, but the most egregious bugs I had were audio-related – with random audio FX, like sliding down gravel, or specific song samples being played ad infinitum unless I reloaded a save.
Despite this, Assassin’s Creed Shadows makes a strong argument for being Ubisoft’s most beautiful game yet. Ubisoft’s seasonal system makes it so that feudal Japan shines brilliantly as a setting here, allowing Naoe and Yasuke to tour the country’s many prefectures in blankets of snow, rain, or cherry blossoms. From Osaka Castle to Todaiji Temple, iconic Japanese landmarks have been brought to life in intricate detail – with the entirety of Japan compressed into a rather large map, where these sights take as much time to travel to by a horse as the bullet train.
The world Ubisoft has crafted for this game is undeniably its strongest point. Even when the story failed to compel me into pursuing Naoe and Yasuke’s next big adventure, and the side activities bogged me down with repetitive prayer quests and hiking trails, simply touring feudal Japan gave me all the dopamine I needed to keep going. Animals like deer, swans, and monkeys roam around the country’s wilderness, and townsfolk move about their up-and-coming cities in busy reverie. Groups of samurai fight back against rebellions in the streets, and swathes of land reduced to ashes and rubble are scoured by peasants. This world feels as alive as it is on the verge of great change, struggling to recover from one war before it is thrown into the next – a rollercoaster of blood and strife quickly veering off the rails.
Shadows feels like a game that the Assassin’s Creed team has wanted to make for a very long time, and it shows. It feels more passionately put-together than recent titles in the franchise, flourished with detail to keep players immersed in its environmental storytelling. The sidequests players run through are some of this series’ best, as well. Diving into multi-part questlines allows the player to learn more about new allies and ultimately recruit them, but even the short one-off quests can play on Yasuke and Naoe’s sibling-like bond to great effect.
Verdict
Assassin’s Creed Shadows sees Ubisoft once again flex its open-world prowess, showing that even after a string of recent misses and controversies, it still has the chops to craft a breathtaking open-world journey worth losing oneself in. The main campaign does have its shortcomings – namely dated facial animation, forgettable characters, and poor voice acting. However, Naoe and Yasuke make compelling protagonists in a story that can often seem overly reliant on revenge tropes, and their playful bond makes this a journey worth seeing through.
It’s hard to deny the minuteness of detail with which Ubisoft has approached recreating a version of Japan now lost to time. The game’s gorgeous environments, stealthy sandboxes, and host of miscellaneous activities make it easy for players to get lost in its stunning open world. There's plenty of historical detail stowed away in the codex to make this a makeshift historical tour too, for fans of this setting.
Assassin’s Creed isn’t a franchise that typically hooks me like this – aside from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, to which I credit my obsession with Greek mythology – but Shadows feels like a marked step forward for the franchise in almost every aspect. The game’s myriad of systems may not be perfect, but they interlock just right so that the player feels motivated to keep going, keep collecting new gear, and keep ticking off new quests; all in order to carve out a path for themselves in this rich world. That’s Open World 101, and it’s something that Ubisoft has painstakingly relearned to make Assassin’s Creed Shadows great.
Assassin's Creed Shadows launches on 20 March, 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Mac, iPad, and PC. We received a copy of the game for this review.
