Assassin's Creed Shadows review
Alongside its tea ceremonies, rangu poetry and Sumi-e ink drawing, Assassin’s Creed Shadows makes several mentions of the Sakura festival, Japan’s annual cherry blossom celebration. The brief appearance of falling petals each year, lasting just a week or two, is seen as a symbol for the fleeting nature of beauty and life itself – the idea being, especially back during feudal times, that you should enjoy the moment while it lasts. You might survive the invasion of one warring daimyo, but another is likely not too far behind.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows reviewDeveloper: UbisoftPublisher: UbisoftPlatform: Played on PC, Xbox Series XAvailability: Out 20th March on PC (Steam), PS5 and Xbox Series X/S
Assassin’s Creed Shadows has that same sense of being present in one of its biggest changes to the series’ gameplay – the new way you explore and uncover its world. Shadows’ version of Japan is perhaps Ubisoft’s most spectacular open world to date, and is designed to be explored in a more organic fashion. Missions typically no longer direct you by default to a specific location, and Ubisoft has grounded your eagle drone. Instead, you’re provided with clues, able to narrow your search by pinging your map using scouts, and then left to use Shadows’ new Observe mechanic – essentially Eagle Vision, but for quests and treasure. All this, while Shadows also constantly tries to tempt you slightly off-course – to investigate something else you might find along the way, or watch something happening in the game’s world you may not see twice.
Simultaneously, Shadows itself is anything but a fleeting beauty. It is another vast and generous adventure from the talented Quebec team that led the development of the Ancient Greece-set Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and, similar to that game’s trio of major plotlines, Shadows takes dozens of hours to fully reveal the shape of everything it has on offer. Its dual protagonists, for example, each of which have their own backstory and motivations, are introduced independently and in their own time. After that, and after a lot of stomping around Japan, it isn’t until near the very end of Shadows’ core story – a good deal north of 50 hours – that both characters’ own personal journeys come to separate climaxes, and fresh plot threads emerge.
Shadows begins with a strong and near-exclusive focus on Naoe, a young woman from the rebel province of Iga whose father – part of the Ikko-ikki uprising – tries to defend their home against the invading daimyo Oda Nobunaga. Naoe’s story, like much of Shadows, is deeply entrenched in Japan’s real-life history – meaning major spoilers lurk for everyone on Wikipedia. And while there’s still plenty here that’s woven on top of actual events – Naoe joins her father wielding an Assassin’s Hidden Blade inherited from her mother! – it’s notable how straight Shadows typically treats its historical backdrop overall. Gone are the days of jokey in-universe lore tabs from Shaun Hastings, or the mythological bosses that fitted Odyssey’s ancient world. What mentions there are of the Assassins are, for the vast majority of the game, kept to interactions with a handful of relics, or whispers of an organisation from a far-off land.
