The Assassin’s Creed series has been an interesting experiment in triple-A game development edging. We’ve had AC games for nearly twenty years, and for nearly all of that time, there has been an obvious premise for a sequel, a natural progression that fans have demanded- that the concept of the series basically demands. And yet they have steadfastly refused to deliver it, all the while dropping in little hints that yes, they know what we’re all thinking, no, they aren’t gonna do it right now. With Assassin’s Creed Shadows, they’re finally doing it. Why? What made this the moment for the payoff?
It has been sixteen years since the release of Assassin’s Creed 2. I was one of the people who thought AC1 was good and played it to completion, but I understand why the popular opinion was that it was underbaked and too repetitive. I certainly enjoyed 2 at the time, and was pleased that the second chance the series was given caught people’s imagination, giving the franchise a chance at life. People asked the natural question: we did Damascus and Jerusalem, then Florence and Venice… when are we doing Osaka and Kyoto? If you’re making a series about various stealth agents throughout history, ninja are a no-brainer, right?
I admire the decision to ignore the obvious answer- to take the artistically satisfying hard road over the easy but unimaginative one. Over the next decade and a half, Ubisoft showed us the assassins of Victorian England, Ancient Greece, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the French and Indian War, pirates of the Atlantic Ocean and also the South China Sea, Baghdad, Rome, Scandinavia, Constantinople, Pakistan, Moscow… and all the while, little teases. Oh, this artifact? It’s from Japan. Wild shit going on over there!
Whatever inspired Ubisoft to end a decade and a half of teasing, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is here now to show us how kunai synergize with the series’s iconic hidden blade. And if they’re gonna do it, they’re gonna pull out all the stops. Nobunaga! Tea ceremonies! Katana! Your choice of style: ninja or samurai! And let me tell you something about myself: I am not immune to propaganda! After games like Ninja Gaiden, Samurai Shodown, Tenchu, and a lifetime of anime, the trappings of feudal Japan are exciting to me! I pop off for the sword-drawing art of iaijutsu. I love the twirl of a kusarigama’s weighted chain. I am simply here for this setting and these trappings.
And to be clear, I haven’t had a bad time. (That’s how positive reviews begin, right?) First and foremost, the game is gorgeous. The Japanese architecture of the temples, castles, and other buildings of the wealthy and powerful are striking, as are the rice paddies of Iga and its humble farming houses. Crowded settlements like the harbor town of Sakai are… less attractive, but that’s deliberate and effective- the majesty of Osaka Castle hits that much harder when you’ve seen the glamourless living conditions of the urban peasants most directly harmed by the samurai.
Yet all of this rightly takes a backseat to the beauty of Shadows’s depiction of nature. I’m only partially joking when I wonder if the Japan National Tourism Organization reached out to the dev team with reference materials and suggestions. I might be overthinking it, though- the last major Assassin’s Creed game was Valhalla, largely set in England, and after years of depicting Mudhole Kingdom I’m sure any artist would kill to bust out the greens, pinks, and oranges of autumn in Japan.
A part of me wants to object that it’s overly picturesque, but the rest of me interjects with “what does that even mean, do you just hate nice things?” To object to trees of scarlet, viridian, amber and sunset leaves cascading over a mountainside like patches on a quilt is just being impossible to please. The water is gorgeously rendered, from shallow streams to cascading waterfalls and even surprisingly striking rainstorms. Summer in Shadows is full of light, the very forests seeming aglow with life, while winter presents a calm, cruel beauty of unrelenting ice and snow. And stone… well, usually rocks and their ilk seem like an area for artists to save some polys and effort, but the creek beds and rock walls of Shadows have a beauty I’ve not seen games successfully emulate before.
I’m less enthusiastic about the writing, though I wouldn’t call it a weakness necessarily. As stated, I was there at day one with this series, when AC1 ended with the reveal of a sinister hologram projector, and 2 had protagonist Ezio fistfight the Pope and his sci-fi laser staff. I don’t come to the series for good storytelling. There may be isolated moments of enjoyable or even good writing, but by-and-large I expect and am content with “serviceable.” If it’s not pissing me off, it’s acceptable.
The story of kunoichi Naoe and samurai Yasuke meet this (low) bar, and so Shadows gets a pass from me. Sure, it’s the series formula to a T- young hothead in pursuit of revenge is deceived by a Templar into killing the wrong person, then decides to take down the whole Templar organization in their area. But the formula works, and the game is aware of how predictable it’s being: it knows you’ll see twists coming, and doesn’t belabor them.
Two points of this feudal story are of particular interest to me. The first is the use of historical titan Oda Nobunaga; he of the famed Ambition, would-be unifier of Japan. He’s a fascinating figure whom no one is neutral on- you’ll see him portrayed as a tyrant, a literal demon, a misunderstood visionary, a fatally flawed idealist, and a thousand other perspectives. Assassin’s Creed Shadows presents a genuinely interesting perspective of him as a bastion of self-confidence with doubts and regrets gaining on him from behind, but kills him off near the end of our playtime for this section. The death is understandable, but regrettable given how much more could have been said.
The other element is that which sent white supremacists across America into a mouth-foaming rage: Yasuke, second main character of the game and real historical figure, black samurai in service to Nobunaga. Frustratingly little is written about the man’s life (because of racism), but on the plus side, that gives the game plenty of canvas to draw on (not that they ever let historical fact get in the way of their story- nor should they). He’s barely been in the game thus far, but that is clearly about to change- and I do think the scenes he’s had have been some of the best in the game. Apparently he’s one of the only people who knows what an Assassin is? Even the game’s playable assassin doesn’t know, and he does? Fascinating.
Much less deserving of grace is the continuing Animus/Abstergo near future storyline, which had its “shit or get off the plot” moment a staggering thirteen years ago, and whose continued presence has been irritating at best ever since. That presence is kept fairly minimal, at least thus far, but tying it into their faux battle pass microtransaction bullshit does not positively influence my opinion. Free your mind from propaganda with a $4.99 legendary katana, comrade!
Graphics and art design are a lovely treat, but not a meal, and going to Assassin’s Creed for the story is like going to a sushi bar for a cheeseburger. Let’s talk about this restaurant’s specialties, then: movement, exploration, and most crucially to me, combat.
Though I’ve poked at series entries here and there, I haven’t really gotten into an Assassin’s Creed game since Black Flag in 2013. As such, some of my observations about the nuances of movement might be outdated. For the most part, it’s classic AC– separate buttons for freerun up and freerun down, that when held allow for automatic mantling, climbing, jumping, and dropping. The architecture of the area does complicate things: it may have been a simple task to climb a multi-story building in Ancient Greece, but classic Japanese buildings love their tiered roofs with long overhangs. Attempts to climb straight up on many buildings are limited by a literal ceiling. To remedy this, ninja Naoe is given a grappling hook with which to haul herself up, and swing across gaps.
I’ll be honest: the grappling hook is a bit too manual for my taste. With the ridiculous speed and fluidity of movement iconic to the series, the clumsy clambering up a rope feels less satisfying. The game can also be strangely fussy about what it will and won’t let you grapple to, or from what angles and distances it’ll allow it. I’ve had more than my share of stealth sequences go wrong because I really thought I should be able to grapple to the next roof, and the game did not agree. I also find myself wishing for a simple jump button: while the freerun button is certainly useful, sometimes the game doesn’t want to offer you a jump that would be both easy and very useful. All in all, the movement mechanics are ok but don’t fully rise to the new challenges this game’s level design introduces.
One of the crazy things about our society is, if I threw rocks at the design lead for exploration in AC Shadows, I am the one who would get in trouble. …Kidding, please do not harass developers, but that does accurately represent my frustration with this game’s navigation. The series has experimented in the past with trying to emphasize exploration by offering more vague directions, and now it’s all in on that approach. Instead of an objective marker, the game offers a vague “it’s north of X, east of Y, in region Z” and asks you to figure it out yourself. This part is actually fine- sometimes it takes a bit longer than it should to find the general area, but I don’t mind being asked to actually read a map.
The problem comes when you arrive in the target area, and the game gives you fuck all. It isn’t always a problem: when you’re told to find a group of warrior monks camped under a waterfall, there aren’t that many waterfalls in the area, and only one camp. On the other hand, when you’re given the target area of five city blocks and simply told to “find a shop,” it inspires a near-homicidal rage. I have found lots of shops, game. Does this one have any distinguishing characteristics? Oh, and lest you think the guidance will kick in, I ultimately discovered I’d walked within yards of the correct shop a half-dozen times with no indication from the game.
There are two courses available to you at this point. The first is to use scouts to narrow down the location: a surprisingly limited resource that only replenishes when the season changes, and is also used to collect resources. Do you want to build a new forge at your base, or do you want one (1) use of Google Maps? Better choose, asshole! It is of course less specific or helpful than Maps, so that comparison is in fact too generous, but belaboring the point further would only frustrate us both. The other option is to go into settings and turn on some damn objective markers, which the game protests firmly is not the “intended way to play.” Look, game. After the third time I got to a mission area and walked in circles for 20 minutes trying to get ANYTHING to trigger, I stopped giving a damn about how you “intended” me to explore.
The most important of these systems to me is combat. I’m an action gamer first and foremost, and I love a good stealth kill or swordfight. And If we’re being totally honest here, I love a bad swordfight too. I spent an unreasonable amount of time in Assassin’s Creed 1 deliberately getting spotted by guards so I could play its distinctly mid combat. I would be deeply embarrassed if anyone figured out just how much of Middle Earth: Shadow of War I played because I liked getting in random swordfights. When you say “bad swordfight,” you’re grading on a curve- you’re grading relative to other swordfights. All swordfights are good, so we can only determine their quality by comparing them to each other.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows’s swordfights are good… because they’re swordfights. Relative to others of their ilk? They’re fine. You have a weak and strong attack, you can dodge, block and parry, you have some skills available on cooldown. None of these options feel amazing to use- “workmanlike” is the term I’d use. What’s more, Naoe’s toolkit is deliberately limited to give her fewer options in a direct fight, and a boring and uninspired skill tree doesn’t help spice things up. Yasuke looks to have more options, but we haven’t gotten much of him, and his skill tree is similarly bad. Despite exquisite animations, the act of swinging a sword, or parrying, doesn’t feel that great, and the combat falls into the old-school Assassin’s Creed trap of being so counter-based that attacking feels pointless- the only option is to sit and wait for them to swing, so you can punish them for it.
The stealth options don’t feel like they’ve really changed in the last fifteen years. Sneak up, press a button, they die. Some higher level enemies simply take a chunk of damage instead of dying outright, and certain enemies are completely immune- any attempt will result in them catching your arm and tossing you aside. It’s a good bit of friction, but it does feel odd that these characters are completely unharmed. It’s fine that the game doesn’t want me trivializing certain encounters, but that stealth can do nothing to these enemies feels strange and unjustified. Can I at least debuff them, or start them on the backfoot? No. A “stealth kill” is actively worse than walking up to them and waving. Sure. Ok.
The real devil here is the loot system. Yes, it’s true: the last handful of Assassin’s Creed games have become full-on action RPGs, with Diablo-style loot with stats and levels. I don’t think it’s a good fit for the series, especially since Naoe has such a limited arsenal (katana, kusarigama, and tanto). With so few options, and all of them using the same moveset, there is an overreliance on +3 weapon damage, +5 skill damage, and other numbers that don’t change how you play, simply how long a fight takes. Loot is rarely exciting– instead, it is a bottleneck. If you have good enough loot, you can play the game normally. If you haven’t gotten lucky on drops, enemies just become tankier and tankier, and you have to do nine perfect dodges into counterattack instead of four.
I find myself wishing I could turn loot off entirely, and just have A Katana, A Tanto, and A Kusarigama. Though, arguably I do: once you get one of the legendary items, all other loot becomes material for upgrading the legendary, and there’s no reason to go back to normal gear. The natural progression flattens the relevance of its own mechanics and new drops aren’t exciting anymore, they’re simply more trash to scrap for parts. I do have to give credit to the legendary item perks at least, as some of them do add fun wrinkles to your abilities. I’m particularly fond of my current armor, which turns every stealth kill into a double as Naoe follows up her initial stabbing by throwing a kunai at a nearby enemy’s head. Now that’s a worthwhile upgrade!
All in all, the picture I’ve painted is of a decently fun game that’s not remarkable in many ways, but solid enough to carry the player through it. Hardly a Must Play, but if you’re looking for some open world katana-swinging, Shadows will treat you well enough.
Except… why? Sure, you can play Shadows’s tolerable combat and turn off the most aggravating open world features, but let me tell you a secret: a more enjoyable open world ninja and samurai game came out the week before. Well, ok, its PC version did: the original PS5 release was last year. I’m talking about Rise of the Ronin.
Made by Team Ninja, developers of Ninja Gaiden, Nioh, and Wo Long, Rise of the Ronin is an open world action game set at the start of the Boshin War, the Japanese civil war that kicked off after the forceful reopening of the country by Commodore Perry and the American Navy. A dash of stealth accompanies a deep combat system with fourteen different types of weapons, and all the melee weapons with various martial schools consisting of entirely different movesets. Combat is sharp, dynamic, varied, and intensely satisfying; there is an excess of loot, but because of the depth of possibilities, you find yourself trying different weapon types in response to a lucky drop, keeping your playstyle dynamic. And you can get a flamethrower. Very important, flamethrowers.
In most other ways, Rise of the Ronin is lesser. The graphics are fine, but won’t provide the stunning vistas that Assassin’s Creed Shadows does. The story is… well, borderline incoherent, as your character’s motivations make less and less sense with each story mission. The movement mechanics are less ambitious, though at the same time more reliable: you can use a portable glider, you can mantle, and you have a deeply satisfying grappling hook that only works on specific objects, but feels great to use, and can even be used to hurl objects at enemies. The cast is less nuanced, though it is odd that it feels more Assassin’s Creed than Shadows does- you’re constantly meeting real historical figures in Rise of the Ronin, while Shadows has been uncharacteristically light on that given the series it’s from.
But why are you here? Are you playing a samurai and ninja game, to, I don’t know… do samurai and ninja shit? Because that part of the game is exceptional in Rise. It’s a delight. Swinging a sword feels great. Grappling to a rooftop is exhilarating, sprinting at a rifleman is thrilling. Rise of the Ronin is weak in everything surrounding the core action: the graphics (not bad, but not remarkable), the story (bad in a way that’s kind of exceptional [derogatory]), the characters (shallow but inoffensive). But anything that happens as a response to you pressing a button is stellar.
So ask yourself: what is it that you really want out of a swordfighting game? If the answer is “not the swordfighting,” that’s pretty bizarre but I bet you’ll have a great time with Assassin’s Creed Shadows. It’s a game I have plenty of respect for, and even I can’t say if I’d play more if I didn’t have a professional obligation to continue. But if you’re here for… you know. The swords? And fighting with them? Be smart. Play Rise of the Ronin.
Or shit, wait a few months and play Ghost of Youtei. Ghost of Tsushima is gorgeous and also plays better than Shadows, I bet Youtei is gonna be a fucking banger.
P.S.: One thing you definitely should not do is switch back and forth between the two like some foolish critic might have. Not out of loyalty to one game or the other, and certainly not because you’ll confuse their threadbare stories. It’s for a much more practical reason: controls. In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, galloping with your horse is L3, and dismounting is Circle. In Rise of the Ronin, galloping is Circle and dismounting is L3. In Shadows, attack is R1 and interact is Triangle… so of course, in Ronin attack is Triangle and interact is R1. Grappling hook, heavy attack, block, parry… “dodge” might be the only button that they two share, whi- oh wait, no, it’s X in Rise and Circle in Shadows.
I am not a person who usually has control issues, but switching back and forth tied me in knots. Don’t do it: choose a side. I suppose I should thank this particular conflict for forcing the issue. Sure, you could walk the middle road, and play both games, but control issues will punish you for your indecision. Do the right thing: play Rise of the Ronin. Play a sword game for the goddamn swords. And if you want to play Assassin’s Creed Shadows afterwards because you have an insatiable appetite for swinging a katana, you know I can relate to that.
