2025-04-28 02:01:06

The game Assassin’s Creed Shadows, in my personal opinion, is very mid, and I do not recommend it.

This is my first Assassin’s Creed game. So I can’t compare it to any previous games in the franchise, nor am I familiar with the lore. So if I point out any things that they always do in AC games, well, here’s my disclaimer. I also have not played any Ubisoft games besides Just Dance, Catz 5, and Imagine: Babyz, so I don’t really have a grasp on Ubisoft itself.

The gameplay felt like it had no soul. I guess it could be potentially fun….if you just empty your brain and don’t think too hard. It seems as though the developers have made some sort of pattern, it was formulaic in a way. Everything I did in this game felt very much the same. Traveling felt the same, accidentally going into a high level area felt the same, getting mobbed by random NPCs felt the same, sneaking into castles, everything. It’s hard to describe, but it felt like I was living in a dystopian husk of a game where everything was already pre decided for me before the game even started development. There is also a TON of bloat in this game, probably in order to pad the gameplay time to longer than it actually is. Meaningless side quests that are not fun, and crazy level requirements for the main quest to force you to do side content. All of this is just put into the game to extend playtime, so more of your time is wasted! Yay!

It gets even worse, because they make you engage with this side content by locking progression in the skill tree under the “knowledge rank” system. YES! You level up, gain mastery points with the levels to use in your skill tree, but can’t even use those mastery points until you go level up your “knowledge rank” with the dumbest most tedious side quest activities ever. Go collect pieces of paper, play rhythm games, and obstacle courses throughout the map…because otherwise you literally can’t proceed past the first skill tree level. I hate that this game locks progress on your skill tree behind bloat content that is just tedious and not even fun. Just let me play your game normally without shoving Yasuke horseback riding and paper collecting down my throat, please……..

The story of this game is cliche, predictable, and really cheesy. A lot of the “epic” fight scenes use this Kill Bill esque music that is SO strange. It doesn’t fit the vibes at all, and is suddenly so modern, which makes it really jarring compared to the time setting. I chose English for the dialogue. This is the original language of the game for voice over and motion capture. I actually was under the impression that I chose immersive mode, which meant that they would suddenly speak one word of Japanese in their sentence and Ubisoft would pull the whole (translator note: keikaku means plan) thing. There were so many other instances of this, and some where they wouldn’t even explain the word. I really thought that this was supposed to be immersive mode, but oh. This is the actual English version. Overall the vibes were really cheesy, and in a comedic sense I was entertained with it, even if the story was cliche, up until the soulless Ubisoft formulaic paper collecting gameplay crept in.

None of the characters are really likeable, or unlikeable for that matter. Maybe there are two likeable characters. Some kid who is so good at drawing that he is probably going to invent the medium of manga itself, and probably Naoe’s dad she’s constantly screaming CHICHIUEEEE at. I can’t even remember their names, so in conclusion, the characters are bland. Even though Yasuke existed in real life, he really feels like Ubisoft’s cringe OC self insert character rather than a historical figure. Naoe also feels bland, devoid of soul, and together as a team, they make for a not so memorable duo. Which is a problem because they are the main characters of this game. Naoe and Yasuke have this drinking scene together which is as entertaining as untoasted white bread, and then it fades out to the morning, where Naoe ends up on the roof and Yasuke ends up in a cart. What is this writing??? They didn’t do anything of significance at all, yet they want me to think the protagonists had a wild night, gee wow hahaha so crazy!!!!!

This is the part that I look back on that really annoyed me the most, more than anything about this game. I have heard that microtransactions are a common Ubisoft practice, but I was shocked at how blatant and in your face it was in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. I understand that (unfortunately) microtransactions have become common practice in many single player AAA game titles (thanks Todd Howard, thanks horse armor). However, I really think that for a single player game, it should not be as in your face as a free to play mobile game. It should be separate, and it should not have as much content as Assassin’s Creed Shadows does. If you showed me the in-game store of Assassin’s Creed Shadows and told me it was a FTP mobile game, I would believe you. It is BAKED INTO THE GAME, advertised when you enter the menu, and it’s inescapable. The items in it aren’t even purely cosmetic. The weapons add actual stats to your character, making a single player game pay to win, or rather pay to beat faster. I literally can’t believe this.

Microtransactions were in my face before I even had one second of gameplay. I was even generously handed 300 microtransaction points by generous Mr. Assassin’s Creed to spend in the store, randomly via a very obnoxious on-screen popup while I was playing the game!!! Great, just enough to get the player a grand total of nothing, and entice them to actually spend more money than the $69.99 plus tax they already paid Mr. Ubisoft! Not only that, there was one point in the game where I finally got to play as Yasuke again, and I was stuck with only high level quests. The only way to fill my time was to do those silly little knowledge points quests, but other than collecting paper, I quite literally had nothing to do. It’s infuriating, because instead of doing side quests, I just want to proceed with the main story. Then, low and behold, I opened the menu, and advertised right in front of my face is THE MAP PACK ADD ON FOR $10!! Yes, you can no longer be bored!!! No longer do you have nothing to do if you just pay us a mere $10!!! We have Yasuke activity maps, hidden chest maps, Naoe activity maps, and world activity maps!! This really is an insult to any single player game ever made. You pay a price to play a single player game, and all of the content should be included in it already. I bet there are nice people in Mr. Ubisoft who are against these types of practices, but whoever green lit and encourages this, you do not care about gamers. You do not care about single player gaming. It is very disappointing, and at this point it made me lose any motivation to actually continue this game. At least I can purchase a beautiful uwu sakura flower crown Yasuke outfit to soothe my hurt and anguish I’ve experienced! Thank you Mr. Ubisoft! Too bad right after experiencing the pain of wanting to stop playing this game, I experienced a bug which made Yasuke lose his sword.


In conclusion, putting all of the out of game controversies aside and just looking at the game as a game, I can say that it is truly a mid experience. It definitely wasn’t as terrible as I thought it was going to be. I can see it as a turn off your mind and play for hours on end type of game for sure, if you have nothing better to do. However, the formulaic gameplay, bloated side content, overly complex skill tree system, and in-your-face microtransactions makes this game one that I cannot recommend, and one that I have dropped after 16 hours. I hope to go back to the golden days of Assassin’s Creed and see what that was like. For now, goodbye tedious paper collecting that I gave up on immediately, goodbye Naoe, and goodbye Yasuke.

2025-04-21 10:54:06

It's cool to play, I like the combat system of weapons, skills, a beautiful world around, but the plot is weak, it's very stuffy to go through some quests and side missions. Optimization is not very cool, but not bad either, normal, at least on Steam deck it stably goes at 30 fps with default graphics settings. I would recommend you to wait for a discount on the game, because 70 eu for the same Assassin, which is no different, is a bit expensive to pay, but I recommend it!

2025-04-13 02:11:37

[h3] Preface [/h3]
The thing I enjoy most about this game series is the world in every game. It takes me back to prominent historical locations and periods, lets me meet characters I have read about. That is what I enjoy the most. For example - meeting Oda Nobunaga and Akechi Mitsuhide in this game. This makes me a bit biased towards this series. Visiting Athens in Odyssey, talking to Perikles - I eat it up.

[h3] Rating [/h3]
With that preface - I'll rate this game 7.5/10

[h3] Explanation [/h3]
If you are interested in Sengoku period history, you'll meet many recognizable figures. Disappointingly, we don't get to directly interact with them a ton.
The world is as good as can be expected. You can visit famous shrines, temples, and forts - all beautifully made. The graphics are gorgeous.

The stealth has improved a ton over previous games. Even without guaranteed assassinations turned on, assassinating powerful enemies is possible if you tune your gear and perks correctly. The season, shadow and sound mechanics in this game made me love sneaking around as Naoe. You can even kill off minibosses with a single kunai if you build around it.
I didn't really play Yasuke a ton except for some of the mandatory beats.

On the other hand, the story was mediocre. It didn't really interest me a whole lot. Parts of it were okay but it was pretty bland overall. Even the side missions were less interesting than Odyssey story-wise. I have also kinda started to dislike the copy paste conversation gestures that I've been seeing since Odyssey(?). It hurts my eyes to see the same motions repeated in different conversations - like déjà vu.

This was not helped be the fact that I couldn't bear the atrocious English voice acting, making me switch to Immersive mode(Japanese+a little Portugese) almost immediately after the 10-15 minutes of starting the game. This introduced new problems. The character gestures sometimes not matching the dialogue, completely missing the timings for correct emphasis. The English subtitles not matching what was being spoken in Japanese (they follow the Eng VO lines). And the most heinous of all - the mouth not moving at all in some parts, especially in the Yasuke personal missions. Mostly because it is too easy to bulldoze through enemies and also because playing Naoe is WAY more fun.

[h3] Conclusion [/h3]
Finally, as a conclusion, I'll say this - if you enjoyed Origins and Odyssey(I hated Valhalla), you will probably like this a decent bit. If, like me, you have interest in history, you'll probably enjoy it. Overall, it is a fine game. Like I said - a 7.5 (I rate Odyssey an 8.5 out of 10)
If you are a fan, buy it now. If not, well - it'll eventually be discounted.

2025-04-09 04:19:19

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☑ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☑ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☑ Can get annoying
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☑ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10.

2025-04-07 11:24:10

Aftter 120 hours of gameplay,

Overrated by people who love,
Underrated by people who hate

Absolutely beautiful world, incredible graphics and animations, fun stealth, fun combat,
Story starts out strong, drags on boring with forgettable characters, ends in the most stupid way possible.
Side activities are so repititive and boring.(Especially the shrine clappings those make me crazy) boss fights are cool but they are not challenging even on expert difficulty, and at some point they fight like clones of each other

First hours in, i was in love, the more i played it, the more it became a drag, The RPG elements are back and they are worse than ever, but incredible scenery and atmosphere alonewould make this game worth buying, its ... an experience..

Even though Mirage had it's flaws, the direction it took was correct ,if ubisoft makes RPG, Leveling, Grinding components they cant do it unique, they just copy paste tons of items, progression , boring quests.

Overall a good game none the less but a weak point in AC story.

7/10

2025-04-06 03:17:19

By no means does this game revive the Assassin's Creed series. That would require significant changes to the Ubisoft development structure and in all honesty, requires a time machine, because some of their recent titles have been mediocre at best.

This game does give some sense of freshness to the AC series and has both good and bad qualities to it. I've enjoyed it, it has an okay story with solid stealth and a semi-decent combat system. It isn't the best, but it isn't the worst either.

Obviously perception and personal preference play a big part when reviewing game titles. The next person may not like this game in any capacity, which is fair. It isn't bad nor the best, but it is for sure something to play.

2025-04-05 08:47:48

[b]TL;DR:[/b] this is a a soft yes because Shadows is truly a mixed bag. some aspects of the game are the best in the entire series. many others are tedious, sloppy, or poorly designed. if you're a die-hard fan of the series, you'll enjoy it. otherwise, maybe not.

---

[b]PROS:[/b]

- the stealth gameplay as Naoe is some of the best in the series, if not THE best. it's fast, fluid, and responsive. there's a lot of depth here. the light/dark mechanics make raiding enemy bases feel more dynamic. being able to crawl unlocks a lot of potential; not just hiding in tall grass, but staying low to avoid sightlines, getting the right angle on a rooftop to stay out of sight, staying hidden in shallow water, and assassinating from a whole new level of verticality.

- the game is visually stunning, especially the environments. the way the characters and their surroundings react to the weather and lighting is a technical marvel, really. there have been plenty of moments where I just wanted to stop and enjoy the game world.

- the gear aesthetics and transmog are really great. any gear you pick up is automatically and permanently added to the options for transmog which is a nice QoL improvement. and for weapons, in addition to wholesale transmog, you can switch out the look of each component. a blade from one katana, handle from another, hilt from a third, and sheathe from a fourth. all these options allow for some surprisingly deep swag customization.

- the combat is a big improvement from some of the other new-age AC games with RPG pretentions. it feels more methodical and strategic, and it rewards precision which is what open combat in AC is supposed to be about.

- parkour as Naoe feels refined and fun. it has some of the fluidity and flashiness of Unity while still feeling grounded in reality and suitable to a place that doesn't have a lot of large architecture.

- the difficulty is tuned pretty well, and lends itself to a more nuanced experience playing as Naoe. I've been playing exclusively on the hardest difficulty and the enemies' expanded vision makes stealth a lot more challenging, which I love. and because they're so much stronger in combat, it adds a level of tension and anxiety around not getting caught and more of a reason to use everything at your disposal.

- the base-building is way more intricate than I expected, and it can actually be pretty fun customizing the placement and layout of everything. since different structures give you in-game buffs that can be upgraded, there's a strong incentive to spend some time with this system, and then I couldn't really help but get sucked in for a bit tinkering with things.

---

[b]CONS:[/b]

- the story is poorly told. in the beginning, it's actually great! Naoe's quest for a revenge is a simple but strong motivation. however, once you unlock Yasuke, the story becomes fragmented and as a result the game overall suddenly loses momentum. I think it's because the game now has to account for both protagonists' motives and backstories in every scenario going forward, but in doing so, both protagonists end up feeling pretty hollow moment to moment.

- there are some pretty annoying bugs that still haven't been fixed 2 weeks out from launch, the most egregious one being that occasionally when you assassinate someone they will just... not die. they'll just get right back up and you have to assassinate them like 1 - 3 more times before they finally die. I've run into a number of scenarios where I would have remained undetected if this didn't happen, but because it did I got seen, which is super frustrating. as a long time fan of the series, I can accept some jank, and it's even part of the fun sometimes. but not this one. it's literally a game about assassinating people, and the assassination mechanic isn't reliable?

- playing as Yasuke wears thin really quickly. when you first unlock him, it actually feels pretty great to just run around crushing dudes into the dust. but after a while, it sinks in that so much of the game is crafted around stealth mechanics and exploration, and Yasuke is so clunky and slow that he's essentially useless unless you're in open combat.

- gear is incredibly shallow and annoying. you get legendary gear within the first 5 or 10 hours of the game, and legendary gear basically always has the best abilities. so you can just upgrade the legendary gear you have until you find better legendary gear, meaning all the other trash you collect has no real value other than cosmetic. it seems like maybe they even knew this was an issue, because there is some gear that heavily buffs you based on how many pieces of gear you have equipped that [i]aren't[/i] legendary lol. but even that is far outclassed by a spread of powerful buffs from legendary gear.

- the seasons system is not as impactful as I'd hoped it would be. it's not that it's bad, necessarily. it's just that it doesn't really change the gameplay very much. the biggest change is like... the water freezes over in the winter so you can't sneak through shallow water, but that's just -1 option for approaching a scenario and there are always like 20 other options. the seasons also feel like they go by way too quickly. the visual switchup does help to keep things looking fresh, though.

- the collectibles are so lazily implemented. go to temple. run around finding 3 pieces of paper. and that's it. except you have to do it 75 more times. it's a massive waste of time. feels like it's just there as filler to get you to play the game longer. many of the areas where you get the collectibles give you Knowledge points which are required to unlock all the skills in the skill tree, so you are forced to do all this boring collecting to level up. worst of all, some collectibles can only be retrieved while playing as one of the protagonists which can lead to some truly stupid scenarios. the dumbest one that happened to me was, I was in a massive enemy castle as Naoe and found a collectible that only Yasuke could retrieve. but you can't change protagonists while you're inside of a base, so I completed everything else in the base, killing all the guards, getting all the other collectibles, and finishing the story objectives. then I stepped outside of the hostile zone so I could switch to Yasuke. while switching to Yasuke, the seasons changed, so after I took control of him, the base reset, respawning all of the enemies I had just killed. so I had to fumble my way back into the base as Yasuke with underpowered gear because I never play as him, just so I could move a box to get a flag.

- the game suffers a lot from the generic open world fatigue that plagues so many Ubisoft games. side activities are repetitive filler. they try to make quest pathing more interesting, but it's really still just running from point A to point B until you can finally do something interesting. they try to do some dynamic encounters a la RDR2 but they are so shallow that it's better to just ignore them to get to the fun content.

2025-04-03 01:55:13

Thought that this game was going to be bad after all those content creators gave there reviews but the game is way better than i thought the parkour is great and its nice that you can use naoe to make into a castle without being seen and yasuke that is just a brute that rush in and fuck those npcs up and in my opinion i would recomend you to get it just not for 70 euros you should wait for it to be cheaper

2025-04-02 08:49:06

its like all the other open world ac games but ninja. don't know why ubisoft thinks anyone is gonna spend money on skins, weapons and xp in a single player game doesn't really make sense

2025-04-02 08:19:44

If you intend to play this game offline in any capacity, be warned, you can't. Although, they advertised the game as being playable offline on X/Twitter back in May 2024, every attempt I've made to do so is thwarted by the Ubisoft Connect launcher demanding to be reconnected to the internet. If you try to set it to offline mode, it closes then restarts with the same message as if it never happened. The game refuses to start because of this. Support seems to be willfully ignoring anyone that brings this up to them.

Disappointing, because this is otherwise a solid game.