Assassins Creed Shadows is the best one in years, sometimes in spite of itself

It feels like there’s about a 100:1 ratio of negative-to-positive news headlines around Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Just this week, developers have been told internally to not talk about working on the game, lest they face harassment. At the same time, publisher Ubisoft is desperately fighting off talks of a corporate merger amidst investor troubles. 

I’d prefer not to contribute to that because I think this is the best Assassin’s Creed game in a while, probably at least since 2016’s Origins. After a little more than 30 hours with this gargantuan stabbing simulator, my only real problem with Shadows is that it often feels like a giant boulder being held delicately in place by a single plank of wood. 

This is a big and beautiful game that’s also, unfortunately, buggy enough that I have to write about it. Assassin’s Creed Shadows doesn’t totally upend the series formula and turn it into something else, but its dual-protagonist structure, open-ended design, and series-best stealth mechanics make it a fun tour through history, sometimes in spite of itself.

Shadows gets back to what matters

Naoe is rad. Credit: Ubisoft/Steam

As you may or may not be aware by now, the main distinction Shadows has over most other AC games is that it has two playable protagonists. 2015’s Syndicate also did this, but it kinda sucked; one of the playable heroes in that game was a doofus in a top hat who looked like a nerdcore rapper and was, for reasons I cannot imagine, the one you had to play as in most story missions. 

Shadows executes this idea approximately ten thousand times better than Syndicate did. The female shinobi Naoe joins with the African slave-turned-samurai Yasuke (a real historical man, a first for an AC protagonist) to take down all the evildoers who are subjugating the people of 16th-century Japan, and maybe get some revenge along the way. Like the rest of the series, Shadows takes itself pretty seriously in its storytelling and is, in a word, a little swagless. There are times when it tries to include stylistic visual or musical flourishes, which I appreciate, but this isn’t Ninja Gaiden. 

Regardless, once you get past a lengthy (it took me close to 15 hours) opening chapter, Shadows opens up. After that, you can switch between Naoe and Yasuke at will from the pause menu, and play almost any mission as whoever you want. Yasuke is a big brute who can unlock doors by sprinting through them and murder guys with a variety of cool weapons, while Naoe is easily the most lithe and nimble protagonist the series has ever had, making her perfect for sneaking around. 

Yasuke is also pretty rad. Credit: Ubisoft/Steam

Allowing players to tackle most objectives with whichever character they want is a big step up from Syndicate, and it also doesn’t hurt that Yasuke and Naoe are both very cool. As a nice bonus, this is the best pure stealth game in the Assassin’s Creed series when you’re playing as Naoe. Ubisoft has added a bunch of fun variables you have to think about: enemies who can see from much farther away, walking surfaces that make more noise than others, dynamic weather that can mask your movements, the ability to go prone, and shadows that can make you invisible in the right circumstances.

All of that combined with Naoe’s fun arsenal of ninja moves and tools makes her an absolute joy to play. Snooping around a big castle while meticulously stabbing everyone in your way is the best it’s ever been here. Yasuke’s alright, too, if you’d rather fight your way through challenges, but that’s not really how I like to play these games. I appreciate that the option is there for other people, though.

I would say the most interesting thing about Shadows from a design standpoint is how freeform it is after that opening chapter. There are suggested story missions for you to do, but you can also do things in basically any order you want. I’ve stumbled onto story missions earlier than I was supposed to, totally by accident, which is awesome. Shadows also doesn’t put specific waypoints on the map for mission objectives; instead, you have to assign scouts to find the objectives based on hints the game gives you. 

The best part of all of this is that a huge amount of missions revolve around assassinating people. In 30 hours, I have not done a single tailing or escorting mission. There are tons of optional targets who provide interesting, fun challenges and give excellent gear as rewards for taking them down. This is the first AC game in a long time (aside from the more focused offshoot Mirage) where assassination is the main thing you’re doing most of the time. It’s cool.

It just doesn’t work all the time

I love crawling around. Credit: Ubisoft/Steam

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a very good Assassin’s Creed game, with one very problematic quality: During the review period, it had a bad habit of rendering itself unplayable from time to time. 

To be more specific, Shadows had a nasty problem for me where playing for longer than 60 to 90 minutes at a time made a bunch of weird crap start happening. Load times (which are normally very snappy) became several minutes long in some cases, while the UI would take forever to load once I was back in gameplay. Additionally, all menus slowed to a crawl. At its worst, there was one instance where the act of pausing the game and hitting the save button, which normally takes about 10 seconds, took at least five minutes.

This happened to me during a flashback story mission, which created other problems on top of itself. At one point, a cutscene just decided not to trigger, leaving me perpetually stuck between four invisible walls, unable to continue the game until I reloaded my last checkpoint. 

Yes, you can still do this. Credit: Ubisoft/Steam

A couple of caveats are necessary here. First, I’m playing on a PS5 Pro and have no idea if this is a problem anyone else has had on any other platforms. I should also mention the game looks beautiful and runs fantastically in that format aside from this bug. Second, there’s every possibility that by the time regular people have their hands on Shadows, this has been fixed. But I can’t just not mention something so disruptive that’s also so easy to recreate.

I am no software engineer, so I don’t know if this is a quick fix for Ubisoft or not. Given the game’s multiple delays, it really feels like Shadows is coming in a little hot. I don’t think this should be enough to dissuade anyone from playing Shadows by itself, but it’s worth knowing about.

Despite all of that, my first 30 hours with Shadows have been pretty positive. This game feels enormous, like I could potentially play 30 more hours. Maybe it’ll get old before then, maybe it won’t. But I can confirm that the people who are mad because Ubisoft made Assassin’s Creed “woke” or whatever are morons who will be missing out on a good game.