If I am ever fumbling around for something to do on a lonely weekday evening, I always go to one of my old faithful Assassins’ Creed (AC) games. I blow the dust off the CD, place it in the PlayStation drive, and continue my ancient save file. Which is why I am so glad that Shadows finally released last week — a new favourite game to spend hundreds of hours on. Shadows, set in feudal Japan, with sharp katanas that chop bamboo forests. Shadows, an AAA game on East Asian cultural history that unfortunately came a few years too late (who knew Ghost of Tsushima would be that good!). Shadows, a new RPG combining stealth with brute force, new AC exploration with age-old tailing and eavesdropping missions.
If I am being very honest, Shadows is doing nothing radical in the larger sense of things. Gameplay, combat, and story are all as it was in the recent RPG style of the AC games. Given how a little too sprawling Valhalla was, I was concerned that Shadows would follow suit. But luckily for Ubisoft, Shadows is kind of perfect. The series has found the right balance of RPG and concentrated city exploration missions, and the landscapes in Shadows are absolutely stunning. This game felt closest to Odyssey in its overall themes, which means I will easily spend another 200 hours on Shadows. Let me explain.
In Shadows, we play as two characters with their own motivations, story arcs, and a unique set of skills and weapons. Naoe is your stealthy, crafty assassin. She climbs tall fortresses, uses her grappling hook to swing through tight corners with ease, and is extremely handy with her hidden blade. However, she’s incredibly useless in front-facing combat, unless she’s super overpowered in terms of sheer skill levels. So then we have Yasuke, the infamous Black Samurai who has been heatedly discussed for quite some time. In the game, he’s a machine. He razes through enemies, swats them away with his Naginata with great ease. Yasuke is useless when it comes to anything that’s not close combat — he runs slower than Naoe, can’t climb, and has no “eagle vision” skills at all. It’s a good combination of characters. At every new town, I always have this nice little dance of strategy where I shift between Naoe and Yasuke characters for specific missions.
I know what you’re thinking, and yes, it’s like GTA V. The only difference here is that the shift isn’t as seamless within a live mission (or a battle in this case), at least, as far as I have played. It’s a real missed opportunity that they haven’t incorporated an element of coordination or timing early on in the game, when both characters are in play in a specific mission (think coordinated bank heists in GTA V with all characters fighting the enemy simultaneously). But what Shadows does really well is share the level progress between the two roles. It’s super nifty that Naoe, climbing a watchtower, shares experience with Yasuke. The game doesn’t force you to play an equal amount of both characters. You can, simply, choose to play one of the two for world exploration and most major missions.
Open world games like Shadows often suffer from the issue of having too many open threads, or quests. I am a huge sucker for the “Objective” menu in Shadows. Every game should have one like this. The menu is like this large network of interconnected events — a real conspiracy board, and it really does give you the feeling that you’re infiltrating this large, corrupt group of baddies. It’s an ever-growing interwoven mess. Just when you think the game is close to done, it opens up another nest of Ronin or Bandits to defeat. Just as in the previous RPG games, there’s also the element of collecting “clues” from smaller missions in the open world. Eavesdropping on nearby soldiers can reveal the positions of someone important. Saving a poor farmer from a greedy landlord can earn you a valuable scout ally.
Exploration in Shadows is as good as it can get. You can circle around hills and mountains to uncover a cave, which you will discover has some “legendary” tanto or long katanas hidden within it. There are some cool environmental puzzles involved in finding legendary weapons, which rely on the special abilities of either of the two characters.
Overall, an excellent AC game. I defy the upcoming “Ghost of Yotei”, the Tsushima successor also set in a similar era, to be better than Shadows! The game is currently available across consoles — PlayStation, PC, Mac, Xbox. It’s a no-brainer if you’re a huge Assassins’ Creed nerd like I am.