Assassin’s Creed Shadows

Genre: Stealth / Open-World Action-RPG

Players: 1

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: UbiSoft

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Review:

Before getting into the meat of this review, I feel like I need to get into one of those “how the sausage is made” sorta’ comments. Bear with me here. eShopperReviews is pretty much a one man endeavor – everything on the website is made by me, all the games are reviewed by me, all the editing, formatting, image editing, Patreon management, all me. As you might imagine, this takes quite a lot of time, and as a result, I haven’t had much opportunity to play videogames I haven’t been actively reviewing. I still do on occasion, just not often. This means I have some blind spots, areas where I know I’m out of touch. And one of those areas is the Assassin’s Creed franchise.

This is because this is a franchise that has largely skipped Nintendo platforms. We got a few late releases in the series on Wii U, and Nintendo Switch received multiple bundles of earlier games in the series. Japan even got a cloud version of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on Nintendo Switch, though that never released in the West. However, for Nintendo-platform players living outside of Japan, the most recent game in the series they’ve gotten to try was Assassin’s Creed: Rogue from 2014, which was included in Assassin’s Creed: The Rebel Collection. This was the seventh main installment in the Assassin’s Creed franchise.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows, released in 2025 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and then later that same year on Nintendo Switch 2, is the fourteenth mainline game in the franchise, so Nintendo-centric gamers have missed half of the franchise at this point. And… maybe that’s for the best, because from others who have followed the series I have heard frequent complaints of fatigue, of sameyness, of a lack of innovation in the series. I experienced none of those things when playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Instead, my experience playing this game was pretty much just… joy.

If you’re new to the Assassin’s Creed series, no prior experience is necessary to play Assassin’s Creed Shadows, as it does a good job explaining how it’s played for newcomers to the franchise, and the story connections to prior games are minimal. The basic idea is that players are participating in a futuristic simulation of a past era, a simulation whose purpose is murky and there’s some organizational struggle between rival organizations over… look, forget all of that, because it’s mostly just a framing device. The point is, you’re playing a character from a past era during a time of great struggle and violence. Or, in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, two characters.

Set in Feudal Japan during the years of the reign of Oda Nobunaga, players take the roles of Naoe, a young kunoichi from Ida, a province that Nobunaga violently conquered, and Yasuke, an African samurai and servant to Nobunaga loosely based on a real-life figure of the same name. While war and cruel dictatorship grip Japan, Naoe and Yasuke find they have a struggle in common against a gang of masked warriors manipulating events behind the scenes – they Killed Naoe’s father and stole a mysterious box she was sworn to protect, and meanwhile Yasuke holds a reverence for Naoe’s “hidden blade” (a recurring Assassin’s Creed series tool), though the reasons for Yasuke’s motivations are only explained later.

As with other games in the franchise, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is an Open-World Action-RPG with a strong emphasis on Stealth, or at least half of the game emphasizes stealth. After a prologue as Yosuke, players spend the first 10-15 hours of the game playing as Naoe, who plays similarly to past protagonists in the Assassin’s Creed series – she’s fast, highly acrobatic, and has various techniques to make use of stealthily taking out enemies from the shadows, but she’s not super-strong in combat, and can get in trouble if she gets outnumbered. Naoe also has a grappling hook tool vaguely reminiscent of the tool from the Tenchu franchise, letting you scale to overhanging roofs that would otherwise be unscalable.

After those early hours of the game, players get the ability to swap between Naoe and Yasuke, who plays quite differently. While theoretically capable of stealth, Yosuke is an absolute tank, standing tall over enemies and able to take on swarms of them all at once head-on, often shrugging off attacks that would floor Naoe. Yosuke can climb and navigate difficult surfaces, but he’s clumsy and sluggish to do so, and cannot use Naoe’s grappling hook. However, he can shoulder charge to bash through sturdy doors that Naoe cannot pass through.

Where prior games in the series occasionally gave us multiple protagonists, they were often pretty similar to each other. However, it becomes pretty clear early on that Naoe and Yosuke are very different, and players will likely gravitate towards one or the other. Each of these characters has specific story content only they can navigate and locations only they can access, so you will have to play both, but expect to play as both characters at different points of the game.

This ties into one of the flaws Assassin’s Creed Shadows has – its opening is slow and it takes an hour or two before the game opens up into its vast open world. In addition, players who favor Yosuke, or who just want to swap to him for a while for variety’s sake, will have to play through quite a lot of Naoe content before he becomes fully playable.

Speaking of the open world, Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ open world is absolutely incredible, a wonderful simulation of what Feudal era Japan may have looked like. I’ll talk more about the visuals later, but this is a world that feels really fleshed-out and filled with both deep history and very pressing current-day conflict.

I do have one complaint about this open world, though it may not apply to everyone – much of the landscape is covered with thick forests filled with heavy underbrush and often steep terrain, meaning players who want to “Skyrim their way” from one spot to another on the map will likely find themselves sometimes moving blind through a screen filled with bushes and trees until they’re stopped by a hill too steep to climb, at which point they’ll need to blindly feel their way for a path forward.

Players have a number of different things they can do in this world – they can of course fight enemies and gain experience to increase their stats and ability points to improve their skills as well as money to put toward various pursuits. They can collect, buy, or upgrade weapons and armor with different stats and bonuses. They can head to points of interest and fill out their map, including Assassin’s Creed’s typical high vantage point fast-travel spots. They can stalk the large castle estates and hunt down powerful samurai daimyo to gain access to that castle’s valuable treasure. They can engage in base building, building up their own private base which gives various bonuses in its own right. They can assist various people with a variety of side-quests, or of course take on the main quest goals.

Through all of this, the moment-to-moment gameplay is mostly similar. As Naoe, you’ll mostly be moving from cover to cover, taking out enemies in secrecy as much as possible and engaging in battle with stronger enemies only when necessary, all while moving swiftly and skillfully through the area, climbing up and over all but the tallest walls easily. Meanwhile, Yosuke will be tackling problems head-on, often fighting off multiple enemies at once with powerful strikes that stagger all but the toughest enemies. It’s satisfying if a little repetitive, though the game’s story and side-quests add enough variety to keep things interesting.

However, it’s hard to complain too much when the stealth and movement and exploration in this game is so very satisfying. This game does stealth very well, and when you engage in combat it takes a bit of getting used to but once you do it has a pretty good attack/strong attack/dodge/parry system, with smarter enemies recognizing when you’re readying a strong attack and backstepping out of the way.

I did have one small complaint about healing and auto-saving, since auto-saving includes your health and item use, which means the game might auto-save you at low health with no healing items (rations), searching the area desperately for a ration restock as you get killed over and over again. This happened to me a few times while playing and it was extremely irritating, but also very satisfying when I managed to finally succeed.

When it comes to the presentation, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is absolutely magnificent, albeit with a few caveats on Nintendo Switch 2. First, I need to distinguish that this game make frequent use of what is either pre-rendered cutscenes using in-game visuals rendered on more capable hardware, or cutscene-specific models… I’m not sure, but in any case, the visuals in these moments are better-looking than the way the overall game looks. However, that’s not to say the rest of the game looks bad.

Quite the contrary, actually. This game’s natural landscapes are probably the most impressive I have ever seen running on Nintendo hardware. Simply seeing some of the early areas with the trees and grass moving in the breeze are jaw-droppingly stunning, and the game continues to impress throughout, with detailed character models, outstanding lighting, nice shadows, gorgeous-looking water… this game is an absolute feast for the eyes.

That said, there are definitely areas where you can see flaws shining through. When you get scenes with a lot of characters in them, the framerates noticeably take a hit. And while the game is overall surprisingly devoid of pop-in despite having some of the most foliage-dense environments I have ever seen in a videogame, there is still occasional pop-in during in-game cutscenes that can be distracting. And you do occasionally have characters moving in ways that can be a tad glitchy-looking. Overall, I still think this is one of the best-looking games ever released on a Nintendo platform, even if you can see areas where it is a compromised port of other versions of the game.

Of course, the sound suffers no such issues, and this game absolutely delivers with its cinematic orchestral soundtrack with fitting Asian influences, along with outstanding voice acting for all characters. This ties into an excellent story with themes of revenge, forgiveness, finding peace with one’s self, preserving a legacy, and the costs of peace.

Overall, I had an absolute blast playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows. I know players on other platforms have reported feeling weary of this series, though the general consensus seems to be that this game is a solid return to form for the series. I can’t speak to any of that, all I can say is that my own experience with this game was that I was absolutely hooked playing it and had to tear myself away from it to force myself to write this review. It certainly has its gameplay flaws, and the presentation is certainly bumping up against the limitations of the Nintendo Switch 2 hardware, but all of this hardly matters when the game itself is a joy to play, a feast for the eyes and ears, and presents such a massive, wondrous world to explore. If you’re like me and haven’t had much exposure to the Assassin’s Creed franchise over the years, this is absolutely the time to get back into it. Assassin’s Creed Shadows is absolutely not to be missed.

tl;dr – Assassin’s Creed Shadows is an Open-World Action-RPG with strong Stealth elements. Set in feudal Japan, Shadows stars dual protagonists – the stealthy acrobatic kunoichi Naoe and the large imposing samurai Yosuke, who both play very differently. This game presents a massive, gorgeous open world to explore, really great stealth gameplay, enjoyable nuanced combat, and excellent characters in an engaging story. This game does have some irritations and repetitive elements, and there are clearly areas where this has been downgraded from other platforms. However, even with those flaws, this is an absolutely delightful game in that I wholeheartedly recommend. Do not miss this.

Grade: A+

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