‘Assassin's Creed Shadows' is a luscious, uneven open-world experience
With one of the most luscious, naturalistic worlds ever committed to video games, 'Assassin's Creed Shadows' is an easy recommend, even if so much of the game is uneven.
The long-running series finally goes to Japan, and this entry's choice to star two characters was met with lots of controversy, some of it in good faith and some of it racist nonsense. Paired with the woman ninja Naoe, Ubisoft's latest game, which releases March 20, costars Yasuke, a rare historical figure taking the lead in this historical fantasy series. Yasuke is documented as Japan's first Black samurai, under Nobunaga Oda, the notorious 16th-century Japanese feudal lord.
Ubisoft's approach was to split gameplay mechanics between two people. Playing as Naoe means playing the best stealth game Ubisoft has made in more than a decade, thanks to a long list of skills and tools like ropes and immensely satisfying, lovingly animated parkour movement. Playing as Yasuke, however, means playing a good-enough samurai game that pales in comparison to the experience Naoe offers. Yasuke's focus is on the battle system, the weakest link of 'Shadows.'
Combat has rarely been the high point of any game in this series. In 'Shadows,' it feels weighty and consequential with visceral, dramatic sprays of blood and body parts. That adds gravitas to Yasuke's battles, but after several hours, the fights are weighed down by a repetition that would sink other games in the series.
Many of the game's areas are 'level gated.' This means the player may find themselves in outmatched fights against higher-level enemies who can take a lot of damage, and the battles are reduced to smacking people with your massive sword dozens of times, hardly an immersive experience. Yasuke's brutality is fun in bursts but feels limited when compared with Naoe's abilities. Yasuke feels powerful, but 'Shadows' enters a now-crowded market full of powerful samurai action with little to distinguish itself.
Play as Naoe and switch on the option for guaranteed deaths in assassinations for this game's true delights. She slinks through the game's incredible locations that include castles that scrape the sky and a floating fortress anchored in the stunningly re-created Lake Biwa, located northeast of Kyoto, where much of the game centers. There aren't many games today where you can boost up a ninja with a grappling hook to scramble over lovingly detailed Japanese timber architecture. She can blow out candles, crawl under tight floorboards and disappear into the ceiling shadows. Suddenly this game feels like a triumphant return of the gameplay in Ubisoft's dormant and sorely missed Splinter Cell stealth series. All of these options are absent for Yasuke, who crashes around in large, loud armor.
Yasuke's experience isn't a total loss. There is a quiet thrill in walking around as a living legend as this game's detailed crowd systems respond accordingly with people leering and gawking believably, often in awe. More importantly, Yasuke's story is the game's main narrative pull: There's a mysterious reason Yasuke was called to Japan, one that pertains to the series' larger story about the foundations of humanity. Although Naoe has the stronger gameplay, Yasuke has the more compelling narrative.
Assassin's Creed games also function as virtual tourism, and for this purpose Yasuke is an excellent player surrogate. Much of his story is told through flashbacks, a normally tricky storytelling mechanic that works here to draw out a satisfying arc from humble, well-intentioned foreigner to legendary samurai. It's also an intimate, warm tale of cultural appreciation. That process is slow, but it ends with a more worldly, considerate person. It also helps that Japanese culture is well represented, with exact pronunciations from a convincing English-language cast of Japanese performers.
The game allows the player to almost completely ignore playing as one character or the other, only occasionally forcing engagement for certain storylines. 'Shadows' makes it easy to ignore the parts you dislike, which makes this an easy recommend. But it makes me feel uneasy to praise this game for its uneven gameplay direction by allowing the audience to pretend as if it doesn't exist. I would've loved if the game allowed the characters to swap roles, much like the series has always done. The split here feels ambitious, yet doesn't quite work.
Still, 'Shadows' is a stunning open world, the most beautiful ever crafted by Ubisoft, the publishing house that helped pioneer the formula. Not since Rockstar's 'Red Dead Redemption 2' in 2018 has a game looked more natural. It's no small feat that this game looks both better than and distinctive from Sony's gorgeous 'Ghost of Tsushima' in 2020, which had a more deliberate, painterly color psychology. 'Shadows' aims for photorealism, and it's clear the game's many delays helped create a sturdier visual experience.
As a publisher, Ubisoft is in the headlines for financial woes and potential corporate overhauls. The narrative is that it all depends on the success of 'Shadows.' It's hard to tell whether this would be an audience-expanding entry in the series, particularly since it still relies on the 'go here, assassinate them' quest formula that is recreated endlessly in this game's repetitive structure. But at the very least, 'Shadows' is a brawny, beautiful reminder that Ubisoft, even in its experimental stumbles, remains a master of the open-world genre.
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