Assassin’s Creed Shadows

I completed all recent AC games, including the slog that was Valhalla. This game is by far the worst of them with so many baffling bad design choices. I won't list them all but a few main items that bother me: 1. The resource / scout mechanic feels like a mobile game and adds little interesting in gameplay value, its just frustrating. 2. Finding a location in immersion mode isn't immersive instead of using landmarks and environmental design it is just, go here and then look / scout. 3. The level up mechanic is horrible, if you get a new ability point (mastery) you can't spend it because you need to complete this other boring fetch mechanic to level up your skill tree first. 4. The skill tree itself is bland and absolutely boring there is almost nothing interesting, many abilities are things like get X% better at this, wow... 5. Having two different characters doesn't work for me, just stick with the assassin play stile. 6. The game makes your assassin ability intentional worse (can't 1 hit kill) so you can level up to suck less. This is poor game design, you should start with a fun to play Assassin and then get more bad ass as you play more (see: Ghost of Tsushima). Also, the designers noticed that not having a instant stealth kill might not be fun, so you can turn the whole mechanic off, another indication of confused and poor gampeplay design. 7. I am not long in the game (started on PS5 and transferred save over, that works fine at least). But the cutscenes are far too long and just bland and not interesting. You might control the character for 10 seconds, then another 15 minute cutscene. In one cutscene you learn to fight, instead of actually having you fight and learn the controls the game gives you a quicktime scene that has nothing to do with how the actual fighting works... 8. Loot is bland 9. Gameplay mechanics often center around infiltrating a castle and that mechanic is just so overused, and just not fun to play Going from AC Mirage which I thoroughly enjoyed to this is disappointing for me, I think Ubisoft needs to take a pause on AC for a few years and have their designers a) play their old games b) play every other game in the genre to understand whats good. Find the fun in your games Ubisoft, but this isn't it. PS: I will still probably finish it at some point, as its just tradition for me to complete the games, but this feels like work.

This game left me with mixed feelings. The map is amazing, and the setting is perfect for AC with the whole shinobi clan origin. However it does have some pretty annoying features. ------------ The stupid Ubishit connect window suddenly maximising over the game instance. Nobody wants to use your lame app. ---- 2 Characters, bleh! What sucked in AC Syndicate still sucks now. Kas/Alex and Eivor/Eivor worked well, just stick with one character. Yasuke is not worth playing outside of a mission due to his lack of mobility, in a game whose main selling point is mobility. And there is never any warning about which missions he may be good for. Grinding through waves of chod-tier enemies as Naoe is boring, "Oh but she's not supposed to be in melee, she's supposed to strike form the shadows!". Then stop scripting so many stand up fights. --- Whoever thought of the mastery tier needs to go back to making MMOs. Locking players out of the skill tree to bad the "gameplay time" out is lame. -- The intro to the game is a jumbled mess. Flitting between past and present multiple times early game messes up the establishment of a storyline. Am I playing future Naoe or past Naoe. It would have made more sense to stick with past Naoe, do the foundation of the story and then jump forward to where the game begins. - This is minor gripe, but the sync points are very copy paste. Castle or shrine, maybe a tree if you're lucky. Covering everything in forest and identical pagodas, whilst probably very true to setting, doesn't really give me much of the wow vistas from the other AC games.

For me, it's not the best ac game of the last decade. The spot is filled by Odyssey. If Odyssey is a 10/10, i'd place shadows at a 7/10 almost an 8. Visually it's fantastic. The world looks so natural with the new lighting they have, the interactivity of the world is top notch. Going back to Odyssey, it's clear how less natural the world looks. Still a fantastic looking game in its own right. The changing seasons is awesome, adding how it can affect gameplay. Character models look nice in and out of cutscenes. Animations are top notch, again, in and out of cutscenes. There can be some unnatural movements in side content cutscenes, but not a big deal. It just causes a bit of a consistency issue between major and side content. Compared to Horizon forbidden west, fw is more consistent in character and animation quality for major and side content. Gameplay is good, with punchy and brutal combat. The skill system is much improved over Valhalla, which felt bloated. All weapons feel well implemented with plenty of active and passive skills to go along with them. The final kill animations are cool but can be difficult to trigger all of them, so it can seem like they are repetitive. Stealth is very fun and probably the best it's ever been. It feels thought out and not just, "there". The open world activities are fine and I can say it's the weakest point of the game. There should be less. The world design can be the same, or similar enough, but there is a lot of nothingness that can be removed to make the map feel tighter. Decrease the amount of side activities and it would them feel more meaningful and worthwhile. Also the target page is I could say, too much. Too many targets to assassinate that are basically meaningless and distract from the plot. Maybe saving them for the end game is the better way to do it. It's good to have a lot for the gameplay but for the plot it's too distracting. I thought Odyssey had the best balance and approach to the targets. Writing is fine, acting performances are fine with an okay story. It's enough to stay engaging, but nothing that stands out dramatically. In short, I'd say this game is worth playing, especially if you like ac games. It's a good ac game that is very immersive with its world and characters, but certainly not the strongest in those aspects.

First things first, this is an Ubisoft game, you know the formula it's going to have. If you hate this formula, you won't like the game (why are you reading reviews if you hate all Ubisoft games). Now, this game was right on the edge for me between recommending and not. I choose to recommend because honestly the stealth in this game is the best in the series. Using night and shadow to hide really works well (though it's annoying you can't change it to night other than by waiting). The combat is very similar to Origins, with each character being good at their thing. I thought this really added something to the game, opposed to previous games where your character is just good at everything. Naoe is good at stealth, but until late game you'll want to keep her out of combat if she's outnumbered too much. Yasuke is good at combat but terrible at stealth. Enemies can hear him from quite far away even when he's crouching. Having to choose between them adds a bit of strategy that wasn't in previous AC games. It's also a visually stunning game. Graphics of course aren't everything. But my 4090 was able to run with ultra everything at 4k with about 80 FPS on average, and around 60 in combat with tons of stuff going on. Cutscenes unfortunately are locked at 30 regardless. The story probably would be good but it's very hard to keep up with, and it being completely open and non-linear really hurts it. The main plot lines are easy enough to follow, and probably the only ones you'll care about, but you have to go through so much political "this guy betrayed this guy" filler. The English voice acting is also exceptionally bad. They used the same voice actors for both English and Japanese, which sounds cool, and you can tell they are talented when you have the voice on Japanese. But being non-native speakers really shows when they speak English. The biggest negative is it's just way too long of a game. It's slightly better than Valhalla, but not by much. If you liked Valhalla you'll like this game. If you thought Valhalla was too long you'll probably think this is too long too. If this is the case just ignore all the side missions and run through the main story. I had fun for about the first 60-80 hours, and made the mistake of doing a bunch of the side content. By that point I was burned out and I just forced myself to finish.

The game is fully installed and connected to Ubi connect. But I can't open the game. You guys are so terrible. Goodbye. I hope you go bankrupt soon.

Loved this game. The graphics were incredible, the story engaging, the music at time hauntingly beautiful and the scenery, serious wow. There were many times I just stopped during play to just take it in. Beautiful. I loved getting to know all the characters and getting to know their stories. I did spend most of the game playing as Naoe as I found Yasuke a little ... ummm .. lumbering maybe is the best way to describe him. Not my style of play. He was still fun to play as though and when he jumps from synchronisation points, hilarious. Anyway, you have to play it to enjoy that and so many other aspects of this game.

I think the graphics haven’t gotten better since origins and the writing has gotten much worse. Seriously Ubisoft, did you use an intern to write the dialogue or AI? It’s so disappointing. I’m glad I waited for a sale.

Here's my review of the game (I'll mention Valhalla often, you'll see why) in bullet points: - The game looks great; the water looks realistic, puddles reflect light, and the recognition of vegetation in the distance is top-notch. - The story, like in Valhalla, quickly becomes convoluted because you're bombarded with side quests that are essentially the same in every region (kill X enemies, assassinate person X, etc.). - The world is slightly smaller than in Valhalla and follows the typical Ubisoft formula with viewpoints, mini-games, and tons of "?" on the map. After a while, this feels really tedious. - I personally find it a shame that there's no in-game game like Orlog in Valhalla; for me, it always felt meditative and added some variety. - Later in the game, it's necessary to switch characters, which is always tied to loading times. It's a pity; I would have preferred a system where this happens instantly. - The combat system is fun. While Naoe is the agile one, dealing less damage but being quick on her feet, Yasuke is more of a bruiser who skillfully ignores blocking enemies by spamming attack. I mostly played Naoe since I prefer stealth and her combat style. - The soundtrack, unfortunately, isn't as great as in Valhalla. The mix of traditional instruments and "new-style synth" isn't my thing, but it's still okay. Overall, Shadows is a downgrade from Valhalla but not a bad game per se.

honestly, i played ghost of tsushima before this. if u want a better assassins creed in japan. then ghost is way better. weak story and weak and forgettable characters

This game was mostly fun until those memory block things require those kata with certain keystroke combinations. They are mostly impossible to do because the game lags or requires them so fast that the key lag is so bad you cant do them. They basically never succeed so mastry is just stalled. After a couple of these I'm just done. I'll never progress or finish this due to that stupidity. What a huge waste of money !! Way to go UBI ... I'm DONE!

they tried to make a ghost of tsushima game but failed in every aspect. Little sidemission/collectables they present it in a original way but it gets redundant real fast and the side mission arent necesarily good. the main mission has you travelling kilometers just to talk to someone and then travel some distance again. The combat is defintly (somewhat) unique and maybe something interesting for a certain group of people but I definitly dont belong in that group. the timing is annoying, some characters just spam their best move, without giving you any openings. you dont get the thrill of fighting as I got in GoT. Some of the abililties in the skill trees are terribly explained. some skills dont work and you have to change key binds for them to work. and the movement that got AC so populair is p00p, unless you want to change your keybinds again, then it is mid. for some reason they added a build mode to create your own little community, not a big fan, dont really understand why they added that. imagine clearing out a castle and your rewards are trees and vases. I personally dont enjoy this game, so if youre doubting a purchase this large, I would recommend not doing it. or put the difficulty on its lowest and dont mind everything I just mentioned. It wont be iconic but atleast you wont get irritated. EDIT: the annoying combat is mostly a difficulty thing, if you lower the difficulty to normal or below they stop spamming. sometimes the dogde and block doesn't work because of some hit animation.

first off I have NOT played *2.9 hours* of this game, I can't even get past the intro scene, because I keep getting the DX12 error message over and over again, and I have tried almost everything and all my drivers and graphics cards are up to date further more NVIDIA and ubisoft are no help as usual so I in a seance I have yet again wasted my money on a game that I thought I cold enjoy and play but that is not the case so sorry to say how can I recommend a game to someone when I an't even play the game in the first place.? At this point I don't recommend the game it will be a waste of money maybe if they actually fixed this issue that a lot of people are having it's not just me, then I might recommend the game later on.

Pros: (+++) Decently optimized on steamdeck (+++) Out of all the previous ACs I have played, this one has the most enjoyable stealth (+++) Parkour is so good (++) Naoe animations (parkour and movement) are sick af. Very shinobi-like (+) Yasuke kill animations and skills are sick. Also, his interactions with the environment are cool (ramming through doors) (+) The world is beautiful af Cons: (-) Fragmented missions made me lose interest in the story. (-) English dub was dogsht. Monotone and no emotions. Cutscenes were unbearable due to the dead facial expressions. (-) While the parkour animations are cool, parkour is really limited because of how large the world is. You can't parkour on trees like in AC3 which is very disappointing. Personally, It would be cool if you can traverse from one town to the next without touching the ground or having to use your mount. (--) Forcing a lot of fluff contents (even for a ubisoft game). Why are you making me collect papers to unlock new skill tiers n shid... frick u! (--) the combat animations are clunky, especially on Yasuke. There are no transition animations between each light attack (Compare this to light attacks in Ghost of Tsushima and you will see what I mean). The standard attack animations looked so bad that I thought I was playing 3rd person modded Skyrim at one point. (---) the combat is horrible and boring. If you are playing on the hardest difficulty, it just feels like a chore to hit chunky trash mobs. Also, why do we only get standard attacks after a perfect parry? Please bring back unique attack animations after parries. Overall: Decent game and could be really fun if you just like shinobi shts. Everything else was just disappointing coming from a triple-A game.

Buy if it's own sale, but honestly not worth the full price. I really wanted to like this game. The story is intriguing at times, but gameplay feels like a loop at times. I'd argue that it's not as "grindy" as Valhalla but there are several things this game could do better. I'm not sure if this game is victim of multiple good games coming out recently or if AC just needs to look at changing the formula. The further I got into this game, the more I just looked forward to being over. I didn't even end up finishing some of the boards that actually interested me. I didn't finish Junjiro's journey either because it's just time to move on. Other people might like, but like I said initially, don't waste your money on this game full price.

This game gets boring very fast. The story is also not good, which makes the running around seem not worth it. I also feel that they made the female character so weak that during combat I feel like I need to call the police to report domestic violence. Just buy the Witcher 3 and save your money, or get Odyssey which was amazing.

What you do in the first 10 hours, you will do for the hundreds of hours you can sink into this game. Average ubisoft slop. Dont get me wrong, the first couple hours are great but then its just empty nothingness. Parkour is as clunky as ever, combat is slightly better but Yasuke is just playing the game in easy mode. I like the idea of a second character and i found Yasuke to be rather interesting in the beginning but he trivializes all combat. The open world is empty and boring with no good side quests. The killing of the cult leaders that was a side quest in all the other rpg assassins creed games is just the main story in this one, if you can even call it that. I really hope that this is their last ac game, the series is dead and ubisoft should die with it.

alot of issues with the game, cant change the audio device,lagging. Sad cause i really wanted to play the game but thers too many issues so had to refund

I am enjoying playing the game, however I have a couple pf comments: (Spoilers) The ending comes rather abruptly but it seems that the story of Shadows is not completely told which leads me to suspect that there will be additional DLC's to further continue the story, which is a pity since I consider the game should have ended cleanly. It is a pity that no Japanese mythical creatures have been included in the game, similar to Odyssey and Valhalla.

Bad game, probably the most boring AC game in recent memory. Snooze fest gameplay, forgettable characters, and the game looks mid at best yet FPS tanks like no other, and overall just a bore to try and finish. Yet another common Ubiflop L (what's new?).

Gameplay : 4/5 Art Style : 3/5 Audio (Sound effects, voice acting) : 4/5 (JP Dub) Soundtrack : 3/5 Story : 2/5 Characters : 2/5 Worldbuilding : 4/5 Immersion : 2/5 Replayability : 2/5 Bugs Cleanliness : 3/5 Price/Quality Value : 2/5 Difficulty (1-Very easy, 5-Very difficult): 1/5 Overall : 2,8/5, Okay If there was an option to put a review that is neither positive nor negative, that's what I would put. It's overrated by its fans but also overhated by its haters, when really it's closest to mid. It has its nice aspects and is certainly not horrible, but it's also nothing excellent the way it's clearly flawed. First off on good things, it has clearly improved not just in combat where it's more than just click spamming and sometimes pressing buttons, but also has you focusing on attack patterns and carefully timing your moves and skills, it also improved on the parkour despite still relying on just one button, as you now have to actually look for where to go next otherwise you don't move on, and the grappling hook is also a nice balanced addition to diversify the parkour while not making it redundant. The stealth also has a refreshing upgrade aswell, with the addition of guaranteed assassination, the agonizing level-based assassination of the previous games are now gone if you wish to. On top of those, the setting of Japan is really nice, the worldbuilding is beautiful to look at and engaging to explore, and the amazing graphics accompany it very well. Despite those positive points, it's also hard to ignore the negative ones. The art style is nothing unique and hardly stands out from other games. Although the Japanese dub was good and I would recommend it more, it's because the english dub is very monotonous and hollow to listen to. The same goes for the facial expressions that downgraded horribly, sure they're well done in some scenes, but for the rest that are the most, they're very robotic and hardly show any emotions, instead relying on subtitles to explain feelings, all making the cutscenes very hard to watch. Unfortunately, those cutscenes are also used too often during the prologue, getting out of the way that it's an attempt at making you waste 2 hours of playtime so you can't refund it, the introduction is too long and boring the way it's mostly filled with cutscenes and way less gameplay. The story is also hardly organized in the beginning, making you feel bad for a character you never got attached to, and placing flashbacks at moments that just feel very out of place, all in all making it hard to get invested into the story, despite seemingly having a promising start. Most of all, the gameplay still lacks smoothness and responsiveness, still feeling stiff and clunky to move around, and it has not been worked on at all yet, but that's expected from a Ubisoft game by this point. Overall, it's a game I have mixed feelings about. If you like the modern AC formula then it's definitely great and made for you, otherwise I would absolutely not recommend buying it at full price, but rather wait for a reasonable price drop to try out as a time killer. And even then, there are better games of similar style and genre to play, most notably its competitor, Ghost of Tsushima. Edit : I bothered giving this game another chance and trying it out some more, my points still stand and I regret not refunding this game.

after a 56 hour playthrough i can confidently say this game is pretty good, probably one of the better AC games. combat is solid, theres some nice weapon variety but it can get a little repetitive later on due to how the level scaling works, which i still think is really stupid and arguably the worst part of the modern AC titles. the narrative and characters are pretty decent as far as ubisoft games go, its a bit of a basic revenge story but naoe and yasuke are damn cool enough as protagonists for me to not really care all that much. exploring can get a little tiresome after a while due to how big the map is but the world is really pretty to look at, and the season changes are a nice touch there as well. the side content is fine enough, its mostly just there to give you some extra play time which im okay with. also really big fan of the dead by daylight and critical role crossovers, those are nice inclusions. overall solid game, i think the controversy from before launch was really stupid and all those morons can piss right off.

The game started off strong, i was really getting into it. but now a few hours in and im facing issues like constant stutters, Freeze and loading while travelling on horse, frame drops. on top of that my HUD keeps disappearing for no reason, forcing me to reload my game. For something that is steam deck verified its running poorly on my main pc which has a 3090ti and i'm using an SSD. I tried to look up fixes and reduce settings but the issues are still there.

Garbage of the Year !! I have played all the series of Assassin’s Creed, every Assassin’s Creed game has its problem, but they are still “not so bad" games until Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. Assassin’s Creed: Shadow's plot is boring, gaming system is terrible. As a big fan of Assassin’s Creed, I feel that Ubisoft just regards its loyal fans as nothing but fools who just pay money. Ubisoft thinks that no matter what garbage they pull out, their fan will always buy it. So, it is time to say goodbye to Ubisoft unless they put their focus on making good video games. Review Update after finishing the Main Story Mission: Finally, I finished the main story, and the ending was worse than I expected. The only good thing about Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is that the graphics are beautiful, but the whole world of the game is hollow. Summary: It is truly a disappointing game; it is a shame and dishonor that a big company like Ubisoft delivers such a terrible game, which it calls a 3A game to gamers.

I tried. God did I try. For the record I'm a big fan of the old AC games, but fell off around Syndicate (played and beat it though) I don't even know how to describe this shallow, uninspiring "we have Ghost of Tsushima at home" attempt at a game. First of all, I hate comparing the two. Its not fair to anyone and it really doesn't help sell how bad this game really is to play, especially when the only real comparison between the two is the choice between stealth or not and the setting. Yet somehow Ghost did every Shadows failed to do almost 5 years ago! Lets focus on AC: Shadows though. The world is quite large yes. However, you are not supposed to go off the path at any point really. Dense bushes you can't see through as well as trees, rocks and even steep hills make taking shortcuts or direct routes to locations nearly impossible. Alright so the paths have interesting things in between major cities then to make it interesting? No. No they do not. Maybe a bandit camp, maybe a tomb to raid, but more often there's nothing. Nothing but some random enemies your horse rides past with no issue at all. This is when I check my phone for something more interesting. Okay so what of the city themselves? Well they are filled with "?" icons that suggest there's something of interest. Well you see, they use those markers for everything. Vendors, Hideouts, Castles... Random buildings with nothing there and have no quests tied to them. That is most of the points of "interest" by the way. A collection of buildings that serve no purpose to gameplay, but may be a bit of history to the real life location. That's fine that the building is there, but if you're going to include it and lure me there, it should have something. Some in game event, some loot, or hell even a collectable, but no there is usually no incentive to even find these locations and they are ALL OVER the cities. So you get to the first town and see all the points of interest markers only to realise there's nothing to do except the castle, and then you leave. Okay, but is the story any good? The story hasn't been good, if I'm honest probably ever, but at least since Black Flag in my opinion. One of the main characters has a bit of depth, Naoe, however they did Yasuke so dirty and just kinda threw him in there and said "good enough". The plot is weirdly given in a kinda reverse order, but also all revealed kinda at the end all at once almost. There's some pretty terrible writing and story beats that make no god damn sense logically or even morally. I don't want to get too into spoilers partially because some people may for some reason want to play this game if they can get a pirated copy maybe, but also because yes I could not bring myself to finish this game. Now I paid full price for this bad boy, so I was hoping to get my *checks Canadian wallet* $90 out of it, and it just F*ckin' sucks man. I genuinely wish I bough Ghost on PC and played that for a third time then this mess of a game. (Edit: Fixed some grammar and misspellings. Not all because I don't care that much, just a bit)

This game is a complete embarrassment to the Assassin’s Creed name. AC Shadows is what happens when Ubisoft stares at Sekiro for 10 seconds and decides, “Hey, let’s copy that but drain out everything fun or original.” The gameplay is clunky, shallow, and slow. There's zero fluidity, no real stealth, and absolutely nothing that makes this feel like an Assassin’s Creed title. You’re thrown into endless forests and flat villages with no rooftops, no parkour, no crowds, and nowhere to hide. How do you make an AC game with no f***ing buildings? Assassin’s Creed was built on verticality, stealth, and urban immersion. This is just bushes and boredom. The so-called “duo protagonists” are gimmicky and soulless. Yasuke is basically a brute with a sword and no stealth utility, and Naoe feels like they were added last-minute to shut up fans who still hoped this was an AC game. The RPG mechanics are bloated and meaningless. Combat? Weightless. Repetitive. Unsatisfying. Sekiro did it better, and Ubisoft knows it. And don’t even start on the $130 price tag for “deluxe” trash packed with microtransactions. This game is corporate cosplay, slapping AC branding on a half-baked samurai game no one asked for. They sold you an idea—Assassin's Creed in Japan—and then gave you a lifeless, padded-out tech demo with none of the soul, grit, or finesse the series used to have. Ubisoft didn't evolve the franchise. They gutted it, stuffed it into a poorly skinned action game, and called it innovation. If you love Assassin’s Creed, don’t buy this. It’s not AC. It’s a ripoff in robes.

Regardless of the game quality I'm consistently running into game breaking technical issues. My SSD keeps getting maxed out to 100% causing the game to freeze completely while the UI/world/audio/enemies get stuck loading. This is with a high-end gaming PC and changing the in-game graphics settings doesn't help at all. There are several threads in the bug forums + reddit on the issue, so I'm not alone. The game itself is pretty mid, even for an AC game, but with the technical issues I absolutely can't recommend it to anyone. I regret my purchase.

I 100% completed the game, and I would be lying if I didnt enjoy it even a little bit. However, as an Assassins Creed purist I did not like the game. Yasuke moved like a fridge. Felt like there was no actual story and the one thing I was interested in doesn't have a final point or a reveal. The graphics were certainly good, even amazing if you ask me. The weapons and gear looks nice and all but it just felt to easy and felt like a rushed product. There was also no real emotion with English Voice Actors. (My bad I wanted to switch but couldn't without having to start over) So I personally wouldn't buy this game if you are a purist. If you aren't a purist, you will probably enjoy this game.

I don't know how they managed to fuck up the combat so much after being acceptable to great in every other AC entry. Target lock flying all over the place, enemies not reacting at all to me slicing them up, and extremely inconsistent dodge and parry windows all combine to make for the clunkiest AC combat I've ever experienced. Not that it matters much because 90% of my time spent is just trying to traverse 90 degree mountains covered in so much foliage that I can't even see that it's 90 degrees, only noticing it when I start sliding down and not stopping for 90 seconds. This is the most immobile I've ever felt playing this series And yet, I know I'm gonna be forcing myself through 90 hours of it

It's just not an Assassins Creed game. It really does just feel like a cliche "you're in X time period of Japan!" game. I genuinely despise how they think just because you get a hidden blade with barely any explanation it's an assassins creed game. This game doesn't have "it". The thing that makes you go: "YOOO I'm an assassin within the brotherhood!". I'm not going to say "this is bad because it's an RPG game" because I loved Origins so much. It's bad because you're not fighting templars or wearing an assassin's uniform. You're not like Bayek where the story is leading up to how the brotherhood formed or where the leap of faith comes from. Why is it a setting that I have to turn on that stealth kills actually KILL. Why did they even keep that if an enemy is "HIGHER LEVEL" than you, sneaking behind them and stabbing them in the neck with my blade doesn't kill them and just alerts everyone. You can still find people making videos in Unity and Syndicate of being a "ghost" killing every guard and enemy in a place without getting caught because that's the essence of assassins creed. Who asked for a game that requires you to solve a riddle to unlock every new quest location? Genuinely, you need to figure out yourself where the next mission is. Of course, you turn on the setting that streamlines it but you won't get a bunch of achievements that way. This isn't the immersive ship traveling in AC 4, I don't want to spend an hour to travel and figure out what each mission is. I'm not attached to either main character enough to be invested enough to do that either. if you want to play an assassins creed game feeling motivated to stop the templars and "yooo I'm a legendary assassin" this isn't it. This game doesn't have the things that makes is an assassins creed game, it's just a ghost of tsushima knock-off. I understand they tried to switch it up because the formula was getting repetitive. But it's been 10 years since Assassins Creed Syndicate and I want those kind of games again. Looking back, syndicate wasn't a terrible game. London was awesome. They made a few bad mechanic decisions and the main characters were meh. Can we please stop with this "super big open world, you're an assassin but not really, and you're fighting people similar to the templars"??? And before anyone calls me out for being blinded by nostalgia, I had a weird introduction to this series. I started with Assassins Creed Syndicate, then AC 4, AC Origins, AC odyssey, then AC Unity, AC 3, AC Rogue, AC 1, and finally the Ezio Trilogy. I am not one of the fans who keeps glazing the original games because I played them when I was a kid since I played them literally half a year ago. Please can we go back to that and Ubisoft REALLY WORK HARD on a good main character who won't be thrown away after a single game, with a classic assassins creed story? One of betrayal, high stakes, and an awesome hooded assassin coming after templars on a mission? I mean, shit, Edward Kenway wasn't even an official assassin most of the game and it was awesome. Thanks for reading my ted talk / whine-fest on modern Assassins Creed games I'm just so frustrated I spent 70 bucks on another let down when I loved the series so much.

It is a good game, it's an era everyone wanted for a while. I've finished the whole game without any problems, until... They made an update that added one achievement. When i got back in, i could barely run 20 meters without the game freezing, mind you, i had completed the game on max settings before. Don't release update that will make the game unplayable maybe? Thank god i had finished everything else before otherwise i would not have had the patience. At the moment i do not recommend the game, when it'll be fixed then YES have fun people!

the map of the game is sparse. I played mostly as Naoe since she feels more like an Assassin’s Creed character than Yasuke. I understand he is a samurai, but he’s literally a one way play style. You’re forced to stick to roads and can’t climb or take shortcuts, so there’s no flexibility at all. It makes exploration feel really limited. Both characters stories were good. Playing as Yasuke, the gameplay is easy, whereas it’s slightly harder when playing as Naoe. I would give this game a 7/10.

I want to like this game, I do, the gameplay loop is fun, Naoe and Yasuke have fun combat, the world is beautiful and most of the side content is fun... but the second I open up the bounty board I loose all desire to play due to the sheer quantity of stuff there.

Did you play Ghost of Tsushima and looking for next samurai game? If so, you'll probably be disappointed with this one. Don't get me wrong, game is not bad at all, but it just feels being rushed and mixed up during development many times. TL;DR: If you are looking for samurai game, consider Ghost of Tsushima for story or Sekiro, if you don't mind challenging games. Visually game is phenomenal, the world is beautiful and impresses you every time. But this changes while going outside predefined paths. If you expect that you'll just randomly go off path and stumble upon something surprisingly beautiful, don't even bother trying. Areas outside main routes are just monotone, boring and even buggy. You'll come across many trees which you can't go through, hiding steep hills which you cannot climb and will force you to slide down, eventually getting bugged inside some bush. I tried to shorten my journey many times through the woods but end up wasting lot more time then going through guided path. That's why I mentioned that game was just rushed. It had potential to be best open-worlds.. What a waste... Just couple more hours of designing / coding.... Lets get straight into annoying things. Soundtrack? Sometimes great sometime awful, inappropriate music during cut scenes, some beautiful Japanese melody spoiled with hard-rock genre just sounds wrong. Dialogues? Later in walk through I just started skipping them. Lot of useless information just to fill gameplay time. Quests? Sometimes interesting but repetitive. Also, WOKE was bothersome inside this game. I just met some side character and instantly I could confess him love during our first dialogue? Don't get me started.... I have no problem with sexual orientations at all but forcing character into being gay? Just why.... What I enjoyed? Besides beautiful visuals already mentioned, customization, weapon choices, wear customization, all was nice. I personally enjoyed playing as Naoe much more, Yasuke just feels clumsy and boring... He's just killing machine where you spam light / heavy attack and slice everyone. I prefer Naoe style, where you could enjoy stealth, some planning... But this is subjective and someone may enjoy Yasuke. Meanwhile, story telling definitely gives you situations where one character will be more usable, but there should be more of them.. Overall, I'd recommend getting this game for discount, around 30 euro would be price I'll be willing to pay, I understand, this game was expensive to develop but mentioned shortcuts just aren't worth full price. In the end, I do not think I'll want to play this game again, it just wasn't that entertaining and overall story was artificially stretched in my opinion. But to end with something positive, I consider AC Shadows to be one of those better games among whole AC series...

Well well well , where to start. Facial animations? Still a joke. They’ve been disappointing for years, and this game does nothing to fix that. The story is flat and boring, and turning Yasuke into the main character was a mistake, he should’ve stayed a side mission in my opinion. It’s the same tired engine with a few slapped-on graphical updates. Ubisoft really needs to wake up and stop recycling the same old formula. This engine is ancient and holding the series back. A total overhaul is desperately needed. If you’re expecting anything fresh or exciting, you’ll be sorely disappointed

I've tried to like this game, and to be fair, it's not like it's bad. It just doesn't, for me, measure up to previous titles like AC Origins or Odyssey, or the Ezio games. I'm not exactly sure why, and I've played a good amount of it, so it's not terrible. I just don't find the story very engaging, and the enemies get repetitive after a while. Most castles look and feel the same, and the locations become repetitive as well. It has great graphics, but I have run into some graphical issues as well, playing on a 4070 with 32GB RAM on PC. The framerate is good (around 100 fps), but recently it had an issue with the NVIDIA APP where this game was tremendously over saturated...and it caused all my other games to do it, but only after playing AC Shadows. I've since deleted the NVIDIA App, and that seems to have fixed the issue, but it's still annoying. And there's something about where either the contrast or brightness (which you can adjust) are tough to get right. The weapons are good, but the characters are just, I don't know, meh. At any rate, it's a decent game but NOT worth the price tag in my opinion.

Says it works on SteamDeck but the stupid Ubisoft connect doesnt work. SD users do NOT waste your money.

Good gameplay, bad story, very bad assassins creed game

I am one of those who loves the original Assassins Creed games. I would love to give this game a positive review but I just can not. Pros: -Combat is amazing -Environment looks amazing Cons: -Story is dull -Activities in the game are horrible, copy paste the same castles and outposts non stop -Forgettable side quests - man this is so boring, go there bring this, go there kill the target and that's all I get -Not being rewarded for loving to explore ( as someone who loves to go many places I find it very dull to not being rewarded for doing so) - The optimization.....loading textures are loading for ever and it makes game load slow af. My PC is nowhere slow to be able to handle this game. I am playing it on 4k, 4090, i9-13900k , all SSD. If you want a good assassin combat, by all means get the game but don't expect to do anything than main story, castles and outposts over and over and over again. With big shame I need to give it a thumbs down.

Do not purchase on PC. The is not playable on PC. From the start, the game is trying to constantly load during cut scenes. This causes the audio and visuals to go out of wack. If you play with the settings to see if you can fix the issue, you will have to reload the game, which took 10 minutes to get out of the loading screen. Out of the .7 hours on my record of playtime, only about 10 minutes is in the actual game which is the starting cut scene. The rest of the time is either in a loading screen or in the options trying to fix this mess to be able to actually play it.

This is, quite simply put, not a good game. Not even a good Assassins Creed game. Combat is boring, aside from bosses enemies are absolutely no threat. The world is completely empty. Aside from the villages and occasional bandit camps, there is nothing. No reasons to explore, no resources to gather, off the beaten paths waits emptyness. The whole scout mechanic was a nice idea, but very badly implemented. If I raid a fortress I expect to be able to loot everything. If I have to return 3 times to tag all the resources, because I only have 5 scouts available, that´s got nothing to do with realism, logic or immersiveness, it´s simply a bad design choice. Quests are more boring than ever in an AC game. It´s usually just murder fetch quests. The lack of a system to change ingame time is utterly insane. Why implement "great stealth mechanics" when you can´t even decide on the timing of your assaults? Haven´t gotten that far in the story, but it is just bad. I get the whole Naoe Revenge thing, but aside from that, the masked guys are completely forgettable. Only good part is that some of the armors look cool, aside from that I have not really found anything to actually enjoy here. Playing this "game" feels like a chore, not an action packed adventure in Sengoku era japan. I´d rather play Odyssey or Valhalla again, than spend some time with this one.

Okay, I played it too. The graphics is really nice, but dialogues and the play is absolutely stupid. Like I have no desire to continue, waste of money.

bought this at launch, returned it same day because of the absolute abhorrent optimisation that made it completely unplayable and added to the fact that the game tries so hard to look good even though you cant even experience it due to you having to play it on low(er) settings because of the optimisation. bought ghost of tsushima instead.

I am unable to play this game for more than 15 fucking minutes (which is pushing it) without Ubisoft's shit of a game decided that they need to bless my monitor with a Dx12 error that is completely unfixable. Im sure this game would be amazing, if only I could actually FUCKING PLAY IT. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD FIX THIS BULLSHIT SO I CAN PLAY THE GODDAMN GAME

For a massive game, that costed me over 100 dollars, i would expect it to save files correctly. everyday i have to go back and undo all my progress because it wont save correctly, it will have all missions done and all skills unlocked! not to mention the crashing, and i have a very good computer. Very very disappointed

I am requesting a refund immediately. The Ubisoft account/launcher is forcing me to change my password with Ubisoft. It won't accept any of mine and I can't play the game or any of my old purchases. Ubisoft needs to fix this immediately or I'm never getting another game from them again. I was not on the Ubisoft hate bandwagon until now.

I LOVE THIS GAME! The combat is much more direct, compared to games like oddysey and valhalla where it felt more like you were dragging swords against enemies and not really touching them. Also the scenery is great and the focus on assassinating being back is also cool. Like that you can assassinate most enemies without any trouble.

OK, who is responsible for those decisions??: - enemies stay on ground at all times, if they go higher it is only by stairs/ladders - it is impossible to climb small slopes - selling junk equipment takes a lot of time, you need to select each and hold 'sell' button for few secs each time - there is tons of equipment and engravings dropping, but unless you do some build for stats all except legendary is useless - at the beginning of the game fun equipment dropped, 'after assassination instakill other enemy with kunai' and I thought, cool! equipment that alters gameplay a bit, but no, most of legendary eq is 'you do more dmg at night', boring(I still have that mentioned engraving equiped, because nothing better/interesting dropped so far). - all enemies are not a challenge to fight playing on highest difficulty, the most challenge I had was during some enemies in tournament mission and dead by daylight boss fight. - qte activities - First Kuji-kiri was pretty nice I guess, if there were 3 of them in the game I'd say cool, but so many? Now I hate it - time wasting activities (watch Naoe/Yasuke clap hands and bow at the shrine for few seconds, wtf?) At least you got rid of drone eagle.. Pls make map at least x10 smaller, but activities and quests more meaningful and world that feels more alive. On technical side of things, why the hell is ui sometimes disappearing, like the game is stuck loading something? are you making so network calls after each quest? What is going on oO Even with all those terrible decisions game is kinda ok to play with some podcast on and clear some castles or hunt down organizations. edit: I forgot, Immersive mode is great and something I wished was in AC games since AC1. Canon mode is also great since introducing choices into games that are about reliving memories makes no sense to me. But the thing that in canon mode one of potential allies is not recruited because canonically MCs were not able to convince them is dumb af.

I have only played the intro, every cinematic/ story scene buffers every 4-11 seconds. Its not smooth, voices speak and the screen is frozen. I have clips evidencing this. I also have a clip where I am on like 5hp, I get surrounded by enemies so I start fighting them. They then dissolve, and re-appear behind me and insta kill me. For these reasons, i would not suggest buying the game. Its incredible frustrating. It does have potential though, just not sure i want to give it another chance.

Am I the only person on earth who will openly say Ubisoft is my fav dev? The Division, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, and this game is pretty much a masterpiece IMHO. The intro / chars are real cringe but you'll have to just do what I do and use headcanon and RP that ur char's tears are tears of laughter at the dialogue. Aside from that the gameplay is honestly stunning.

This entry into the series seems to leave you on a cliffhanger. It has me excited to see what DLCs and extras come down the pipeline. There is plenty to do after the game is beaten to make your characters stronger, as well as a bunch of customizable builds.