Assassin's Creed Shadows

Assassin's Creed Shadows was provided by Ubisoft for review. Thank you!

I know that Ubisoft has gotten a lot of flak for many different reasons as of late, but there is still something special about the games they create. They still run some of the most iconic series, like Far Cry, and have been able to create collaboration titles with big companies like Mario + Rabbids, but nothing has compared to their Assassin's Creed series. It's an iconic series with one of the most intriguing premises in any game I have played, and the newest entry, Assassin's Creed Shadows, may be one of my new favorites for the series.

Of all the aspects of Shadows that hooked me, the world was probably the part that stood out the most. The premise of Assassin’s Creed fits perfectly into Japan, and taking time to examine the world and architecture was pretty wonderful. Visually, the world is stunning and is enhanced by some of the tech they have incorporated to make it feel more alive. This comes in the form of physics (rolling into doors to break them or cutting bamboo) to the slight grass tilt as you walk across it.

I also appreciate how drastically the world can change when the season does. So many aspects of the world feel different when the seasons change, making running through them more enjoyable. I am a fan of seeing the change from Winter to the other seasons more than anything, mostly due to snowfall during winter, but there’s something to love about each season.

However, I have a love-hate relationship with the foliage. There’s a solid amount littered throughout the world to cloak yourself for assassinations, but there’s too much out in the open world. It ends up discouraging exploration off the roads. I can understand the mountains and other obstacles I may face, but the amount of shrubbery makes it nearly impossible to see where I’m going. There were a couple of times I powered through it, but it wasn’t fun. Sticking to the roads will solve this issue completely, but it's still a bit disappointing that trying to find my way through the woods wasn't as easy to accomplish.

I don't want to go too much into the story to avoid spoilers, but it's great for an Assassin's Creed game. It does the job and stays a bit predictable, but I found Naoe and Yasuke interesting with intriguing character arcs. I was invested in each character and wanted to see the conclusion to their stories and what would happen next. As someone very interested in Japan as a whole, I enjoyed seeing Ubisoft's take on their history.

The contrasting personalities of Naoe and Yasuke and their motifs keep the story interesting. I don't want to go too much into it, so you can experience the story for yourself, but it's one of the better storylines in the series.

If you enjoyed the previous Assassin's Creed titles, especially Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, you will feel at home with Shadows. Close combat is quite on par with those games, giving you a light and heavy attack that can be charged up to deal extra damage to vulnerable enemies or break guard. There is a heavy emphasis on parrying, dodging, and blocking to sneak in strikes to consistently carve out the enemy's armor and health.

Assassinations are a key element of the game, as they have always been from the first entry in the series, but they don't feel as prominent as they used to be. The stealth system is great; using bushes, the tops of buildings, and even the shadows at night to kill without being seen is a treat. However, more powerful enemies can't be assassinated fully and will only take chunks of their health away. There is an option to turn on guaranteed assassinations to make this go away, but I wish this were the default. I miss some of the older games where there was a reliance on stealth and assassination over more action-packed combat. Thankfully, the close combat is really enjoyable, so I didn't mind the up-close fighting as much.

I feel this even more when we take control of our second protagonist. Throughout the game, we will switch between Naoe and Yasuke, who have contrasting playstyles. It was quite nice to play in different ways, with Yasuke not relying on stealth and going all in on brute force. Even though I miss the reliance on stealth, I enjoyed taking a break from the norm and trying something different. There's a certain charm in using gigantic weapons to smash enemies' faces in, that's for sure.

We can spice things up a bit with combat thanks to a range of tools and different types of weapons to use. Each of the different weapons feels different to use with unique movesets, tools like Kunai and Shuriken to kill from further away, and smoke bombs to help you escape a fight.

I loved using all of these, and it just made combat feel even better. Taking on a group of enemies with a combination of Kunai to eliminate some of them, come in with an assassination to take down more, smoke bomb myself away to assassinate another from the shadows, then use my Kusarigama to swing my around and attack the rest of them all at once and slice and throw others into each other. There were so many fights that I just had a blast in and had to readjust my strategy by using the weapons and tools given to me, and I enjoyed it a lot.

The progression systems are pretty fun to play with, too. Like Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, we have a generic RPG take on making yourself more powerful. You gain experience when you kill enemies and complete quests, which levels you up. The more you level, the more powerful gear you can use. You will also get mastery points to give yourself new abilities and passive bonuses in the skill tree, which can unlock necessary skills like assassinating two people at once and special combat abilities.

I also appreciate how easy it is to transmog and change appearance without changing the actual gear. It makes me happy to be able to customize how I look without always having to change out the gear I have grown attached to.

Even though this is a departure from the older Assassin's Creed formula, I enjoy these new systems. I like getting tons of different gear to play around with, and with each one having some randomized stats and unique abilities, I can prioritize the way I want to play. I like the gameplay loop of finding new loot and constantly checking out new gear; it feels meaningful.

Besides the main quest line, Shadows has many side content to dive into. There are castles you can find in the world to liberate and get lots of gear, shrines to find and increase your knowledge to get access to new skills, and many other quests. I like the "objectives" menu in-game, which details quests available to help others, and specific extra targets to assassinate and get extra experience. It also clearly notes where the quests are coming from, so you know if you are working on the main questline, helping the "league" expand, assassinating groups of criminals, and more.

You also have a hideout to expand and upgrade with materials you find worldwide. I like that we can customize the placement and design of the buildings, and they do have a function outside of aesthetics, like the Forge to upgrade and dismantle weapons or the Dojo to train your allies. Placing these can increase your hideout level and give other bonuses like reduced costs for the Forge and expanding what the Scouts can bring back at the end of the season. There are some purely aesthetic options, like lights and pathways, so you can design your hideout.

The content feels much more organic than in past iterations of the game, and there's a solid amount of variety that helps your character grow. It always feels like there's something to discover, someone to assassinate, shrines to pray at, castles to liberate, art to paint, people to help, and it all feels fulfilling. I also appreciate that we can automatically follow people in missions instead of having to manually control the character.

I did encounter some minor issues while playing, like some weird animation glitches or killing someone on the ground, only for them to rise again for me to kill them a second time, but nothing that ever stopped me from enjoying the game. Assassin's Creed Shadows doesn't stray too far away from the established norms of the series, which isn't bad, but it won't bring back anyone who has already made a judgment call after the last few games. Still, Shadows is a bunch of fun and is even enjoyable on the Steam Deck.

Assassin's Creed Shadows - Steam Deck Performance

After Ubisoft debated whether Assassin's Creed Shadows would run on the Steam Deck, I am still shocked at how well it's running. I expected a sub-30 FPS experience, and while it isn't perfect, it holds strong at 30 with solid visuals. It does have some moments where it can drop below 30 in some areas, like when turning around in crowded towns and bigger castles, and the RAM usage can spike a little bit, but it was still playable and never crashed.

In the Steam version of the game, we don't have all of the same graphical options in the base game, with some locked away, but we can change a few things around. We can change the upscaler (TAA, FSR, and XeSS) and the dynamic resolution range. After some testing, I found that TAA with a slightly reduced resolution range mitigates most of the framerate drops and still looks okay. There are slight differences between the upscalers, but I felt that TAA looked better when running around. You can choose any of the upscalers you'd like, but I recommend scaling the maximum resolution down to 35 or 40%.

I wouldn't expect the game to run any better than this, and it's pretty amazing that it's running as well as it is already. I wouldn't expect more than 30 FPS, and I don't recommend using frame generation either. It's going to drain the maximum amount of battery as well, but I genuinely can't see any way to improve performance without some significant visual compromises. You could reduce the maximum resolution range even more or force 1024x576 to make it run better, but it doesn't look nearly as good for not much other benefit, so I would say keeping it as is will be best.

The Steam version of the game also goes through Ubisoft Connect, and while the launcher does have an offline mode, I did have trouble actually getting it into offline mode. Even though I played online beforehand, it wouldn't let me play without internet. I can confirm that if you start the game with WiFi, you can turn it off afterwards and continue playing without needing to connect, but starting the game offline may not be possible.

Accessibility

Assassin's Creed Shadows has a fantastic amount of settings to change. You can toggle the HUD, change walking speed, toggle auto movement and left-handed layouts, adjust controller vibration, invert camera, change deadzone for triggers and joysticks, and change audio volume and music frequency. We can also change text size and color, toggle subtitle details, turn on aim assist, toggle a button to get all loot around you, and so much more.

The game supports 16:10 resolutions and has both cloud saves and controller support. HDR is recognized on the Steam Deck OLED and can be found in the image calibration menu.

Conclusion

Assassin's Creed Shadows is one of the best games in the series in a long time, and is one of my favorites. The Japanese setting fits perfectly within the context of the game, and the world feels more alive thanks to the physics and changing seasons. The combat is very engaging, both in close quarters and when assassinating, and I looked forward to each fight. The story is a bit predictable, but the dual protagonists have very interesting character arcs that make them feel more compelling. Shadows isn't perfect, and it feels like more of what we have seen in previous entries, but the good outweighs the bad.

As for playing Shadows on the Steam Deck, I am truly amazed that it is playable at all. I wouldn't expect anything above 30 FPS with a high battery drain, but the fact that it is playable and mostly stable is quite amazing. It won't be 100% stable, but if you have no other way to play, it will be enjoyable on the go.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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