Disapprove: Assassin’s Creed Shadows (with Claws of Awaji)

I keep doing it to myself. I keep playing Assassin’s Creed games, long after most of the world dismissed them completely, in hopes that the series will finally find an identity and stick with it, instead of being the epitome of the “Ubisoft game”, as a dismissive description. I’ve played every game that was released on PC so far and the only two I have never finished were one of those uninteresting Chronicles games (I think the final one), and Valhalla, which was so horribly boring, I didn’t get much further than the opening act. Yet, if Valhalla was easily the worst Assassin’s Creed game so far that I didn’t finish, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the one I wish I didn’t finish, instead of wasting almost 60 hours on it.

I’ll start with the only good thing I can say about this game – it looks great. Not in terms of the visual style or identity, mind you, artistically Ghost of Tsushima is far superior (which will be not the only comparison Shadows will lose). But from the technological point, this is the moment of the modern visuals, especially in an open world game with changing time of day, weather and even seasons, where I can say that the developers actually nailed it. The global lighting and shadowing looks perfect as a system and little simple details (animal eyes luminescence at night is just wonderful) are far beyond anything anyone has done before. It’s incredible, will hopefully become the standard Epic will strive to optimize their systems for and will be the mark of visual quality for other games. Though, again, just in terms of technical prowess, visual style is always more memorable and, frankly, Ghost of Tsushima had me enjoying the views a lot more, even though they were technologically simpler and more flawed.

But yeah, that’s it – the only good thing about the game, because the rest of it sucks. Once again, this is a game without a clear identity, goals or even a mood to it, as is the issue with most titles in the series. But the issue got a lot worse since Origins, which itself was solid, because of the focus on huge open world maps instead of dense cities. Where even the long and tedious Odyssey at least had the flair of being the stupid and over the top Greek epic, Shadows has barely anything. There is some samurai and shinobi flavouring here, unlike Valhalla that was just surprisingly boring take on vikings, but it’s so generic and forgettable, you sometimes forget it’s there.

Gameplay-wise, this is a mashup of everything Ubisoft does, without making even a single element interesting. Stealth is boring and barely functions because the parkour has been barely functioning since Origins. And despite updates and changes to it since release, it still sucks and the character will always try to ignore your directions and auto-correct their path into the enemy view, no matter how hard you try to make them stop. Open combat is just uninteresting, but at least it’s faster. Another point in favour of Ghost of Tsushima, where combat was a big highlight.

And then yet another point goes to it in terms of exploration, because in Shadows exploring is horribly unfun. Origins built the far bigger open world with far simpler parkour, yet it worked because most of it was flat – you could climb some houses and pyramids, but most of the time you were just chasing the horizon and the systems worked. In Shadows the world is built more “realistically”, which means if you go off the road, you will have your view constantly blocked by bushes and trees and will struggle to get anywhere. And also find anything, because everything is built mostly near the roads. Do I have to remind you that Assassin’s Creed pioneered parkour in games and the idea that in the open world you don’t need to stick to roads and can climb over any obstacles? And now in Shadows the intended way to play is to follow the roads. How do you misunderstand the core of the franchise so much?

Though, there’s not much of a core left either. Just like other recent titles in the series, the Assassin’s Creed title is here just for brand awareness, nothing more. The modern time/double story of the past and the present using the Animus is just gone. The Chaos/Order conflict of Assassin’s and Templars is shoehorned into the story and cutting it out would change absolutely nothing. They’ve returned the idea of a chart with people and connections that originally was attempted back in the first game, but more or less properly done in Mirage, yet it could just be a simple quest list this time around, because that’s what it is. I mean, “Kill 25 bandits” – hardly an evidence board option. And the whole Animus accessing the past idea is here mostly to sell you on “battle pass”-like crap and other “dailies”, because we’re not even pretending how soulless this product is. It’s absolutely shameless and despicable.

Even if you were to play it as just a generic open world action adventure, there’s not much to get out of it, apart from visuals. As I’ve said – every aspect of the gameplay sucks. The story doesn’t exist, instead you have nonsensical episodes and snippets of a story that never come together into a cohesive narrative. The Claws of Awaji is a bit better at trying to tell a story. But because you get to it after 40+ hours of the absence of the story it’s too late, and because the story in the DLC still sucks, it doesn’t even matter. To be fair to it, at least it tries. There’s a new combat style tied to a weapon that has a bit more depth than most of the game. But at that point you would more likely want the game to be over already as soon as possible and not wish to add depth, just stick to what works fastest. Though you will be seeing the empty slot for that weapon for all of those 40+ hours for whatever reason. There are new interesting systems, more varied ambushes and clever boss fights. But all of them are terribly implemented and are more frustrating than interesting. And ultimately, it’s just more of Assassin’s Creed Shadows and who would even want it?

It’s so horribly buggy too. I mean, since the game was so soul draining, I decided to play the free expansion of Mirage, just to remind myself that Assassin’s Creed games can be good. And Mirage has quite a few issues, but it’s also clearly a lower budget entry in the franchise. So you’d expect the big budget one to work better, but it very much doesn’t. So many things break so often, even apart from parkour and stealthing that I’ve mentioned, that usually attempting to do anything smart instead of frontal assault is pointless, because everything will devolve into combat eventually due to one stupid reason or the other.

I see zero reasons for anyone to play Assassin’s Creed Shadows. If you like Assassin’s Creed games, either actual AC games or solid entries that have AC title in it like Black Flag, there’s nothing in this game to hold onto. No gameplay, no story, nothing that you will care about. If you want a shinobi and samurai open world action adventure that is good, play Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut. I was desperately trying to find at least something, apart from the cool engine tech, to praise and there is nothing. It’s a draining experience that isn’t worth the time or money.