Review: Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Identity crisis holds back entry

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There is a custom in Japanese culture called Kintsugi, where pink paint can be used as mortar to repair broken boards or pottery.

The Assassin’s Creed franchise has been broken for a long time. Once an invisible-centric historical novel series about the battle between good and evil, split into a world of game full of close combat and a massive, full of tedious and repetitive activities. With the Assassin’s Creed Shadow, Ubisoft Quebec attempted to stitch the modern structure of the franchise to the roots of its stealth operations, such as a piece of Kintsugi, which, despite being golden in many places, still has many cracks showing many cracks.

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The Golden Stripes are easy to spot – the studio is arguably the lushest and most detailed game world ever, emphasizing both the subtle, meditational beauty and the vicious, heartbreaking cruelty of feudal Japan in the 18th century. The landscape is huge and the terrain is different, and is affected by the changing weather of the seasons. I will never forget my horse and my first time being blizzards, frost and snow in the gaps in my dress and the hair of my ponytail. The attention to graphics fidelity and environmental details is really great.

Invisible mechanics also work like a dream, and over time, a well-crafted upgrade system enables your character to give your character the power to travel through the roof, unsuspecting enemies, kunai to the head, and destroy light sources to keep yourself covered in darkness. The animation is fluid, and I rarely have wrong moves or clumsy hitting a noisy object, so many of the rough mechanical edges of the series are smoothed or simplified.

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These are more positives, such as ADHD-friendly objective boards. But once you really get to know the game’s close to 50-hour main campaign, it’s hard not to notice where the franchise’s dual identities blend into one.

The clearest expression of this identity crisis is the difference between the two main characters in the game. You can switch between African samurai and real historical figures Yasuke and Naoe, a factional Japanese woman trained by her father, who is a shinobi assassin. Yasuke, in the infamous campaign of Nobunaga, began a transnational pursuit to discover and eliminate the secret cabal of samurai, turning her life upside down.

They have both motivational and philosophical appealing characters that complement each other, but the story never explores their relationship beyond their common goals. They won’t be more mechanically different, and it’s generous to say that Yasuke is mostly perfunctory. Don’t get me wrong; he’s an effective savage with real fun fighting abilities, like kicking opponents on the screen like a paper doll. But his tremendous power also reveals the basics and simplicity of game combat. Without duplicate, almost the same battle sequence, this is not Assassin’s Creed, a few enemies attack you in a single file, almost every mission ends in one file.

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Outside of his brutal actions, Yasuke’s athletic limitations make him a poor alternative to Naoe’s athletic ability. He could only climb objects high at his waist, and his clumsy sprint was mainly to smash his body through the door.

The game seems to know this, too, as Yasuke was unable to play for about 12 hours of the story, focusing entirely on Naoe’s journey to avenge his father. So many games are designed to limit him. When I first controlled Yasuke, I rode to one of the many point marks of the race, sat on the top of the castle, just letting him comment that only Naoe could climb it. This type of barrier is the first time I’m getting upset. The third time, I gave up on Yasuke completely. I have no reason to control Yasuke when I don’t need it. First is Nao’s story, and Yasuke is on.

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Yasuke’s combat power and Naoe’s stealth skills are interesting, but they don’t feel like they are fused together. The game world is lush and full of energy and worth a look, but most of what you do in it is superficial and superficial, never focusing on contemporary people like Tsushima’s Ghost. Ultimately, it depends on whether you can go beyond the cracks to find the chain of gold.

Assassin’s Creed Shadow

Posted by: ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Price: $89.99

Platforms: PC, Xbox S/X, PS5

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