Since 2007, the Assassin’s Creed franchise has been many players’ go-to source for immersive stealth gameplay and over-the-top assassinations. This blends beautifully with the historical fiction backdrop in each game’s story, where you play as the titular Assassins. For years, fans have been clamoring for a title set in feudal Japan, citing the aforementioned reasons as the absolute perfect mix. In 2025, after a turbulent development history, Ubisoft has finally delivered Assassin’s Creed Shadows. They’ve not only given those fans a fantastic Assassin’s Creed game, but a great action-RPG and stealth sim to stand among its peers as one of the best of its kind.

Our Assassin’s Creed Shadows review will be as spoiler free as possible.

A Proper Historical Fiction

Assassin’s Creed Shadows takes place in 1579 at the height of Oda Nobunaga’s reign in Japan. You play as Naoe Fujibayashi, a young woman from Iga who was born into a crafty clan of shinobi assassins (and the samurai Yasuke, but more on him in a bit). When her homeland is invaded and her father murdered, she embarks on a journey of vengeance, self-discovery, and, along with Yasuke, becomes embroiled in a conflict bigger than either of them.

Something I appreciate the most about Shadows’ storytelling is its desire to portray Japanese culture in accurate ways. One main story quest had me learning the intricacies of a traditional tea ceremony. I got educated on the proper amount to bow and how to hold the cup correctly. Of course, this serves a larger purpose in the game’s narrative. I was undercover to infiltrate a wealthy business man’s operation to locate and eliminate a target.

The game is packed with moments like this. You can observe a sumo wrestling match or honorably end the life of a defeated opponent. The protagonists even remove their shoes when entering a building. This minute attention to detail is impressive, and the game’s many Animus glitches offer extensive background into this era’s customs and traditions. Notably, Shadows offers an immersive language mode, where characters speak their native Japanese or Portuguese. As a self-proclaimed subtitle hater, I highly recommend using this. The English voice acting is extremely stiff and shatters immersion.

The emphasis on cinematic storytelling is extremely well done and feels inspired by, rather than derivative of, classic Japanese films. However, sometimes the side quest cutscenes dragged on a bit. The long interruptions between chunks of gameplay was disorienting.

A Popular Setting Makes it Hard to Set Itself Apart

The overall narrative is similar to past Assassin’s Creed titles. As Naoe, you’re a lowly shinobi trying to make sense of a rapidly changing world. Yasuke, the game’s other protagonist, is one of the many other real-world historical figures you come across. In the game, Yasuke is an African associate of Portuguese Jesuits who came to Japan for mission work. Nobunaga took a great interest in this, and offered him a role as attendant and later the honor of samurai. This is similar to what happened in real life, but it’s called historical fiction, after all. There is little to no historical account of Yasuke’s life after his time with Nobunaga, so Ubisoft had free reign to make the character their own. Eventually, Naoe and Yasuke band together, offering a unique blend of stealthy assassin gameplay and brute force players can choose from.

As you’d imagine, it’s easy to compare Assassin’s Creed Shadows to other works. FX’s Shōgun and Naughty Dog’s Ghost of Tsushima offer similar settings, but this game does enough different to set them apart. It’s not Ubisoft’s fault feudal Japan is the perfect setting for their signature style of game!

Stick to Your Guns

The meat and potatoes of Assassin’s Creed Shadows gameplay is the combat, stealth, and gear progression. Additionally, as an action-RPG, you’ll level up and build out our heroes via the intricate Mastery system. By leveling up or doing certain activities out in the world, you’ll earn points to spend on perks. These are refundable for free at any time throughout the game. Feel free to re-spec and try a new strategy to your heart’s content.

Naoe is the typical Assassin’s Creed protagonist, sticking to the shadows and taking out targets without being detected. If you’ve played previous games in the series, she controls similarly to what you’re used to, but has a ton of options for her loadouts. For example, I primarily used a katana and tanto. Early on, I found a set of legendary armor with a perk that allowed me to assassinate two targets at once, provided they were close together and I had a tanto equipped. She also various tools at her disposal, like smoke bombs and kunai, and can even master a kusarigama.

Yasuke, on the other hand, is a heavy-hitting tank that favors raw power over espionage. He naturally has more health and can take more hits, but moves slow compared to Naoe. He uses a long katana, with the option of using ranged weapons like a bow or teppo, a Japanese firearm.

Play to Your Strengths

Once you reach a certain point in the story, you can swap freely between Naoe and Yasuke whenever you want. If you prefer one character over another, I recommend you still kit the character out with Mastery and gear. There are some story missions that will separate the two and you have to play as one of them. You swap between them in the menu, and while it only takes a couple of seconds of a loading screen, it would have been cool to see some sort of real-time transition to make it more seamless.

Both characters feel great to control, and are vastly different. Parkouring around rooftops and blending in with the shadows as Naoe, taking out enemies with a kunai or stealth assassination is extremely fun. She comes with a bit of a learning curve at first, as getting use to what you can and can’t grab onto is trial and error. With Yasuke, bursting through doors and taking on groups of enemies at once is also incredibly fun. The first time I took control of him and used his abilities I couldn’t stop smiling. As you progress his Mastery, you’ll be able to use more crowd control abilities more often, leading to a ton of dynamic options while in combat.

Your gear compliments each other, and finding the right build for your preference is one of the best aspects of character progression. And yes, you can even transmogrify if you don’t like how it looks.

If You Build it, They Will Come

Crafting your loadouts and experimenting with builds aren’t the only fleshed out aspects of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. In the center of the map is the Hideout, a hub area where players will return to very often. The Hideout is a robust town building simulator and is another crucial pillar of gameplay. Here, you’ll build up various types of rooms that serve important purposes. There’s the Forge, where you can upgrade and dismantle gear, as well as engrave perks onto pieces of armor. Then you have the Dojo, where you can train up additional allies you recruit through various lengthy side quests. Additionally, a wide variety of cosmetic options are available to find or purchase, so brush up on your interior decorating skills.

All of the game’s systems form one symbiotic relationship designed to benefit and inform your character’s combat prowess in the long run. It’s recommended to devote as much time to your Hideout as you do Mastery or gear, as sections of the map are divided by suggested levels. You’ll level up naturally over time, but upgrading weapons and armor is vital for survival.

An Overwhelming Overworld

Exploring the world is another aspect of the game that gets it mostly right. The internet jokes that Ubisoft has overwhelming map icons in their games, and while this isn’t necessarily the case for the real-time UI, the map menu leaves a lot to be desired. All of the icons, save for yellow fast travel points, are white. The map itself is mostly white. So it can be extremely difficult to find what you’re looking for or navigate if don’t have the best vision. Shadows has a breadth of welcome accessibility features, but there’s no way to change the color of these icons.

A handy new feature with the map is the Scout mechanic. Essentially, you have a finite amount of Scouts that can either help you find your quest objective or smuggle goods at the end of the season. An in-game season is a chunk of time elapsed while doing activities around the world, and Scouts refresh at the beginning of the next season. There are a ton of activities to find and do here, and it can be overwhelming. But over time you’ll learn what to pursue and prioritize.

Assassin’s Creed signature Leap of Faith also makes its return, and is as butterfly-inducing as ever. Make sure you do one with Yasuke for a fun Easter egg.

Endless Exploration

The world is enormous, but the game does a great job of sending you in the right direction. You can technically go anywhere at any time, but Shadows’ takes more of an open zone approach as opposed to a fully open world. Each region is divided by a level cap, so venturing into a zone high above your level is a death sentence. I appreciated this, since over time the icons flood the map and overwhelmed me.

There’s also no shortage of high-value targets to track down and assassinate. Over time, your Objective menu will fill up with various factions of folks to eliminate, including the Shinbakufu in the main quest. The game does a superb job of creating a sense of urgency and directing you to side content by having finishing one quest be the prerequisite for starting another. This sort of structured quest design encourages and rewards engaging in side content and helps it feel meaningful. There are hardly any throwaway side quests, and everything carries weight and importance.

The world and environments are breathtaking and immersive. I often found myself just stopping to look out at the ocean or in a gorgeous, lush rolling green hillside. I played in performance mode, and experienced little real performance issues. That can’t be said about the Hideout, which caused significant framerate dips when fast traveling there. Even so, the enormous and true-to-life scale cities like Kyoto ran smoothly, and the bustling populations and unique NPC designed are impressive.

Verdict

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a triumphant achievement for Ubisoft. Its historic fictional setting serves as the perfect backdrop for the combat and stealth gameplay styles the series is revered for. Scaling rooftops in the dead of night as a nimble shinobi is something fans have been waiting years for, and it pays off tenfold. Playing as Yasuke caters to a more casual audience, but he’s well-designed and so fun to control.

The game’s systems inform one another until the very end. They encourage players to explore every last nook and cranny of the beautiful and vibrant Sengoku period Japan. And while the map can get overwhelming at times, a handful of minor performance issues can occur, and some voice performances leave much to be desired, the sum of Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ parts is a well-polished final product that is one of the best games of the year.

Reviewed on PS5. Review code provided by the publisher.