Assassin's Creed Shadows Review: Two Games in One Body
Naoe and Yasuke are two genuinely different games sharing one map, and Shadows is at its best when it stops pretending otherwise.
Verdict
The stealth half is the best Assassin's Creed has played in a decade. The combat half is a competent action game bolted to it. Both are worth your time, but not for the same reasons.
Reviewed on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
What we liked
- Naoe's stealth is the sharpest the series has been since Unity
- A world that rewards looking at it rather than pinging it
- Two protagonists that genuinely play differently
What we didn't
- The two halves rarely need each other
- Systems pile up faster than the game explains them
Playing as Naoe, this is a stealth game with real teeth. Playing as Yasuke, it is an action game about walking through the front door. Shadows never fully decides which one it is, and that is both its most interesting quality and its biggest structural problem.
Naoe
The shinobi half is the reason to be here. Light, fast, and built around a verticality the series has been drifting away from for years. Crucially, the stealth is failable in a way that matters — detection has consequences beyond a brief chase.
The prone system and the light-and-shadow model do real work. Blowing out a lantern is a decision, not a flourish.
Yasuke
The samurai half is competent and never quite essential. Combat is weighty and readable, and there is genuine satisfaction in walking into a compound that Naoe would have to unpick for twenty minutes.
But it is also the half that turns the game back into the open-world checklist Assassin’s Creed has been running for a decade.
The world
Feudal Japan is a setting the series was always going to reach, and the version here is unusually restrained. Fewer icons, more looking. The seasons are the standout: they change traversal and stealth, not just the colour palette.
Where it strains
The two protagonists rarely need each other. Very few missions are built so that switching is the answer, which means most players will pick a favourite in the first five hours and stay there — and half the game quietly becomes optional.
Verdict
The best stealth Assassin’s Creed in years, carrying an action game it does not need. If you play it mostly as Naoe, it is close to great.
