Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Rating: 4.5/5
Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: PC, PS5, XBS
Price: Rs 4,999
It’s a mystery why it’s taken so long to get a ninja-based Assassin’s Creed game, but we are finally here, and I’m not complaining. As a fan of anime and Akira Kurosawa movies, I am enamoured with the concept of both Ninjas and Samurais. I have felt like Assassin’s Creed games have been in a sort of rut lately; they all seemed to blend into one another, and Ubisoft even went back to basics with Mirage. However, with Shadows, the game has returned to a modernised take on Assassins, but with some improvements.
The story takes place in Feudal Japan, where Oda Nobunaga is in the process of unifying the country’s various regions through war. You get to play two characters in the game: Naoe, who is likely the last remaining ninja from the Iga clan, and Yasuke, an African Samurai. Without revealing too much, their paths cross, and they essentially team up. Letting you play with both characters. Along the way, you also recruit a number of sidekicks to aid in your quest, and their interactions are also enjoyable. The writing for me was a bit run-of-the-mill, but the overall story and premise were good, with a satisfying end.
While Naoe is the classic assassin who kills from the shadows, Yasuke is essentially a brute who gets through with sheer force. Their play styles are entirely different, and getting to play both is a treat. There are improvements in how skills are represented and the way main objectives are tracked, making it much more manageable.
You can also build a secret base in the game; here, you can splurge on cosmetics. Ubisoft sells the most exclusive ones. The micropayments are fortunately not shoved in your face, which is also lovely. The base building is nice, but it’s not something I spend a lot of time on in an Assassins game. You can also recruit Scouts; they are extremely useful. They allow you to explore places and then unlock them for a small fee, and they also help you loot resources. The map is quite large, and exploring it all takes time. There are easily more than 80 hours of gameplay to be had in Shadows, plenty of distractions and side quests to keep you in the game for weeks if not months.
Visually Shadows is also one of the better Assassin’s games. The weather system is actually great, and the attention to detail in the foliage is superb. The character designs, and the cutscenes are also pixel-perfect. This graphical marvel has its limits, though for one the game should only be installed on an SSD; installing it on a regular hard drive will cause stuttering during the cutscenes, and moving fast on a horse causes the surroundings to degrade into jagged shapes that reminded me of the old Tomb Raider. In my experience, things only got back to normal when I dismounted the horse and waited for the game to catch up.
I also love all the large buildings in the game, with their hidden spaces and secrets, which reminded me of Hitman for some reason. I also used the kunai a lot to essentially snipe my targets from the maximum permissible limit on more than one occasion. Though calling it sniping is a stretch. Assassinating someone, like in previous games, also depends on the level; a higher-level opponent could thwart your attempt, and with Naoe, one-on-one fights are not her strong suit. That said, I appreciate the weapons on offer and the system for upgrading them at the forge. It allows you to continue using a single weapon as you upgrade its capabilities to match your level.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, and it is a game I would recommend to anyone who likes the Assassin’s Creed series; however, there are always purists who demand a more traditional experience, like Mirage, and they might not like this one. For the price, it’s a great deal as well because you will be playing this for a long time.