Assassin's Creed Shadows review: A stunning new high point for the series

Let’s get right down to business, shall we? Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the best Assassin’s Creed game in the series' 18-year history. After over 40 hours spent exploring Ubisoft’s jaw-droppingly beautiful recreation of 16th-century Japan, I find myself hard-pressed to come to any other conclusion.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is everything I have ever wanted from an Assassin’s Creed game. Its map is expansive without being overwhelming; it’s full of things to see and do, but knows just when to let players sit back and enjoy the quiet of its staggeringly gorgeous vistas; its combat is bloody and satisfying; its stealth slick and brutal. It is an immensely polished, carefully crafted game that easily sits with the very best of what 2025 has had to offer so far.

It’s often felt to me in recent years that Assassin's Creed is a series suffering from a bit of an identity crisis. Trapped between the open-world RPG formula it first embraced with Assassin’s Creed Origins, and a vague awareness that these games are still kind of supposed to be about a group of stealthy assassins.

With Assassin’s Creed Shadows, it feels like Ubisoft has finally struck the perfect balance between the series’ original incarnation and its latter-day RPG transformation. This is still very much an open-world RPG, with side quests and skill trees and weapons that cause 5% bleed damage, but the soul of what Assassin’s Creed originally began life as shines through - in large part thanks to Naoe, one of the game’s two playable protagonists.

Naoe is a shinobi ninja on a quest for revenge after a mysterious group of masked marauders steal an ancient artefact and leave her for dead in a stunning opening sequence. She is also, comfortably, my favourite addition to the series since Bayek. Stoic, but deeply kind. Unassuming, but capable of opening your throat before you realise what’s happened.

The simple fact that Naoe is a ninja, and not a spartan or viking warrior, means that we’re treated to some of the best stealth-focused gameplay the series has had in years. Naoe can slip in and out of shadows, use tools like shuriken and kunai to distract enemies, and slice vital arteries like it’s her job. Which, I guess it kind of is, actually.

Yes, I did a lot of this in Assassin's Creed Shadows

I spent my first few hours with Shadows simply sneaking into enemy camps and castles to loot and kill, just because I was having so much fun doing it. And I say this as someone who is, historically, awful at stealth and usually opts for the less subtle approach. There’s a poetry to the way Naoe flits through the gloom, bringing bloody death to unlucky guards. This is, I think, the best an Assassin’s Creed game has ever felt to play. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean there aren’t occasional moments where your character jumps onto the wrong ledge, or leaps when you want them to drop slowly.

By the time you’ve fully upgraded Naoe, she can move and maim with alarming speed. And while one-shot assassinations aren’t always guaranteed until you’ve levelled up, you can turn them on in the settings, along with other tweaks to up the stealth challenge, to really get that classic Assassin’s Creed experience. Regardless of how you approach one-shots, though, Naoe is an absolute blast to play as, and her story of vengeance is as good as anything we’ve ever gotten from an Assassin’s Creed game.

Representing fans of the more RPG-focused entries who might not be as into stealth is Yasuke, a slave taken into the service of a powerful warlord and trained to become a samurai. While Naoe can handle herself if her cover is blown with fast, light strikes, it’s much easier for her to become overwhelmed. This is where Yasuke comes in; an absolute tank that can walk through the front door and start hacking away.

We’ve never had a playable character quite like Yasuke in an Assassin’s Creed game before. We’ve had protagonists who aren’t technically assassins, certainly, but Yasuke doesn’t have the skills or training of the lead characters we’re used to. He can climb and sneak, but he stumbles and is easily caught - which makes sense given he spends most of the game strapped into heavy armour. Try to leap from a vantage point with him, and instead of doing a leap of faith he’ll scream and plummet like a stone. Attempt a stealth kill and Yasuke will roar as he impales his foe on the end of his katana.

Yasuke is a joy to play with in a completely different way, offering a marked change of pace any time I start to get a little tired of Naoe’s sneaky antics. His combat is crunchy, tactile and bloody, with limbs and heads hacked off in showers of blood.

Yasuke is a force to be reckoned with

Having two distinctly different playable characters makes an absolutely monumental difference in terms of reducing the feeling of open-world bloat and fatigue one might usually develop on a game of this size. Feeling bored of one? You can switch to the other at any time, with only a few story sequences or optional missions forcing you to assume a specific role.

Naoe and Yasuke’s unlikely alliance and budding friendship is also a pleasure to see develop over the course of the game. And while I found it hard on occasion to keep track of my various allies and their own allegiances and internal politics, the relationship between our two leads kept everything nicely grounded.

While we’re introduced to Yasuke in the game’s prologue, I didn’t actually meet him again - and subsequently unlock him as an ally and playable character - until around 12 hours in. This, I fear, is because Ubisoft has created an open-world that I was quite happy to wander aimlessly as Naoe, soaking in its beauty.

I can’t really overstate this: Assassin’s Creed Shadows is hands-down the most gorgeous open-world game Ubisoft has ever made, and a strong contender for the best-looking game of the PlayStation 5/Xbox Series generation so far. I’m aware fans have been asking for a feudal Japan Assassin’s Creed game for years, but it was worth the wait if it meant the technology available could help render it quite like this.

The level of detail in the world is nothing short of remarkable. Deer hop in and out of the long grass, trees sway lazily in the breeze, and leaves swirl and stir underfoot as you sprint between destinations. I can’t remember the last time I was so happy to just slow down and walk from point A to point B in a game, simply drinking it all in.

Seasons make the game feel completely different

This is helped, massively, by an impressive system of changing seasons that allows you to see Japan in various states of change, showing off a range of excellent weather effects in the process. In autumn, for example, you might find yourself duelling rival samurai in the thick of a brilliant blood-red forest. Summer will see monsoons bring thick sheets of rain and high winds that threaten to rip the trees from their roots. Winter covers much of the map in heavy snow, slowing movement but allowing greater opportunities for stealth.

Is Assassin’s Creed Shadows a perfect recreation of Japanese culture? I’m not the right man to comment. But what I will say is that this feels to me like a game that was made with care, and passion, and one that was given the time and space it needed to be the game it wanted to be. I would urge you not to get drawn in by pearl-clutching nonsense from people whose appreciation for Japanese culture starts and ends at big-titted anime women dressed as schoolgirls.

To head anyone off at the pass: Assassin’s Creed Shadows comes up with a message the first time you enter a temple reminding you that climbing all over torii gates is not the done thing. It then allows you to do so without any consequences if you’d like to, because that’s what Assassin’s Creed has always been. I’ve clambered all over churches and mosques, and swung off the large stone wang of a Greek god just for the lols. This is no different.

Crucially, Ubisoft hasn’t overstuffed this world with ugly quest markers and waypoints. There’s plenty to see and do, of course. You’ll raid kofun (tombs), explore temples, and help out locals with any trouble in the region - one of my favourite quests involves hunting Yōkai - but you’re rarely hammered over the head with any of this. There’s a confidence in the way Ubisoft has stepped back this time to simply allow you to slow down and explore at your own pace, on your own terms.

You don't want to miss this game

Much of the open-world exploration and side activities feed back into the game’s surprisingly robust base-building system, which you can almost completely ignore if you want, or get stuck into making exactly the kind of base you want. Supplies are gathered by finishing certain quests, and various cosmetics can be looted from chests or given as rewards by grateful villagers (just don’t think too hard about how Yasuke is able to get a cherry blossom tree from a treasure chest).

This base of operations builds on the homestead idea that was introduced in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, but gives players much more freedom to do exactly what they want with their secret hideout. I, for example, realised I could fill it full of dozens of cats and dogs, and so prioritised this over useful additions like a dojo for training allies.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows isn’t just one of the best games of the year so far, it’s the new yardstick by which all future Assassin’s Creed games should be measured. This is an epic, sweeping adventure bolstered by jaw-dropping visuals and a masterful blend of stealth, action, and exploration. You don’t want to miss this one.

Pros: First-class visuals, great blend of stealth and combat, two markedly different lead characters

Cons: Can be a little hard to keep track of various plot threads, occasionally clunky parkour

For fans of: Ghost of Tsushima, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Tenchu

9/10: Exceptional

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is available 20 March on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X (version tested), Xbox Series S, and PC. A review code was provided by the publisher. Read a guide to our review scores here.