Assassins Creed Shadows on PC / Steam – The DVDfever Review

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Assassins Creed ShadowsAssassins Creed Shadows Assassins Creed Shadows

Assassins Creed Shadows has launched to pretty much a fanfare. Since the very first game back in 2007, many players have said: “Do ancient Japan with the Ninjas and Shinobi”, and here we are with the latest game in the series, almost 20 years later, visiting said era and… just WOW! Simple as that. I could literally just slap a score below this opening paragraph and be done, as I want to get back to playing!

This time around we have two protagonists – Naoe & Yasuke, the latter being the first Samurai of colour, from Africa, based on a real life person. Much like Assassins Creed Syndicate with Evie & Jacob, each character has their own skill tree and play style. So you have a brawler and a stealth based character and it is up to you how you want to play once you get past the opening area. Granted certain missions can be aimed at a specific character with the mission showing under their avatar on the mission screen but you can use whoever you want to accomplish your goals.

Much like Assassins Creed Origins, Assassins Creed Odyssey and Assassins Creed Valhalla, you have a huge open world split into different areas. Once again, these zones do have a recommended level, and venturing your low-level characters into them will turn you into a training dummy for any enemies you encounter! Now with each area you visit, and the recommended level, if you level-up past said requirement, the game will auto-adjust the level where you are currently, and the other areas to keep the challenge, rather than steamrolling through it. This option can be turned off, though, if you so wish in the options. The same can be said for the assassinations: You have to collect scrolls and lore items to level yourself up, and the higher the level, the higher parts of the skill tree get unlocked.

So, say you have a samurai in full armour with a red coloured name, you will not be able to one-hit assassinate them, as they will turn and grab you before shoving you back. However, as you level-up your hidden blade skill, you will initially be able to take a chunk off their health, making a takedown a touch easier and quicker, and at an even higher level, you will get that one-hit assassination. With the accessibility side of things, though, you can enable one-hit no matter the enemy level; my son has enabled this, as he feels a blade in the neck would kill anyone, no matter what!

ASSASSINS CREED SHADOWS Full Gameplay Walkthrough / No Commentary【FULL GAME】4K 60FPS Ultra HD – Gamer’s Little Playground




Navigation through this huge open world is mainly on horseback. Initially, you could only have the map marker, and activate a line that you follow manually, to get to your destination. Getting through some forests can take some doing with only lit torches highlighting a path through, but it is easy to stray from said path. Thankfully, with an early patch, they added at the request of fans, the option to have your horse automatically follow a path to your selected destination, which is cool if that is your thing.

Other than that, you have the usual Assassins Creed parkour which works like it always has, and where all the memes come from. There was one viewpoint I had climbed up with Naoe, and she kept moving round it, or hopping over it with the different inputs, and I ended up falling! It isn’t as bad as the original games, but still there, and as a long time player, I accept this quirk! Naoe also has a grappling hook for climbing up to high places. This is especially handy for getting up to high places, and to do drop assassinations.

The weapons you will use will depend on the character you are playing as, e.g. Yasuke has rifles, pole arms and the katana. Only one main weapon can be selected, but you can set different loadouts with different armour, and either the katana or polearm. Naoe – on the other hand – has her Tanto for up close and personal, hidden blades, and the choice between either the katana, or my favourite from the Nioh series, the Kusarigama (sickle blade with handle ona chain with a weight on the other end) which is great for taking out crowds of enemies. Combat, itself, is more like Assassins Creed Odyssey and Assassins Creed Origins rather than the brute force of Valhalla. You don’t have an Eagle or other bird, but can tag enemies to keep a track on them, which is ideal for Naoe, given her attacks are lighter, because she is more of an assassin, and striking from the shadows.

Now, Yasuke on the other hand, is an absolute tank, heading into combat with heavy samurai armour, no stealth at all, and just outputting damage to multiple enemies with ease. Both characters do have their own skill trees to work on, so you can build them up in the style that matches the way you play.

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I can honestly say that side quests and open world activities are a bit more varied this time around, from the usual open-world stuff to which you are accustomed. The side quests, themselves, from the regular folk in the villages, are fleshed out enough to have meaning, and following a smaller storyline. You have small bandit camps and settlements, there is a job board where you can take out key enemies outside of the main protagonists, old tombs to explore in order to find unique gear, and then there are places where you can meditate, which will give you more background stories as a mission to play through, prior to the events of the game. You will also do paintings of animals, and can pet dogs etc in the open world (there is even a quest to help a dog out), which will then allow you to add the dogs to your settlement.

The settlement, itself, is an integral part of the game, adding dojo, blacksmith, library etc and then upgrading them to make companions stronger, allowing you to upgrade the actual characters or getting more informants for checking out, and pinpointing exact areas where you need to be, rather than just a standard quest marker. It is really intuitive while exploring, finding information, and the more you find will take a vague area like a castle, and make the large circle get smaller with the more you find.

Over the past two weeks I have put countless hours into Assassins Creed Shadows, and for me, personally, it is THE BEST game in the series since Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag from the original series and Assassins Creed Odyssey from the newer games.

Assassins Creed Shadows is truly awe inspiring, and captures the era perfectly, right down to the Nightingale floors – these are missing from both Rise of the Ronin, and also Ghost of Tsushima. I love Japanese culture and history, and a few days before I received Assassins Creed Shadows for review, there was a post about said floors on the socials, which was fascinating.

The performance on PC is outstanding and I am getting a steady 100fps on my system, with Ryzen 7 5700x, Gigabyte Eagle OC RTX4070 12Gb, 32Gb 3200 DDR4 and installed on a Crucial 3D Nand 2Tb SATA SSD running at QHD and ultra settings with DLSS Quality and framegen. I have experienced no bugs or glitches at all, even pre patches.

This game is a must buy!

Thanks to our friends at Ubisoft for the review code.

Assassins Creed Shadows is out now on Xbox Series X / Xbox One, PC / Steam and PS5.

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