Review of Assassin’s Creed Shadows: an ambitious and captivating world that has stuck in the past
The fate of a company, as big as Ubisoft, is unlikely to depend on the success of a game with a Tentpole player. But the company cannot afford another major mistake shortly after the likes of Star Wars: Opened and Xdeter failed to light the world. Ubisoft desperately needs a big hit (and for Rainbow Six Siege X Overhaul to go well). The good news for the company is that Assassin’s Creed Shadows is willing to deal with that.
On the surface is exactly what you would expect: a massive game of Assassin’s Creed, which takes dozens of hours to win. There are so many things beyond the main story, given all the missions and side tasks that the game constantly directs you to. I was rarely bored over time with the game – even during prolonged lightning – which speaks a lot about the care and viewing of Ubisoft developers in this giant world and the story that connects it together.
Ubisoft couldn’t risk the game to work badly from the jump and then spend months by fixing it à la Cyberpunk 2077S Fortunately, in its bigger part, Assassin’s Creed Shadows Works well through my consoles (base PS5 and Xbox Series X) and PC.
It seems gorgeous on my high-end game platform that has the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, 14th General I9 CPU and 32GB RAM. I had zero problems while doing everything at very high settings. The action was carried in the range of 55-59 FPS, with no significant drops for frames-apart for the slightly alarmed switch to Cutscenes, which is played on 30 FPS. Worth noting that Assassin’s Creed Shadows was checked for Steam Deck, but I couldn’t test it there.
There were no noticeable delays even in the midst of the chaotic battle of the three platforms I played. However, I noticed some small visual aberrations of the PS5. In the beginning, as you stroll through puddles in performance mode, water on the dirt track water shines in an unnatural way. This distracted me from the conversation I had with an ally.
After being in the winter, the textures of the grass that was running through the snow, faded and, as I was torn through the countryside. For the recording, this happened in a balanced mode, which tries to divide the difference between the quality and performance modes in terms of visual fidelity to the framework. These are minor complaints, honestly, but for a moment they broke the immersion for me.
The main other strange strangeness is that my horse often crashes when I used to call it. If, for example, I was on a narrow bridge when I called the horse, it could be thrown into the river below. A slight annoyance that is more recently related to how the horse is programmed to catch up with you, but the one that is simple, given some of the many narrow paths you will go.
Two characters with their own stories
The big hook this time is that you can change between two characters almost when you want. Naoe, Shinobi, is a more traditional main character of Assassin’s Creed, while the warrior Yasuke is a peeling samurai who can break through the doors and wear bodies to hide more spots than his colleague. There are missions and interactions with characters that require specifically to play as a character, but for your bigger part you can play like in the open world.
I stepped into Naoe as much as I could. It is far more first and capable of climbing around the fortresses – its embroidery hook is such a comfortable tool – and performs thieving killings. After all, she is the only one who has the fabulous hidden blade. Its movement is extremely liquid, an aspect of the game that is said to have taken advantage of the extra time that the developers had Against the background of his delaysS
Unlike Yasuke, Naoe can use Classic Eagle Vision’s ability to reveal enemies, hiding stains and tastes through the walls. She is also very capable of fighting with her hand, especially since you unlock abilities as a very useful dual murder. She KusarigamWhich consists of a sickle -like realization and a heavy chain -related weight is a large part of her arsenal.
This does not mean that Yasuke is not a funny character either. Tacitly thinning the enemy numbers with his bow or loudly with a Cleaning A firearm, before loading it to eliminate the rest with a long katana, a crushing club and special movements such as inserting numbness into a wall, never gets old.
Both main characters are well written and filled, at least while playing with English audio. However, the synchronization of the lips does not always correspond to what the characters say, the distraction of Cutscenes. As long as I did not play playing the game in immersion mode, with the characters speaking in their native languages in Japanese and Portuguese, it would be interesting for me to see if the problem of synchronization of the lips is so prominent there.
Personal bets with a wider purpose
Nevertheless, the story was strong enough to hold my attention during Cutscenes and the rest of the game. This is a fairy tale that begins with many personal bets for both characters, but expands to include protecting the future of Japan. The writers have made a story with a lot of intrigue and complexity and I liked how they woven the width killer of Veruyu Shadows.
I would say that history and structure are rich enough and complex enough to justify 40-60 hours, that it will take many people to complete this game. (The new scout system will use to narrow the location of a goal after learning that, for example Assassin’s Creed MirageS
I enjoyed playing in Canon mode, which removed the choice of dialogue and left the story to play as designers intend. He is too much a spoiler to reveal how Yasuke is in allies, but the interactions between them and other characters, especially the flirting connection that Naoe has with a figure that has a firearm, for the most part, are compelling enough.
The performers (and God, are there many speaking parts here) as a whole do a great job with the material. But it is a little rattling to hear a character to speak with a simple accent in North America when the bigger part of the cast brings Japanese and Portuguese flexes to their birth.
As solid as the story is as a whole, the structure is a little strange in places. The main story includes Flashback sequences, including one with a combat lesson, which takes place immediately after the action prologue, which breaks the flow, even if they add any color to the main characters’ background.
Frustration
I’m not a big fan of the way Ubisoft has structured the progression systems. Naoe and Yasuke have six trees of skills, all of which are broken into levels. In order to unlock the next level, the player must gain enough points for experience by completing various side activities, including horse shooting with a bow and finding hidden objects covered around the temples. In the vacuum, they can be fun, but it becomes a little disappointing when you have a lot of spare mastery points to spend on skills and you have to run around to honor some shrines or find meditation places before you can acquire some of the cool Naoe and Yasuke movements.
There are some other antique systems in the game. Beating a scope – Samurai, who is hired to pull out the characters – in a fun battle he won me a decent prey, including some legendary light armor. But I couldn’t equip it because my character had not reached a high enough level to just put some new rags. This makes no logical meaning.
Scaling the difficulty of enemy from a region to region, a trope in which Ubisoft has escaped Mirage, And here he feels very tired. This is an artificial way of increasing the difficulty and progression when other approaches such as a more creative design at the level, the new types of enemies and the player manually makes the game more difficult in their settings can make a trick. Given the historical nature of the series, it largely follows that some of the ideas of Ubisoft’s gameplay have been stuck in the past.
In general, I don’t care to spend my time by searching for gear upgrades just so I can have a chance in a new area. This said the benefits of particular equipment can be useful. Sculptures around the castles to get some key enemies to unlock a crate with some valuable equipment, they felt rewarding – even as a little extra thing to do while trying to make my way to the point of view of the enemy Gazon. Castles are valuable fortresses and offer a defensive advantage against the attackers, so it is logical that only the bad guys will be located around perspectives that reveal new points of interest visible to our characters after they have scaled to a specific perch.
Even without this gameplay aspect, scale to perspective is always worth it, as has long been happening in the Assassin’s Creed series. The minimum prize is an extensive photo of the surrounding area and since then Shadows is such a stunning, I made sense to say every point of view in my way.
The aforementioned anomalies of a puddle and grass aside, it is joy to dig around this magnificent game, with your abundant greenery, carefully assembled settlements and a dynamic meteorological system, combining to form a rich, living world that I will not forget soon. The main systems that allow Naoe and Yaskue to stew candles and lanterns to help them hide in the shadows at night were also a smart addition here.
There are many other fun aspects of Assassin’s Creed ShadowsS At one point that reminded me of rhythm The last of us part III was just starting a calm side activity when the killer tried to bring me out. It was a pleasant unexpected twist. Meanwhile, an optional fight against an enemy at a high level at the foot of a flaming tower in the middle of the night felt deeply cinematic.
There is a lot of riding of Assassin’s Creed ShadowsS Ubisoft will absolutely hope that this is a success from the gates and that not many players are waiting for the price to fall. There is a lot of competition to worry about the sequel of Sucker Punch Productions Tsushima’s ghost, A ghost of yōtei., is planned to arrive at some point this year.
There is a feeling that there is enough here to attract both Assassin’s Creed Diehards and the newcomers who may have entered the Japanese setting of the 16th century, but do not know their elbow animus. Assassin’s Creed Shadows There is impressive technical work, great performances and expansive, well -painted history, but unfortunately it is weighed by some disappointing solutions and antique gameplay systems. However, I am eager to continue to explore.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows will hit the PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows PC, Mac, Amazon Luna and Ubisoft+ on March 20. It will be available to the iPad in the future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/assassins-creed-shadows-review-an-Ambitious-and- Captivating-worth-tkes-in-the-the-178
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