I’ve been playing Assassins Creed: Shadows for the past several weeks, on & off due to ‘life’ but it has been my only game in that time (apart from the recent NMS expedition). I have mentioned this gane before, however this post is more of a review after sinking a good amount hours into it.
It is a massive world with beautiful graphics & a nice amount of variety. There are 2 characters to play & both have their own unique skill set to develop. One being more ‘ninja’ & one more the heavy duty warrior. I made a point of using both as I noted several YouTubers favouring the ninja & complaining a bit about the warrior & I thought that they might be missing the point a bit. The warrior is great for open world exploring when unexpected combat occurs, whereas the ninja is great for stealthy sneaking about in castles & such. Switching between the 2 is a simple click & reload so why not? Some weapons are character unique & some are shared. I do like that character appearances are customisable so that you can enjoy a particular weapon or armour perk but adjust appearances to your tastes.
I have found that the cut scenes drag on just a bit but it can be skipped through with the subtitles enough to glean the story at a glance, which greatly speeds things up. Depends on my mood, as sometimes letting it play naturally is relaxing.
Much like @Polyphemus I love to explore & open maps up slowly & methodically so I enjoy that the map markers can be made less precise & the tips give you hints, allowing you to search & explore without being spoon fed locations. In this regard, the custom settings options are great & really allow you to set the game up to match your very own playstyle.
I’m many hours in & much of the map is still unopened & I’ve made a point of dropping into doing little side quests that are somewhat repetative but also allow for a bit of snooping & XP building. Some encounters are quite unexpected & even amusing & eavesdropping on random conversations can sometimes give you little sidequests or tips to your current objective.
The character(s) development allows for gradually opening up more skills with different weapons but to also recycle skill points so you can try new weapons & keep things interesting. I have found the combo setting a tad annoying because an accidental tap can have your character swinging, chopping & murdering empty air for overly long sometimes drawing attention & breaking immersion when it doesn’t make sense.
There are a great variety of locations ranging from basic camps & villages to complicated castles & forts. I have greatly enjoyed the sneaky ninja aspect of finding my way through sprawling castle areas, using shadows & various skills to either slip through unnoticed or take out foes in classic assassin style. The AI for the many enemies is a bit on the dopey side & thus a bit predictable at times but difficulty settings can be tweeked for those looking for more challenging & dilligent opponents.
I have found myself occasionally getting a touch bored despite the huge variety in how the game plays out so I have made it a point to really push the sneaky ninja side of things. It is much more interesting for me to not get caught or seen at all, than half arsed infiltration followed by spamming the fight controls until there is a courtyard full of bodies & the walls are painted red.
The autosave feature is a bit hit & miss so I have learned to make a manual save (& take note of the timestamp) prior to trying to get through a castle area. Annoyingly, the autosave may often save you smack in the middle of an area, which is ok if you are just trying to get through but irritating if you are going for an immersive experience & are trying to pull off a solid one-go super sneaky ninja style assassination.
Finally there is the home base building. I’ve found that the way you get buildings & decor is a bit slow resulting in a need to end up deleting half of it because you can now decorate or build with more favourable items. I think it would have worked better if the decorative decor was more easily attained & earlier. The base structures are intertwined with the gameplay so you must build & upgrade them for perks, however given it is also an interctive aesthetic where you can design & plan out quite pretty Japanese Zen gardens, it seems a bit messy needing to delete & redesign your layout when age & long term moss covered stability in appearance is contradicted by instant delete & build type mechanics. Maybe I’m whining a bit because it is quite beautiful once you get it established but I think it possibly could have been done a little better.
Anyway, thats my halfway through review of AC Shadows.
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