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Assassin's Creed Shadows

pendragon1 said:
but why? is it a "this shit sucks but i spent $80 on it so i better play it" situation?
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Sunk cost fallacy probably. But also all assassins creed games, even bad ones, seem good on first try but eventually it becomes very apparent they are actually quite shallow and run out of steam.

Only thing that keeps me on is that I am bit of a Samurai and medieval Japan movie fan and the world Ubisoft built is exquisite for people like me. 👌
 
Open worlds are in my opinion, one of Ubisoft's strengths as a developer. They tend to do it better than most studios do. The worlds generally feel high quality even when enemy AI, quests, weapon balance and other things are completely screwed up. I'm not saying Ubisoft always makes the most out of open world design but they've consistently done it better than a lot of others in my opinion. Both Ghost Recon Wildlands and Breakpoint did a pretty good job on that front. (Despite Breakpoint's issues compared to Wildlands.) I think those games were better off going open world where as Mass Effect Andromeda (like many others) was hurt by its open world design.
 
Dan_D said:
Open worlds are in my opinion, one of Ubisoft's strengths as a developer. They tend to do it better than most studios do. The worlds generally feel high quality even when enemy AI, quests, weapon balance and other things are completely screwed up. I'm not saying Ubisoft always makes the most out of open world design but they've consistently done it better than a lot of others in my opinion. Both Ghost Recon Wildlands and Breakpoint did a pretty good job on that front. (Despite Breakpoint's issues compared to Wildlands.) I think those games were better off going open world where as Mass Effect Andromeda (like many others) was hurt by its open world design.
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Are you referring to the terrian/art design? If so I would agree. Ghost Recon Wildlands looks quite good even today despite being something like 8 years old. The rest, I disagree. IMO Ubisoft open world games are generally quite bland. I think they used to do a good job with things like Far Cry 3 and Assassin's Creed Black Flag (aside from shitty tailing missions, climbing, and poor stealth) but the games got longer/bigger, more empty. Conversations, characters and writing deteriorated.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
I stopped playing a few days ago, probably around 2/3 of the way through the game.
The main story is ok (didn't finish it). Side quests are either very interesting or have no narrative at all (just assassination targets). None of the side content is compelling, like animal paintings and QTE mini-games. Exploring the world is boring after the 1st zone because you've seen everything. All the dense forests and slopey hills make getting around a PITA.

The knowledge point system kills replayability because nobody is going to want to pray and collect scrolls HUNDREDS of times to get their skills. The next time I want to re-play an AC game it certainly won't be Shadows.

The game is it at its best when you're sneaking around stabbing people which only makes up about 25% of the total playtime, though. Unfortunately every castle (fort) looks the exact same so it ends up feeling repetitive immediately.

I said it was better than Valhalla a few weeks ago and I'd like to change my answer. I like Valhalla better than this, I like all of the Layla games better than this. And syndicate, and Unity.
You know what this is probably the worst game in the franchise.
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Appreciate the honesty. Really doesn't surprise me, hence the Metacritic user score that's much closer to a 6 than an 8+. I had a feeling that once the manufactured hype died down, that this would be the consensus.

Heck, that laughably busy and overcluttered map that you posted on the previous page was enough to kill any desire I might have had to play it and infer a lot of what you said here. I know it's a Ubisoft game, but geez. These games really seem to have something against respecting the player's time and intelligence.
TaintedSquirrel said:
I don't think it's a bad game but it's certainly not some amazing masterpiece like some people are saying.
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Hmm, I didn't see any "real" gamers saying that. If anything, sentiments like that seemed to only be coming from the access journos who want to stay in Ubisoft's cool kids club to maintain access to future titles, and the shills. Nearly everyone else who has actually played it and wasn’t simply a cheerleader for it/Ubisoft seems to have arrived at a relatively similar conclusion. Some of its flaws are unique to Shadows, while others are par for the course for an AC game.
 
The open world is the weakest part of the game in my opinion and I wouldn't mind they just cut the area by a factor of 10 and just focus all their attention on that
 
Lateralus said:
Hmm, I didn't see any "real" gamers saying that. If anything, sentiments like that seemed to only be coming from the access journos who want to stay in Ubisoft's cool kids club to maintain access to future titles, and the shills. Nearly everyone else who has actually played it and wasn’t simply a cheerleader for it/Ubisoft seems to have arrived at a relatively similar conclusion. Some of its flaws are unique to Shadows, while others are par for the course for an AC game.
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Some AC fans have been using the classic "return to form" with this game. I think a lot of people are still in the honeymoon phase, and Shadows will age poorly as people spend more time with it.

To be clear I think it really excels in all non-gameplay areas like graphics, polish/stability, attention to detail, cutscenes, animations, audio quality (this was an issue for recent AC games), etc. I think Shadows is the best in the series for most of those.
But where it really falls flat is everything that involves actually playing the game. Aside from the stealth mechanics, it's all pretty disappointing compared to past games.

I think if you just pop into the game and take a quick tour around Japan you can be easily impressed by all the things Ubisoft has improved. But it seems like they spent so much time improving those things, they uhh, forgot to work on the game mechanics.
 
Dan_D said:
Yes I am. As I said, Ubisoft doesn't always utilize these open worlds properly, but I'd argue the Ghost Recon games made good use of it. Not perfect, but better than most.
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Ubisoft seemingly has an army of talented environmental artists, which is unfortunate considering they waste that talent on mediocre games. This nanite like technology in this game would be amazing to see in a good open world game. From the sound of things this seems to be more of the same bland Ubisoft writing, quest design, and grinding/gating. Which is too bad they debuted this tech in a game that seems quite underwhelming.
 
Ranulfo said:
Did you turn on guaranteed assassinations? Apparently that is off by default. I've seen a few people complain about this in reviews and posts.

https://gameranx.com/features/id/532696/article/assassins-creed-shadows-change-these-settings-first/
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It's unnecessary, there are enough skills and item stats to boost assassination damage easily.
It took me about 5-10 hours of playtime before I was able to 1-shot every enemy except a few of the boss assassination targets. It stayed that way for the rest of my playthrough.

In previous games you could use the bow and abilities to complement your assassinations but you can't do that in Shadows. Hitting an enemy with a kunai instantly puts them into combat with you, even if you're hidden. Lame.
Heightened Senses and Hidden Hand have temporary damage boosts but I never noticed a difference when I tried it.

Also, guaranteed assassinations turns off denials which is a fun mechanic.
 
Executive director and video game industry analyst at Circana Mat Piscatella took to BlueSky on Monday and announced that AC Shadows has stayed in the top spot for weekly game sales in the United States since it launched on March 20, 2025...Piscatella also confirmed that Assassin's Creed Shadows is now the second-best-selling game in the United States for 2025, trailing behind Capcom's smash success to start the year, Monster Hunter Wilds
 
Lateralus said:
Heck, that laughably busy and overcluttered map that you posted on the previous page was enough to kill any desire I might have had to play it and infer a lot of what you said here. I know it's a Ubisoft game, but geez. These games really seem to have something against respecting the player's time and intelligence.
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I recall the previews were saying the map was less cluttered. I also recall the marketing hype directly from Ubisoft where they had videos explaining basic gameplay that previous entries had, and which are completely standard for games in the genre. Yet they were trying to pass it off as some reinvention of the series. Not surprisingly, the game seems to have turned out to essentially be the same as Odyssey and Valhalla, maybe just a bit shorter. Again the previewers were likely told to say certain things.
 
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