We’re about two months away from the release of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. This time around the game is finally going to feudal Japan; which fans have been begging for since the franchise’s inception. Last week, we got to go hands on with the game for about four hours, and we got to experience the game’s prologue as well as one of the later missions in the game. From the short amount of time we got to spend with the game, as a huge fan of the franchise, this one feels like a step up from previous entries.

The first thing players will notice about Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the emphasis that is placed on the story. From the start of the game players are given an option to play the game with canonical choices enabled or be able to choose their own dialogue options. One of my favorite early settings the game features comes in the language settings as this game features an “Immersive” language mode which have certain characters speak Japanese or Portuguese to immerse players in the era of late 16th century Japan. This is the language setting we chose, and absolutely hope other games follow this example.

Jumping into the story though, we started in the game’s prologue where we met the game’s two protagonists. We are first introduced to Yasuke as he meets and joins the side of historical figure Oda Nobunaga and later takes part in a battle later on. Almost immediately afterwards, we are introduced to the other protagonist Naoe whose story immediately delivers an emotional impact as well as introduces some very interesting characters and plot threads. When we picked up later in the game, both protagonists were available to use and could be swapped between at any moment, so we were able to tackle the missions with either character, and there were many points where you are given the option to choose which of the two characters you want to play as during story sections. Not only that, the emotional resonance of the story was still strong that far into the game as the cutscenes are engaging and by the end of the mission we completed, I felt a connection to the story that is hopefully maintained throughout the rest of the game. If it does, this will easily be one of the best stories the franchise has told.

The other big focus in Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the exploration. Unlike other entries in the series, you are the main observer and your goal is to uncover and explore the map yourself. The synchronization points no longer reveal parts of the maps and instead show you a few close by points of interests after you sync them that you can mark yourself and explore. Missions aren’t immediately marked either. You must gather clues about your objectives and be able to explore to find the precise location. Sometimes a clue will hint at a general area an objective is in, but it’s still up to you to find it.

The game does feature some optional ways to make exploration easier for those that do not care to fully explore themselves. There’s an optional activatable “pathfinder” that appear on the ground that’ll help you with traversing Japan or point you to an objective once it’s been located. Then, there’s the ability to use scouts on the world map. These scouts are able to pinpoint an objective for you depending on how much information you have gathered. The less information you have though, the more scouts you will need to deploy. Scouts take time to use again as well, so you can’t just spam them over and over to find objectives immediately, so you still have to do some exploration yourself, so you’re not using all your scouts immediately.

Dealing with enemies is also different here as well. When infiltrating areas, there’s no more eagles for aerial views to mark all enemy locations. Now, that’s also up to you as you need to find points where you can scan an area yourself to mark enemies and locate treasures or items. There is dynamic weather changes in the game too that change how you interact with enemies. Different weather or lighting can make you harder to notice or cover up sound you make. Rain causes enemies to take cover under roofs or in buildings or cold will make enemies gather around a fire. Thus, knowing this will make you change up your tactics when engaging enemies in these conditions.

Combat is is mixed up as well in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Combat itself isn’t just constant attacking, and there is more of a focus on parrying or dodging enemy attacks to be able to strike back easily. Things also change depending on which of the two protagonists you choose to play as. Yasuke, as a samurai, is built far tankier than any previous character in the series. He has high health and high damage output, and is perfect for moments in the game where you are storming head first into enemy territory and engaging with multitudes of enemies at the same time.  His downside is that he is slower and more detectable by enemies when trying to hide or get away. Naoe, on the other hand, is more in line with classic Assassin’s Creed protagonist in the combat department. She is the stealthy one and has a toolset better equipped to infiltrate a base without enemies noticing. She also has a grappling hook to give her more vertical traversal than Yasuke does.. Her only downside is that she has low health and damage output, so being sneaky is a must for Naoe as you can easily be overwhelmed when playing as her if you are caught and have to engage with multiple enemies at once.

With a huge focus on story and exploration, Assassin’s Creed Shadows shows a lot of promise, and, hopefully maintains the strong showing from what we saw at this preview event. Assassin’s Creed Shadows is set to release on March 20, 2025 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X.