Assassin’s Creed Shadows

Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows (Steam Deck OK)
Current goal: Bring peace to Sengoku-era Japan

I’ve taken the plunge and embarked on another massive open-world RPG tour through history in Ubisoft’s latest Assassin’s Creed game. Five hours in, Shadows is fun, stunning-looking, and overwhelming in its size and scope. I should be burnt out on this type of game between Ghost of Tsushima and Rise of the Ronin (both are set centuries apart), as well as the recent TV adaptation of Shogun, but instead I’m finding myself feasting on a genre that we actually haven’t had a lot of recently.

I’m actually kind of hungry for some tedious RPG systems in my open-world game at the moment, a thing that felt particularly lacking in Star Wars Outlaws last year for me. Shadows’ two strongest virtues, however, are its lush landscapes, especially forests, and its snappy combat, which is more of a combo rhythm game than the combat in some of the other recent entries in the series. I don’t know that any of this will be enough to overcome the Ubisoft map game of it all in the long run. For now, though, Shadows has my attention and then some. — Ethan Gach