Assassin’s Creed Shadows 17+

The only thing that’s missing is everything I found fun lol, stealth plague poison, stealth plague berserk, being able to call in a bunch of people to have a giant fight or stealthily take out a group of dudes… you can win EVERY fight in this game simply by using the whatever weapon with the chain hold R2 a second and let go repeat even on hardest mode, plus you can scare the civilians in bases and they simply bring you one or two guards to stealth kill then repeat, I just don’t find it fun… plus, no fire, can’t even hold a torch so not only is the fire physics simply gone if you use an HDR monitor you literally can’t see at night lol.. but the object cutting physics are kinda neat and the parkour has kinda improved, it’s definitely better than everything post-syndicate in terms of playing like an assassin’s creed game but it’s still an as basic as can be action game with silly magic power moves that just don’t belong in this series… since they did at least try this time I'll pay a little attention to see what happens but there's a really good chance this is my last ubi game :/

I pre-ordered this game and have recently concluded the canon story mode with 100 hours on my saved file. With that being said, I had my doubts when I first purchased the game because of how much criticism it had received from friends and on social media; However, I can say this is a solid game on my MacBook Pro and a really enjoyable experience that is now more portable for my daily life. A lot of the gameplay can feel familiar to other mainstream games on other platforms, but it does a good job making its own identity and it kept me engaged with the story. The scenery in this game is unmatched and I am very impressed by how optimized the game is when displaying so much detail such as: sharp shadowing, leaves blowing in the wind as you gallop on your horse through the fields, and the highly detailed foot prints in the snow, meanwhile keeping a consistent frame rate of 60 fps or higher. My only issue was that recently, the game had started crashing at random points of my play-through and this began after the most recent update. While this issue is happening, it doesn’t discourage me from completing out the game or doing more exploring so hopefully there can be a fix to that soon.

So I’ve been playing Shadows on a M4 Pro Mac mini, and after sinking over 60 hours into the game I’m still not done. The world of Shadows is beautiful. And despite originally thinking I wouldn’t enjoy playing as Yasuke (because I was more interested in the stealth aspect) I’ve found myself playing both characters a good deal, just because of how different they are. While sneaking around as Naoe is the most fun I’ve had, ending pirates with Yasuke’s Teppo was quite enjoyable.

I know there has been a great deal said about the optimization, but I’ve never really had an issue with the frame rate. My only complaint is that every time I hop off my horse to fight a ronin it runs away from me! lol.

As someone who’s been lukewarm about the Assassin’s Creed franchise in the past, Shadows has given me reason to be excited to indulge in the franchise. I look forward to the expansion that’s supposed to come later this year, and hopefully even more fun things they haven’t even announced. Anything to stretch out my stay in Shadows’s version of feudal Japan.