Multiplat Assassin's Creed - Shadows

[dwwaino]

I can easily ignore the trolls as they're everywhere on the internet, but the only genuine criticisms are the same as the previous games and why that as much as I enjoy my time with them they aren't day one for me anymore. AC games have an identity crisis in that they don't know if they're a third person action or full blown RPG. The problem with this is a lot of features are only half baked and not fully developed and imo the games suffer for it.

AC games get discounted pretty quickly though so rather than day one I figured I smash some other stuff in my queue and by the time I get around to this there should be 10-20% off. Green Man Gaming was already cheaper than Steam at launch and they've been often the same for AAA releases lately.

 

[Cyber_punk]

Put it this way, if you liked Origins and Odyssey, you'll like this. And don't compare it to GoT. Ignore all other opinions.

Interesting I have seen a few people say this when from what I see of the tone and aesthetic of this game is that it looks a lot more serious and dark like Valhalla. Odyssey was very vibrant and humourous and didn't take itself seriously a lot of the time (I mean there were quests which involved delivering dildos to people).

 

[dwwaino]

Interesting I have seen a few people say this when from what I see of the tone and aesthetic of this game is that it looks a lot more serious and dark like Valhalla. Odyssey was very vibrant and humourous and didn't take itself seriously a lot of the time (I mean there were quests which involved delivering dildos to people).

How dare you assert that Testikles wasn't serious.

 

[Sixpence]

Interesting I have seen a few people say this when from what I see of the tone and aesthetic of this game is that it looks a lot more serious and dark like Valhalla. Odyssey was very vibrant and humourous and didn't take itself seriously a lot of the time (I mean there were quests which involved delivering dildos to people).

Yeh, Odyssey is more humourous, but that's not really what makes the game. It still plays a lot like Origins, which is more serious.

Also, a game set during the Sengoku Jidai wouldn't really hit the mark being more humourous!

 

[dwwaino]

Some of the other stuff in my to play queue hasn't been as exciting as I'd hoped and unfortunately new install of Cities Skylines 2 on a brand new machine is copping the same crashing that is plaguing most other CS2 players so I've suddenly ended up with limited to play and I caved in and bought this. Have always enjoyed the series but haven't been a must get day one or FOMO type of game to me however the stuff appearing on my feeds over the past two weeks has actually made me want to play it. It was also nice to put my new FTTP connection to the test. Queued to download, went for a walk down the beach and came home to find it already done.

Now that I've got it and will begin playing tonight you guys can now put up with my posting.

 

[dwwaino]

Was that the longest intro for an AC game? Nearly 2 hours to get through the prologue and the initial setup but I did appreciate the story foundation and so much work has gone into the cut scenes in this and music is fantastic. Meditations are already one of my favourite things. Petting cats and puppies is an automatic 10/10. The best thing though is that it fixed one of my biggest peeves from Odyssey and it was worse in Valhalla. That was the extremely over compressed audio which made combat a little dull. There was no oomph and very little feedback when you made contact. Actually by Valhalla the combat was over simplistic in general when you could just mash the same button to strike through any attack or guard. While AC games will never have the deepest combat early on I like this one as while it's still button mash when you get an opening at least you have to setup that opening. Also the audio and feedback is improved where striking in combat is actually satisfying. It's early for me so still time to get fatigue by Ubi-bloat but this feels like a substantial step forward for Ubisoft but that probably means the next 2 or 3 AC games will be identical lol.

 

[BOMBERS 4 LIFE!!!!]

I love this

 

[Truetiger]

I must admit that I’ve tried some of the other Assassin Creed games, and I found them to be average. However, so far, this one seems quite promising.

 

[dwwaino]

This is really good and a definite progression from the previous 3. It's still very similar to Origins-Valhalla but I do really like the slower and more dramatic telling of the story. Maybe it will become the typical button mash later but at least in the first 10 hours combat is more difficult and satisfying. They also fixed the audio from the overly compressed master in the previous 3 games so there is actually some feedback in combat when you strike.

Also lots of obvious cues and inspiration from Ghost of Tsushima but I don't think there is anything wrong with borrowing good ideas from good games. My only real criticism so far is some of the voice acting (in the English version anyway) is really wooden and sometimes the pauses between lines sounds like two AI trying to have a conversation.

 

[BOMBERS 4 LIFE!!!!]

I had to up the dififcult to expert was becoming too easy and was munching enimies.

Yaskue is so op that I still manage to mo down enimies with ease on expert lols.

I've completed the main quest line just need to complete Yaskue and Naoe stories to roll credits

Overall I love this game i have it ahead of Origins and Oddseey as my favoruite.

 

[dwwaino]

I think this has surpassed Origins as my favourite of the AC reboots too. I unlocked Yasuke last night and have been playing as him tonight. It's so much fun just being able to charge head first into camps and forts with no care as if you're Kratos. Without spoilers I think his introduction when unlocked as a playable character is some of the best story telling in an AC game in a long time.

One thing I really like is how side quests just don't appear on your map and you have to find them. Except for one of them, and Google agrees with me, the Twisted Tree side quest feels disjointed or even broken. When you uncover side quests you get some sort of context and then the objectives board will fill it out. When I stumbled across the Twisted Tree it was a vague note and all of the sudden I had these people to kill with not real backstory. The objective board gave a little more detail but I still had no idea of their importance or who they were. It turns out I mustn't have even read the objective notes properly because two of the targets were "spared" upon completion. I get why but at the time I didn't know why they would do that.

1.0.2 patch tomorrow and that brings a fix to my main technical gripe and that's being able to mass sell/dismantle.

 

[Sixpence]

I'm about 60 hours in, feels like I'm barely half way. Reckon this will be at least 100 hours to complete.

Would probably also have this above Origins and Odyssey.

Agree that the side quests can feel disjointed. For how I play open world games, where I complete areas before moving on, the objectives board gets a bit overwhelming pretty quick. Then when I do move to a new area, I need to go through each target to see if they're in that region. On your Twisted Tree problem, you can come across targets naturally, when you kill them, it pops up on your board with no context until you meet the quest giver. So yeh, that's confusing.

The duality of the stealth, assassin of Naoe and the brute force of Yasuke is done really well. It's genuinely enjoyable playing both. Syndicate never quite got this right. My only (minor) gripe with this is that it's another attempt by Ubisoft to avoid a single female protagonist!

The biggest thing that annoys me is that there's no way to reread notes you find. When you view them in your inventory, it just gives you the description, not the content. So it's easy to miss context in missions.

The sell select update will be handy!

 

[dwwaino]

The biggest thing that annoys me is that there's no way to reread notes you find. When you view them in your inventory, it just gives you the description, not the content. So it's easy to miss context in missions.

This is why Twisted Tree confused me. I stumbled on the note, gave it a quick read and then bang, my objectives board has new targets and I wanted to re-read the note as to why. Maybe those targets just need better description as with other side quests they were either prompted by a random NPC I found, tied into another quest or I could read the objective board and the description helped. I waited to finish Twisted Tree to avoid spoilers before looking it up and that seems like the one that the most people had an issue with. Even upon completion I was still "meh" despite two getting away as none of those people meant anything to me.

 

[Sixpence]

This is why Twisted Tree confused me. I stumbled on the note, gave it a quick read and then bang, my objectives board has new targets and I wanted to re-read the note as to why. Maybe those targets just need better description as with other side quests they were either prompted by a random NPC I found, tied into another quest or I could read the objective board and the description helped. I waited to finish Twisted Tree to avoid spoilers before looking it up and that seems like the one that the most people had an issue with. Even upon completion I was still "meh" despite two getting away as none of those people meant anything to me.

Twisted Tree is the jerk family, yeh? I was the same, I never really got why I was tracking these guys other than they sounded like assholes. I only roughly got the notion that some of them weren't as evil as the others. Even then, the objectives board said they'd be spared, but I still had them as targets until I spoke to them, but very nearly assassinated them.

 

[dwwaino]

Twisted Tree is the jerk family, yeh? I was the same, I never really got why I was tracking these guys other than they sounded like assholes. I only roughly got the notion that some of them weren't as evil as the others. Even then, the objectives board said they'd be spared, but I still had them as targets until I spoke to them, but very nearly assassinated them.

Yep that was them. I got the impression they were dicks but I couldn't work out if it was worth their lives or not. I know it sounds silly when they don't matter and you can just kill them, but when I play any game that I can RP I will base all of my decision on how I'm RP'ing the character. This means I don't do what I think is right but what the character would likely do (makes decision making in games a lot easier too). Just killing these characters for no other reason than the objective board told me to felt really out of character for my Naoe and I was trying to do anything to find context. I noticed the rewards were mostly for Yasuke so in the end I got him to finish the quest.

 

[Sixpence]

I turned on the Guaranteed Assassination option about half way through as I felt I was at a point where I felt I should really be able to 1-shot targets.

Pair that with the Hidden Hand Tanto ability and it's insanely OP!

Might have to switch Guaranteed Assassination back off.

 

[Sixpence]

This Horse Archery can seriously suck a big bag of dicks! This is the worst ****ing mini-game in any game ever.

 

[BOMBERS 4 LIFE!!!!]

The update has been great no more does it lag or drop frames in the hideout smooth like the rest of the game.

Beat the game the other day love the outfit you get for Naoe

 

[weekend at bernies]

Really enjoyed it, ending was a bit blah! leaving you needing to buy the DLC.

 

[dwwaino]

The only area I really don't like is Harima. I get that it's themed the way it is for reasons but aesthetically it's kind of poo as it's all torn up and it's nothing but forts and those annoying hills you can't climb up without sliding down.

 

[Sixpence]

Finished it with Platinum. Just under 120 hours.

Really enjoyed this, would have to say it's my favourite AC game. Never really felt like it was dragging on like Valhalla and Odyssey did. As I said earlier, the dynamic of Naoe and Yasuke worked really well, depending on how you wanted to play. I spent the majority of time as Naoe, but it was pretty fun to just **** shit up with Yasuke. One of the better stories for AC, including side characters.

 

[weekend at bernies]

Finished it with Platinum. Just under 120 hours.

Really enjoyed this, would have to say it's my favourite AC game. Never really felt like it was dragging on like Valhalla and Odyssey did. As I said earlier, the dynamic of Naoe and Yasuke worked really well, depending on how you wanted to play. I spent the majority of time as Naoe, but it was pretty fun to just **** shit up with Yasuke. One of the better stories for AC, including side characters.

my only criticism was the ending didn't feel complete. obviously leaving it for the DLC.

 

[Sixpence]

my only criticism was the ending didn't feel complete. obviously leaving it for the DLC.

I can see what you mean, but I think it completed the story it was telling, but also left it open to delve further into.

Much better than Valhalla did, where I still have NFI what happened with Basim and Layla because I didn't play Dawn of Ragnarok.

 

[dwwaino]

I can see what you mean, but I think it completed the story it was telling, but also left it open to delve further into.

Much better than Valhalla did, where I still have NFI what happened with Basim and Layla because I didn't play Dawn of Ragnarok.

Dawn of Ragnarok didn't really go into it either so you didn't miss anything. Hopefully they do with the future Animus stuff.

 

[Sixpence]

Content roadmap

Assassin’s Creed Shadows Post launch Roadmap Update – A first look at what’s coming next!

Discover what is coming for AC Shadows in the coming months

www.ubisoft.com