Assassin's Creed Shadows feels like quite a bit more than just another video game release for Ubisoft. With speculation surrounding its future ownership, a sales disappointment in Star Wars Outlaws, and now two delays for its newest open worlder, the stakes are high for the French publisher. This doesn't just feel like something the firm wants to get right, it's something it has to. Having now played four hours of the game at a recent preview event, we are confident it has finally struck gold.

Ubisoft allowed us access to two distinct sections of the title: its story-heavy prologue and a series of main quests that make up an early assassination target. The latter brought with it a full section of the open world, opening up side quests and optional activities.

However, before all of that was the Animus Hub. Perhaps better known as Assassin's Creed Infinity, this is the launcher by which you can access multiple Assassin's Creed games at once. In our preview version, this comprised a menu you could scroll through that listed recent entries and a disembodied voice called The Guide to introduce things. The demo build listed Assassin's Creed Origins, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Assassin's Creed Mirage, and, of course, the game we were there to play. It was not clear if there's more to the Animus Hub than just a launcher menu, so this is something to be investigated further once the full release arrives.

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Having set ourselves up with Assassin's Creed Shadows, the prologue introduces the title's two main characters Yasuke and Naoe with short origin stories set several months before the events of the game. Yasuke, aiding his mentor Father Valignano, has travelled to meet with Lord Nobunaga to request the free movement of their priests in the area. They do come to an agreement, but only upon the exchange of Yasuke's ownership from Valignano to Nobunaga. Six months later, Yasuke is joining the latter in battle as they hunt shinobi leaders and storm castles in a remote Japanese village.

The perspective then shifts to Naoe, who happens to live in the same village Yasuke and his allies are currently burning to the ground. Given the Hidden Blade, she's told to retrieve a special box from a nearby cave. A samurai ambushes her at the location, however, stealing the box and setting up a short revenge tail for Naoe. More bloodshed concludes the prologue, at which point we jump ahead to the open world section of the game.

While there were some stretches of gameplay during the prologue, what stands out most during the roughly 45-minute section is the improvement Ubisoft has achieved in its overall presentation. There's a significant step up in cinematic quality compared to previous efforts, coupled with interesting storytelling and upgraded audio. Past Assassin's Creed games have been plagued by poor sound effects, and this flaw appears to have finally been fixed.

When we reach the open world, the overall structure of the experience presents itself as an interesting mix of Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Assassin's Creed Mirage. It feels like the former in its map and general sense of exploration, with fewer icons on the map and activities and locations that reveal themselves to you naturally. It then mimics Mirage and its target-based mission design, at least in the early-game quests we played. With a main assassination target at the centre, you'll need to complete missions to discover more about them and their whereabouts. The VIP we were after was called The Noble, with the quests leading up to their death providing ample time to experiment with both Yasuke and Naoe.

We began the hunt with Naoe, whose stealth-focused loadout and attributes were perfect for observation, tailing, and stealing. As has been touted in the lead-up to launch, you can play the whole game as either Yasuke or Naoe, or mix and match as you see fit. It takes just a few seconds to switch between them from the pause menu, and the game will also ask which one you want to play as at opportune moments during story quests.

Their differences are already documented as Yasuke thriving in combat scenarios and Naoe being best when no one knows she's there, and this proves true during gameplay. Yasuke can equip long katanas, naginatas (staffs with a sword on the end), and kanabos (big spiked clubs) to deliver more damage and withstand more hits. He's a fierce warrior with various skill trees you can tune to unlock better abilities and stronger attacks, but he's not a cheat code. Combat still presents a well-rounded challenge as Yasuke, with levels dictating how strong enemies are.

On the other end, Naoe thrives in the shadows and tall grass. She has a set of tools (kunai, shurikens, and a few more) exclusive to her, she has access to the Hidden Blade, and she's the only character who can use Eagle Vision to observe her surroundings. Speedy and agile, Naoe can quickly traverse the environment with leaps and climbs, also utilising a grappling hook to either swing across bigger gaps or climb straight up. If she is spotted and ends up in a fight, Naoe has access to katanas, kusarigamas (similar to a ball and chain with a blade on the end), and tantos (a short sword).

Yasuke is best in combat and Naoe is best at stealth, but the roles aren't actually exclusive to each character. It's absolutely possible to play stealthily as Yasuke and conquer combat encounters as Naoe — it's just quite a lot harder. Trying to parkour as Yasuke is nowhere near as graceful; he's much heavier to control, can't jump as far, and needs to grab onto the ledge and pull himself up after a bigger leap. He has to take his time when balancing on narrow ledges, and he's hesitant to jump down from great heights. Everything is done at a slower pace and is less graceful in every facet.

Conversely, Naoe loses a lot more HP from attacks and deals less damage herself when she's spotted. You'll need to make far better use of your tools and abilities to survive, while ensuring your blocks, dodges, and parries are perfectly timed. Naoe can survive combat encounters, just as Yasuke can clumsily traverse rooftops, but you must be far better tuned in and skilled to come out the other side unscathed.

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Open-ended exploration is the other side to most Assassin's Creed games, and in this new entry, the publisher has worked to distance the experience from the negatively viewed "Ubisoft formula". The viewpoints are still there, but gone are most of the map markers and icons. Instead, when you reach a synchronization spot, you'll be able to look to the horizon and scout out new locations to investigate. As you pan the camera around, question marks will automatically appear, indicating there's something of interest there.

These icons — at least in the first region we had access too — seemed to only highlight important structures and settlements; you'd still need to find the quests and activities they contain yourself through exploration. We discovered activities like animal painting and archery challenges hidden away near to these places but we weren't given the chance to mark them on our map from a viewpoint, for example. This way, you're given a general sense of where the landmarks are, but you must go there yourself to colour in all the surroundings.

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Assassin's Creed Shadows features less land mass than its previous RPG entries (Odyssey and Valhalla in particular); if you zoom out all of the way, you can scroll from the top of the map to the bottom and from one side to the other in just a few seconds. With roughly seven to 10 main regions, it's quite a bit smaller, though Ubisoft has made up for that with density. You'll never travel too far without finding something new to do or a more advanced version of a previous task.

How some of these activities tie into character progression is through Knowledge Ranks. For completing tasks such as finding Lost Pages and praying at shrines, you'll increase your Knowledge Rank, with new abilities unlocked in the many skill trees at certain milestones. The feature encourages you to seek such activities, providing both a distraction from the main questline and a chance to gain more power.

Our preview session concluded as we successfully completed the former for Harima region, with The Noble now killed by our blade. The sequence of maybe four or five quests that made up the overall assassination attempt managed to keep up the cinematic quality of the prologue, helping to present a more interesting story than you'd typically see in an Assassin's Creed title. It wasn't clear whether the whole game will follow the structure debuted in Assassin's Creed Mirage, but it at least worked in this early game case — even without the context of the before and afters.

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How that story and more freeing exploration translates across the whole campaign won't be able to be judged until we have the final game in two months time, but four hours with an early part of the narrative was enough to demonstrate how Assassin's Creed Shadows is prioritising curiosity and freedom over guidance and tired map markers. It's not bigger — a good thing for many — and it does appear better than what's come before it. With Assassin's Creed Odyssey under the belt of Shadows' lead developer, that's high praise. It could well be the peak of Ubisoft's RPG take on the long-lasting franchise so far.

Assassin's Creed Shadows releases for PS5 on 20th March 2025. Are you looking forward to getting lost in the new RPG entry? Let us know in the comments below.