(bright music) - [Jake] Hey, we're back with another episode of "Before You Buy," that show where we give you some straight up gameplay and our first impressions of the latest games releasing. As usual, it's me, Jake, and today, we're talking about "Assassin's Creed Shadows." After years of waiting for the setting that everyone has been asking for, and multiple delays, it's finally here. As the resident "Assassin's Creed" fan at Gameranx, I was able to put aside my nostalgia for the old style games and just jump into this head first, and I wasn't sure what to expect. Well, here's the verdict upfront for you guys, and I'm sorry, it's just not that extreme, but it's the truth, or at least my truth here. It's that "Assassin's Creed Shadows" for me is just fine. For some people, fine is all right. For other people, fine just isn't quite good enough. Life might be too short to play a game that's just okay, I guess, and I fall in the latter camp. Now, have you ever played or watched something that you know is technically good or it's an improvement upon a previous thing and doesn't do anything really egregiously wrong, but it still doesn't click with you? Something you might mildly enjoy, but it's missing something where you may ultimately forget it over time? That's "Assassin's Creed Shadows" for me. Putting some of my personal whining aside for a second, the good news, it is an improvement upon "Assassin's Creed Valhalla." From a technical standpoint, it's in way better shape performance wise and glitch wise. It has way better stealth and the world is gorgeous and incredible. I really think the extra time in the development oven helped this one out, but unfortunately, repetitive quests and side activities, some weird design choices and some real rough story sections unfortunately just drag it all down. When you don't care about the story and you start to feel like you've seen everything after the first 20 hours, you might end up just kind of feeling like you're just going through the motions, turning off your brain and just grinding through another big "Assassin's Creed" game until you stop and ask yourself, What for?" Still, it's an interesting game to talk about overall, and all this just comes down to your preferences. I know some people that put 200 hours into "Valhalla" and they loved every minute of it, so I might not be talking to that type of person, but either way, let's just dive in more. And just so you know, I've been playing a review copy and this footage is spoiler free and is captured running on a PS5 Pro. Now, first things first, it's an "Assassin's Creed" game featuring two full main playable characters, not just swapping between guy and girl. They have real substantial and distinct play styles. This isn't like a Jacob and Evie Fry thing, this is deliberate and they really committed to two completely different feeling characters and play styles. So there's Naoe, the Shinobi stealth character, and Yasuke, the big, strong Samurai, two complete polar opposite play styles. Now, the game starts with Naoe. You learn the ropes of the world with her, and surprisingly, the game commits to not bringing Yasuke fully into the playable fold until quite a few hours into the game, depending on how much you explore and mess with side quests first. So by the time you do finally get to play as Yasuke and switch to him whenever you want, he just feels worlds different. Now, Naoe is fast, really fast. She runs around, she crouches, she slides, she grappling hooks, she assassinates, she parkours, she is the "Assassin's Creed" experience. Yasuke is powerful as hell. He sprints much slower, but he's larger, he can bash through doors, he can take a bunch of hits, deal a ton of damage, but he can barely do any assassin-type stuff and he can't really climb very much. Sure, like I said, he can break through doors, but still, you're very limited in terms of just how you get around. This leads to him being a ton of fun to play as in a pinch when you just want to be strong and chop off a bunch of heads, but it makes him far less enticing to play mainly as you ride around and explore because when you can't climb much in an "Assassin's Creed" game, you really have a hard time getting anywhere or doing anything. So on the one hand, they committed to these characters feeling starkly different, which is cool. I commend them for that, but on the other hand, it just feels kind of forced and weird in certain moments. One of the main ways you progress your character with skill points is exploring temples and climbing around to earn points, and one of the characters can't really do too much of this. They give Yasuke his own version of it, but still, it just doesn't feel like enough. So while they made creative choices with this and they stuck to their guns, to me, it can't help but feel like trying to please everyone, the sneaky assassins in "Assassin's Creed" fans and the newer fans who just love these massive big RPGs and loved killing dudes as a Viking or a Greek warrior previously. So for me, Yasuke was really fun in the select story missions and moments where you just needed to play as him. I actually really enjoyed him for that. The brutality, his special abilities, his ranged abilities, and just really, really good gore and decapitations made it, well, nice in the moment, but Naoe, on the other hand, she's kind of more well-built for what these games still are. the running, the climbing, the jumping, climbing up towers and swan diving off, all that stuff. The stealth also, it's very, very good. It's still "Assassin's Creed," right? So it's still pretty smooth and streamlined and simple, but it just works well here. You get the right amount of actually useful tools, no real filler or fluff with them. You get just the right amount of hiding places just to make it feel fresh enough for this series. Look, this series always gets flack for this and this is still the case, like you'll still just sit and hide in a bush, and then you whistle and then a dumb guy walks over and you stab him in the face and you pull him into the bushes with you, but they introduce clever, creative ways to kind of keep you on your toes, like some enemies just being able to see you coming a bit better, some challenging combat and cool tricks like some interior areas having Shinobi-proof floors and traps that make noises and alert people you're trying to sneak up on. You can also hold the crouch button and go completely prone and just crawl around, kind of "Last of Us" style. It's only really needed in very specific instances, but still, it's nice to have and I think it's a good addition to the series. I do miss social stealth, but I'm glad they didn't just toss some of it in here in a half-ass way, like "Valhalla" did. It's honestly the best stealth in these newer games, I guess since "Assassin's Creed Origins," so I'm giving it a lot of credit for that. It has some issues, like when you go to some of the smaller interiors in the towers, the controls get really fiddly and the camera can get stuck and screw you up. But otherwise, it's all pretty good. It's no "Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory," but I think it saved the game for me personally. It's also way better with the difficulty turned up, just a heads up for some of you. Unfortunately, what you're actually doing can dry up after a while. A lot of encounter areas and bases just start to feel familiar, and you get into that rinse-repeat mode. It's a big world filled with things to do, but you only occasionally find real, genuine surprises, something that delights you or just changes things up. They are here, they are deep in this world, you just gotta dig for 'em. The main stuff and the main side quests on the surface just aren't very enticing. This is because the objectives usually boil down to something extremely simple, like get this item or kill everyone here, and with the game so fluid and accessible and trying to please everyone here, it doesn't really ever want to put up too many walls or limiters to shake things up very much. A lot of the game is structured around groups, main groups and side groups of people that need to be killed. Each requires a mission or a handful of missions to actually find out where they are and meet up with them and take 'em out. This is great when, say, there's a select handful of evil bad guys at the top that you slowly get to know and figure out over the course of the game. We've seen it in other games, and we've definitely seen it in other "Assassin's Creed" games, but the way it's paced here and how both the side and main stuff is often structured like this, like everything, it just leads to you not really caring much about your target. You're not spending too much time, or when you are, it's just few and far between or scattered. It's just really, really muddled and it's hard to stay interested. And I say that as a bad thing because, well, the game does double down on storytelling. Lengthy dialogue sequences, and surprisingly long cutscenes show the game is really committed to it. Unfortunately, nearly all of it fell flat for me, mostly because of the voice acting. You encounter dozens and dozens of characters on your adventure, and only a small, select few had voice acting that didn't get on my nerves. Corny dialogue writing mixed with awkward voice acting is just not enjoyable, especially when the game has lots to talk about. Now, I can shrug that off in a lot of other games or situations, but unfortunately, the two main leads here also fall into that camp, just stiff, awkward, dare I say rizz-less people that I found really hard to care about, and you're gonna be spending a lot of time with them. Naoe's story is a bit generic, where Yasuke's at least actually has some interesting flavor to it. The game has some really cool moments and a few good story sequences that are just peppered throughout and surrounded by a bunch of way more bland, way less excitingly directed stuff. All that stuff gets in the way of a few really cool moments that make the game really feel like a proper "Assassin's Creed" game. All of that good, solid stuff is buried in hours and hours of stuff that, frankly, I found boring. Long dialogue sequences about characters that don't matter that quickly the game moves on from, and again, stiff characters just really hurt the experience. I want a story to chase. I want a vibe or a feeling to play through. I wanna see what's gonna happen at the end of stories. That's why I play through 'em. But I didn't really get any of that here. What I did get sort of is this world, it is absolutely staggering and gorgeously detailed, think "Ghost of Tsushima," but with way, way more people living there, higher population, big cities, castle towns, fishing villages, woodsy hunter encampments, all peppered through a big and very varied map. This Japan feels alive and compelling and really is just straight up awesome. Finding a temple in the mountains as the sun sets is stunning. Slicing away through a bamboo forest in a foggy morning is badass and beautiful. Leaping from a castle in the snow or sneaking through a village lit by candle in the pitch-black darkness of the night, it's all just really cool shit. The detail and the art direction gives life and legit detail to a virtual Japan, while also still preserving some of its more mysterious, ethereal beauty. I don't know if the map had to be this big. There are still plenty of stretches where it's just mountains or endless trees with nothing really else going on, but still, it all collectively just makes it all feel like a big, massive and actually real convincing place, especially with seasons. So as you progress, seasons naturally change. The refreshing alerts and wanted status and giving you a few extra things to consider. Snow can be deep and slow you down, for instance, but the visual changeups are really awesome. Being wanted in a whole area of the map is still chaotic and especially the guys that chase you this time around, they are really over the top and actually pretty cool. But the visual changeups really are the thing here. It's awesome. It's a great way to pace the game because once you start getting bored of looking at it one way, it nearly completely changes to something else. The looks are over the top and just really nice looking. They're not perfect. Every so often, you'll come across a perfectly blossoming, beautiful, bright spring tree in the middle of winter, but it really is a hell of a technical accomplishment here, and that goes for the rest of it because, I can only speak for my experience playing on PS5, but it all ran decent and looked good. And most importantly, I didn't encounter any bugs or weird glitches or crashes in my playthrough. Combat is a fairly simple affair, a few different weapon types with heavy and light attacks and dodges and perfect-timed pares. You can call in allies for quick little assists, almost "Brotherhood"-style, like having an ally stealth kill an enemy from a nearby bush or have a heavy character jumping in to help fight. You also have your own special abilities mapped to holding the trigger and pressing a button, like a big powerful lunge, a multi hits, pretty straightforward stuff. And really, the combat overall here is straightforward if you played "Valhalla" or "Odyssey." It's in a similar vein, but here, the clash of swords is very satisfying and the gore is actually really, really good. Heads lop off and blood sprays on walls and the player attack animations are pretty great, no matter what weapon you're using. Now, in terms of progression, the skill tree is broken out into different weapon types, tools, and assassin skills. You level up and earn points to spend to unlock things in these different trees and they work well and good enough, game-changing abilities and better use of tools, or just a melee damage increase. Either way, the types of things you unlock are very useful and it just feels pretty good to acquire them. Unfortunately, better and better skills are actually locked behind knowledge rank tiers that you gotta open up first, and those require separate points to earn. The easiest and main way to earn them is by exploring and doing stuff, archery challenges and little different meditative things for Yasuke, or finding shrines and temples and exploring them for Naoe. These places either require you to pick up X number of hidden things, like find three hidden scrolls or pray at four different altars with this long pray animation, or engage in a couple of kind of meditative style, but frustrating mini games. And frankly, this stuff is just not thrilling. I like that they want you to explore and really see these locations they created, but it's not all as meditative as I think they were trying to go for. I just want to get the points so I can unlock a new sword attack please. Unfortunately, this kind of deterred me from pursuing knowledge ranks for a while in my playthrough. I went through half of the game with only one special ability attack for one of the characters, and I fared just fine. Eventually, I did slog through 'em to get better, but it just wasn't that fun earning those knowledge ranks. It felt like a lot of things in the game, busy work and a grind. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention is you're also building out your own home base, a hideout like "Valhalla," but more customizable here. Building a workshop to craft and upgrade your weapons, rooms to hold allies and gain extra scouts to use in the field, and just kind of have some fun customizing. I put dogs and cats everywhere and cool statues I found out in the wild. Come to think of it actually, fun loot comes kind of few and far between. When it is good, it is good, like a white sword or a cool, spooky mask, but the stuff you get more regularly is fun things to place around your hideout, and I really like that. I guess technically it's not the longest of these modern AC games, but you're definitely going to be able to spend a ton of time in it, probably at least like 70 hours if you love it all and want to check a lot of boxes off. But towards the end of the story, which clocks in at about 35 to 45 hours depending on how you play, I was already pretty checked out. Bland characters and rinse-and-repeat missions and bases really dried up my goodwill as a player. The awesome story stuff, I'm glad it's trickled in there, but is it worth the grind? That's gonna be up to you. I might be in the minority with this one. I know I've complained quite a bit. Hey, I can't always steer you right. That's why I always recommend to watch other reviews too, but all I can do is talk about my experience playing it and that's a "Before You Buy." You know how this goes by now, I give you some pros, some cons, and some personal opinion. And now, I want to hear yours down in the comments. It seems like when you look online in the gaming world, it's either people's most anticipated game ever or the worst game to ever exist in humanity. I think the reality is probably a little less extreme, so let me know in the comments what you think about this game. Were you looking forward to it? Have you been begging for an "Assassin's Creed" game in Japan? Do you like Tenchu as much as I do? Is that maybe clouding your judgment on all of this? I don't know for sure. Look, let's talk anything "Assassin's Creed Shadows" down in the comments. If you like this video and maybe just seeing some gameplay and stuff like that just helped out, informed your decision, clicking the like button helps us out. Thank you. But as always, thanks for watching and we'll see you guys next time. (dramatic music) (swords clanging) (characters shouting) (characters shouting) (swords clanging) (dramatic music) (characters shouting)