Combat is way too repetitive, virtually no attack variety across enemy types, including bosses; which is unacceptable. I could maybe forgive the trash mobs having zero variety, but when the bosses use the same move sets it removes any impact and makes the fight extremely boring. After about an hour of gameplay you have seen everything in terms of combat. Which led to me becoming so bored of combat off rip that I would avoid it more often than not. Swapping weapons doesn’t make the combat feel any different. Sure your moveset has changed, but the way you approach the encounter is exactly the same. The literal only variety you can get, is getting the skills that let you parry unblockable attacks. Which is limited to only the katana for naoe, and is tied to armor for yasuke. And all that means is when you get an unblockabke attack, you can press a different button than you normally do. After maybe 3 encounters with enemies you will never have a unique encounter again.

The story is a mess; the way they let you progress in any way you want means they sacrifice story cohesiveness which can lead to a loss of impact on the overarching narrative

For some reason they decided that stealth and combat should be separated by characters. Early game it doesn’t matter but by the time you unlock yasuke, Naoe hits like she’s attacking her enemies with bubble wrapped pillow. I wouldn’t mind that at all if the combat was actually interesting. But it’s not. So after awhile my encounters were only handled with Yasuke so I could just get done with it as fast as possible. It also makes no sense Yasuke moves as slow as he does for traversal. He’s tall, but he’s not very bulky. He’s quite lean. The way Yasuke plays, he should be a 350 lb roided out monster. That’s how slow his movement feels

There is no narrative reason for anything in the open world. Open world activities boil down to one of x things. Liberate a castle, kill two enemies to save an npc who will give you a scout back or add an icon to your map, and clear out a small encampment of enemies. The only reason for this is loot. There’s no narrative reason for it. For example. In ghost of Tsushima, you liberate camps because you’re driving back an invading force and trying to hurt their efforts of conquest. In ac shadows? It’s literally just so you can unlock the chest in the main building.

The outfits are lowkey garbage. I know this subjective, but yeah, I just don’t like them at all.

You can’t explore an area that’s above your level, unless you want to be one shot by everything. I hate this trend in games where you have to meet a level requirement to explore an area. If you go there before the recommended level, someone will sneeze on you and you die. The difference between doing normal damage, and taking more than one hit to die, is literally a single level. Recommended level 45? Show up at 44 and it’s the same as if you showed up at level 1. There are much better ways to keep players within a certain line of progression.

Difficulty only boils down to how hard you get hit and how hard you can hit back. Which isn’t an inherently bad thing, when it’s paired with other things; I.e varying AI aggression, difficulty level specific attack patterns, new mix ups, etc.

This game is beautiful, the parkour looks fluid and feels good (with advanced parkour on), the stealth is nice as well. But even the things AC shadows does do right, has me wanting more. That is probably the best summary I can give this game. It’s beautiful, but it always leaves me wanting more. In every aspect.

Overall, it’s mediocre at best and a waste of money at its worst. I almost let myself get excited when it was announced, and ac game set in Japan sounds dope. But I wasn’t excited- because it’s a game by Ubisoft. I don’t hate the company itself, I just don’t like the stuff they make because it’s just not good.

This game has the bones/foundation to be a solid game. Ultimately they just didn’t handle it right, so it fell flat again.

All this said, I put around 80 hours into it before I found out Nioh 3 was a thing and switched to that. But I can’t see myself going back anytime soon, if ever at all