- Aluminum Christmas Trees: At first, some were confused and annoyed about the game centering on an African man, who was presumed to be fictional, in Japan during the Sengoku Period, but Yasuke actually was a real person
. However, due to very little confirmed information about him, it remains a huge debate among many whether he was officially a samurai or not. On the other hand, he was Nobunaga's sword-bearer, making him a very trusted advisor. - Captain Obvious Reveal: After eliminating three of her targets, Naoe is led to believe that Oda Nobunaga is the leader of the Shinbakufu and sets her sights on him less than a quarter into the game. However, even without extensive knowledge of Japanese history, it quickly becomes apparent to players that Nobunaga is not the true “Horseman” she seeks. In reality, Naoe has been manipulated by Akechi Mitsuhide, a key member of the Shinbakufu, who is using her to further his own agenda.
- Common Knowledge: A number of memes mocking the game for featuring a black protagonist in feudal Japan point out how stealth is a core feature of the franchise. While it is true that guards in the previous games tend to be dumber than a sack of bricks and Yasuke would stick out like a sore thumb in stealthy scenarios, pre-release materials show Yasuke as an armored brawler with the standard blades of a samurai, with Naoe being a stealthy shinobi who lacks Yasuke's direct combat skills. In short, Yasuke would stick out in an earlier AC game, but his focus on combat here makes that joke a moot point. Additionally, the type of stealth relevant to the complaint, social stealth, has been a minor mechanic at best in the mainline titles from Origins onward, which have much more of an emphasis on infiltration stealth, in which the aim is not to be seen at all.
- Demonic Spiders: Ronin. The thing about them isn't that they're more intelligent and more difficult than most other enemies that makes them such a pain to deal with (even though they comfortably are on both fronts), it's that they attack you on-sight, regardless of where you are. It doesn't matter if you're in the open wilderness or in the middle of a crowded city, Ronins will spot you from a mile away, attracting unwanted attention from the local guards and throwing your plans off. They're like a not as difficult version of the Phylakaes from Assassin's Creed Origins, except far, far more frequent to make up for them being less tanky.
- Friendly Fandoms: With Ghost of Tsushima and its sequel Ghost of Yōtei due to the similar gameplay and being set in pre-Meiji Japan.
- Memetic Badass: The controversy over Yasuke being a protagonist has caused him to completely overshadow Naoe in nearly all discussions of the game to the point that it seems her entire existence has been forgotten. This led to jokes that, as a ninja, Naoe is so stealthy that even the audience fails to notice her.
- Nightmare Fuel:
- The game doesn't exactly shy away from the brutality the historical samurai were capable of, as it's a common occurrence for Naoe and Yasuke to come across crucified prisoners and rows of severed heads obtained from headhunting at camps.Tomiko: Where would you like to display your heads?
Yasuke: ... My heads?
Tomiko: Yes. I know you samurai like to collect your enemies' heads.
Yasuke: ... I don't do that. - "The Butterfly Collector" questchain is a nightmare for anyone with children. The questchain starts off simple enough; a woman making a game of kids finding origami butterflies asks either Naoe or Yasuke to collect them since she can't get any kids to play. Sounds innocent, right? Then you find notes detailing how someone has been kidnapping kids around Osaka, and that the kidnappers are using the origami butterflies to communicate. The ringleader, Kocho, is no less disturbing, especially in her death throes, where she says how beautiful the children's deaths would've been as they're eaten by her butterfly, lined in the flower fields.
- "The Youkai" questline tasks Naoe and Yasuke with investigating supposed youkai sightings across Japan. For the most part, it's a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax with some individuals being mistaken for youkai due to their quirks (a woman has the likeness of Oshiroi Baba and is constantly getting plastered to relive the happier moments of her life and the Suika no Bakemono is just a farmer dueling another farmer to prove his crops are better). Then you return to the quest giver and discover the woman you saved from the supposed Taka Nyudo killed Mamushi and reveals herself to be the Ao Andon, an actual youkai born from people's fear and terror. While certainly not the first supernatural being to appear in the series, it's still creepy.
- The game doesn't exactly shy away from the brutality the historical samurai were capable of, as it's a common occurrence for Naoe and Yasuke to come across crucified prisoners and rows of severed heads obtained from headhunting at camps.
- No Such Thing as Bad Publicity:
- The game noticeably got trashed by some in Japan for various historical inaccuracies, with a petition by far-right fringe political party Mintsuku (formerly the NHK party)* even making it to the Japanese Diet to complain about the game's portrayal of their culture, although this was dismissed out of merit. Despite this, Shadows topped the pre-order charts in Amazon Japan when the game first was announced
. - Despite all the controversy surrounding Shadows, upon release it managed to surpass the launch numbers of both Origins and Odyssey, making it the second most successful launch in the series behind Valhalla. Ubisoft has even admitted that Valhalla's unique sales figures were mostly the result of the "perfect storm" in which it released (Right during the pandemic when most people were in lockdown, being one of the first major launch titles for the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series Consoles, and right around the holidays). Were it not for those unique and non-replicable conditions, it's possible that Shadows could have been the number one game in the entire franchise.
- The game noticeably got trashed by some in Japan for various historical inaccuracies, with a petition by far-right fringe political party Mintsuku (formerly the NHK party)* even making it to the Japanese Diet to complain about the game's portrayal of their culture, although this was dismissed out of merit. Despite this, Shadows topped the pre-order charts in Amazon Japan when the game first was announced
- Older Than They Think:
- Shadows is not the first time the Assassin's Creed series has visited the Sengoku period, as Assassin Yamauchi Taka in Memories assassinated Oda Nobunaga to acquire his Sword of Eden during the chaos of the Honno-ji Incident, and would later on assassinate Toyotomi Hideyoshi. However, this game explicitly de-canonizes at least that section of Memories by how it treats Nobunaga, so the return is largely irrelevant.
- While Yasuke is the first real-world historical figure to be a protagonist in an Assassin's Creed game, he isn't the franchise's first playable real-world historical figure. Assassin's Creed Syndicate's Jack the Ripper DLC lets you play as the titular serial killer, while Assassin's Creed: Odyssey opens with you as King Leonidas.
- Assassin's Creed games have starred characters who weren't native to the historical setting before, with Ezio traveling to Constantinople in Assassin's Creed: Revelations and the Norse warrior Eivor settling in England being central to the plot of Assassin's Creed: Valhalla.
- This isn't the first video game that features Yasuke, particularly as a samurai. He first appeared in Nobunaga's Ambition as a minor vassal of Nobunaga. He appeared again in the 2017 Action RPG, Nioh, featuring another Western Samurai William Adams, the game's protagonist. Then, Yasuke became a playable character in the Soft Reboot Samurai Warriors 5.
- This isn't even the first time an Assassin's Creed game had played with liberties to its historical context; even dating back as far as the first game, Advanced Ancient Humans were poising as gods to humanity and two ancient conspiracies waging for control of the world since at least Ancient Egypt, on top of various historical inaccuracies like Anastasia surviving and pacifist Leonardo da Vinci having built a fully functional tank, with it being Hand Wave'd as the Animus allowing for a true first-hand account of history.
- This isn't the first time an Assassin's Creed game has courted controversy over misrepresentation of history. Assassin's Creed: Unity was criticized for its pro-monarchy and anti-revolutionary stance on the French Revolution and Assassin's Creed: Valhalla was criticized for whitewashing the Viking invaders and unfairly vilifying the Anglo-Saxons.
- While Shadows is the first Assassin's Creed game to explicitly feature Hip-Hop and Japanese Trap Beats interwoven within its soundtrack, the franchise as a whole is no stranger to utilizing modern music genres and incorporating anachronistic elements into its instrumentals. The first game had modern brass instruments, violins, piano, and electronic synths
despite primarily being set during the time of the Third Crusade. Assassin's Creed II featured Hard Rock throughout much of its soundtrack, prominently during chase
and battle
sequences while the famed "Ezio's Family
" composed by Jesper Kyd featured an electric guitar riff near the end of the track. Unity, Origins, Valhalla, and Mirage also featured Electronic Music interwoven into their respective soundtracks. And that's not even going into the various past promotional trailers, such as the E3 Cinematic for Revelations
which featured Woodkid's "Iron" and the E3 Cinematic for Unity
being set to Lorde's moody cover of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World."
- Padding: One criticism of the game is that it follows the same open ended plot progression system as Mirage, so the majority of the story missions are self contained with little room for any serious plot or character development. This means that many of the game's biggest plot revelations regarding the reasons why the Assassins and Templars expanded to Japan and Yasuke's past prior to arriving to Japan are only revealed at the end of the game, making the rest of the plot feel unnecessary.
- Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic: Much like the prior Mirage, Shadows vastly improves upon the stealth that the RPG entries in the series, particularly Valhalla, didn't put as much emphasis on when compared to the classic-style entries, especially when playing as Naoe.
- The player is finally able to go prone to hide in more patches of dense vegetation beyond simple bushes, as well as hide in shallow waters and crawl into hiding spaces and into buildings from crawlspaces below.
- The arsenal of stealth tools at the player's disposal is much more conducive to a good stealth run, with the long-awaited return of proper double assassinations making stealth kills far more practical.
- The environment, whether that be the light and shadow or the season the player is in, plays a key role in how the player handles infiltrating and staying hidden. All of this is made even more challenging (and therefore rewarding, if the player is willing to go for it) in expert stealth mode, which gives enemies far, far greater situational awareness, including finally being able to look up and spot the player on rooftops.
- Self-Imposed Challenge: Playing stealthily as Yasuke. Yasuke is an absolute brute in open combat, able to take out groups of enemies with ease, with the trade-off being that he has limited parkour and traversal options, his "stealth" kills are loud, his movement is overall slower when compared to Naoe, and his movement is louder, as well. All of this makes playing stealthily as Yasuke difficult... But not impossible. As such, while it's clearly not the optimal way to play as Yasuke, players have found that it's nonetheless an interesting change of pace to play him as stealthily as possible, making good use of his bow and katana to make kills as quiet and quick as possible while sticking to foliage and shadows.
- Scrappy Mechanic: Most viewpoints in this game are located within restricted zones. This creates two challenges: (a) synchronizing with them requires players to infiltrate heavily guarded areas and reach the top of a building without being detected, and (b) using them for fast travel means escaping the restricted zone afterward. While this poses little issue for the stealth-oriented Naoe, players favoring Yasuke may find it more difficult due to his limited free-climbing abilities.
- Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: For the first time in the series, the game introduces a fully customizable home base system, allowing players to build and arrange structures on a square grid, much like in a city-building sim. Many players will likely spend hours designing the traditional Japanese home of their dreams.
- Subbing Versus Dubbing: While the English voice actors for Naoe and Yasuke (Masumi Tsunoda and Tongayi Chirisa respectively) received praise for their portrayals, many members of the English voice cast were criticized as "just reading from the script". The contrast was rather significant as compared to the Japanese All-Star Cast.
- Tainted by the Preview: Early reception to the game had been mixed-to-negative, with the announcement trailer having a majority of dislikes on YouTubenote . This is primarily related to making Yasuke, one of the two playable characters, playing the samurai role. Comments from reactionary groups claim that Yasuke taking the role as one of the two playable characters is blatant pandering on Ubisoft's end due to his ethnicity; they insinuate that Yasuke wasn't an actual samurai and liken his retainer position as a glorified servantnote who didn't contribute much of note in the Sengoku Period. The fact that a Hip-Hop instrumental was featured in the official gameplay previewnote and that Ubisoft featured Thomas Lockley, a historian who had been accused of stealth editing Yasuke's Wikipedia page
to promote his book with embellished claims about Yasuke's lifenote , as a guest on their Echoes of History podcast only aggravated the matter. The game does feature a native Japanese ninja woman (Fujibayashi Naoe) as the other playable character whom some reactionary groups don't seem to mind at all, while others instead have a problem with her for being a woman who fights in ancient Japan while tolerating Yasuke's inclusion stating he should have been paired with a Japanese man instead.- There was a considerable amount of backlash that spawned from Japanese social media in regards to the various historical inaccuracies seen in the game's promotional materials, enough that some people even made AI-generated songs
that mocked the game and Ubisoft
, and the NHK Party's Satoshi Hamada formally presented the game's issues to the Japanese House of Representatives
.Explanation This included architecture and clothing discrepancies
and the unauthorized use of a flag from a historical re-enactment group
within concept art being sold with the collectors edition of the game. It eventually spurred Ubisoft into posting a official statement
addressing these concerns; all while reaffirming that the game is a Historical Fiction taking creative liberties with its subject matter, especially in regards to the scant details surrounding Yasuke's aforementioned life. - Further controversies were sparked around the introduction of destructible environments to the series, primarily uproar due to a viral clip from the gameplay previews in which a player intentionally goes out of their way to smash apart a Shinto shrine
unprompted. This eventually resulted in Hiroyuki Kada, a minor politician in Japan's House of Councillors, expressing his concerns to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba
that the game could potentially inspire real-world vandalism.note As a part of its day 1 patch, Ubisoft rendered most of the objects in these shrines indestructible
in response to the outcry. - Many were taken aback at the pre-order asking price of the game itself, particularly the Ultimate Edition being at $129.99 USD with the option of subscribing to Ubisoft+ at $17.99 USD per month, when at the time there hadn't been any gameplay footage to justify making that purchase. The fact that this is also coming off the heels of Star Wars Outlaws, another major Ubisoft Action-Adventure title with a similar pricing model, only aggravated the matter further.
- There was a considerable amount of backlash that spawned from Japanese social media in regards to the various historical inaccuracies seen in the game's promotional materials, enough that some people even made AI-generated songs
- That One Sidequest: The Kuji-kiri side activity isn't too difficult as it's basically a rhythm mini-game. What makes this activity annoying is that, halfway into it, the screen will gradually turn gray and white, and the prompts will fade, effectively challenging you to remember what buttons you're supposed to press and how fast the tempo goes.
- Underused Game Mechanic: Yasuke, while intended to and for the most part successful in catering to the more aggressive playstyles favored by the recent AC tetralogy, has been noted to hinder the exploration and movement elements of the gameplay, thereby making him redundant compared to the Jack of All Trades Naoe. Combined with him becoming playable hours after players are used to the free movement-oriented gameplay of Naoe, Yasuke's strengths are instead found in his character and story elements.
- Unexpected Character:
- More like "Unexpected Franchise," but when the post-launch roadmap teased a major crossover at the end of May 2025, very few people anticipated that it would be with Dead by Daylight thanks to the two games' vastly different genres and gameplay styles.
- The crossover with Critical Role, the circumstances of which are rather interesting. The weapon pack with items taken straight from player character inventories across all three campaigns isn't exactly unexpected. And with the surge in tabletop RPG popularity, talking Critical Role into having a one-shot session set and aired prior to the game's release with a couple of the English-language voice actors as guests made sense, and wasn't even unprecedented. The unexpected part, even for the folks at Critical Role, was that Ubisoft would contact them asking if they could have Robbie Daymond reprise his character and added him to the base game as a recruitable follower with a questline of his own.
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