Conclusion

Assassin's Creed is one of the longest-running and most beloved franchises in gaming, first debuting in 2007. With over a dozen mainline entries and numerous spin-offs, the series has evolved significantly, blending open-world exploration, stealth, and action-RPG elements. Assassin's Creed Shadows continues that legacy, taking players to Feudal Japan, a long-requested setting, and introducing dual protagonists—Naoe, a shinobi assassin, and Yasuke, a formidable samurai.

The gameplay retains the signature parkour, stealth, and combat mechanics the series is known for, with improvements to enemy AI, dynamic weather, and more destructible environments. However, the early hours of Shadows can feel sluggish, mainly due to the introduction of multiple characters and narrative threads that take a while to come together. Some side quests still fall into the familiar "fetch quest" trap, which may not appeal to everyone.

Combat is fluid and satisfying, but it doesn't quite reach the depth of other samurai-inspired action games like Ghost of Tsushima, Nioh, or Sekiro. That said, the world is immersive, and once the story picks up, it offers the blend of historical intrigue and open-world adventure that has kept fans coming back to Assassin's Creed for years.

Graphics
AC Shadows offers stunning graphics—the best of the franchise. While it still uses Ubisoft's Anvil engine, the graphical improvements are undeniable. Environments are richly detailed, with well-crafted levels that feel alive and immersive. From the dense forests to the bustling towns, the world is filled with visual variety, and the lighting and shadows contribute to a highly atmospheric experience. Ubisoft's designers definitely know what they are doing. What sucks is that the real-time rendered cutscenes are locked to 30 FPS—completely unacceptable for 2025, at least on PC. This is especially distracting with a high-refresh-rate monitor, because suddenly everything feels stuttery from one second to the other.

The production value is exceptionally high, evident not just in cutscenes but in the overall world design. Textures are sharp, and facial animations in cutscenes are some of the best in the industry, rivaling even Hellblade 2. However, character models and animations outside of cutscenes could be a bit more polished—while still very good, they don't always match the same level of detail.

Shader Stutter and Accessibility
On game startup there's a short "compiling shaders" screen, maybe 20 to 30 seconds. This only shows once, and when you delete the intro videos you'll be in-game in just a few seconds on subsequent runs. In gameplay there's no noticeable shader stutter, running through the large seamless map works without hitches or FPS drops. As expected from a modern AAA title from Ubisoft there are various options for colorblind people and the font sizes can be adjusted. Shadows offers extensive customization for gameplay mechanics, allowing players to tailor the experience to their preference. Quick-time events can be set to automatic, simplified, or default, while melee attacks offer options for single inputs, automatic combos, or even automatic posture attacks. Combat difficulty is adjustable across four levels, and stealth difficulty has three settings, ensuring flexibility for different playstyles. These options make the game accessible to players of all ages and skill levels—well done!

Upscaling & Ray Tracing
AC Shadows offers the full set of upscaling options, including native TAA, along with support for DLSS, FSR, and XeSS. Additionally, native resolution (DLAA) is available for those who prefer high-quality antialiasing without upscaling. Frame generation is supported for both AMD and NVIDIA, ensuring smoother performance on compatible hardware. You may mix upscalers and frame generation, so GeForce 30 owners can use DLSS upscaling and FSR frame generation. Players can also fine-tune image sharpness with an adjustable sharpening slider or disable it entirely. The new DLSS Transformer model looks very good, but there are small issues, like streaks behind birds when they fly across high-detail high-contrast areas.

Ray tracing is finally available in Assassin's Creed. There is no real "RT off" setting, but you can choose to enable ray tracing only in the "hideout" portion of the game, which is a safe zone that you can customize. On hardware without RT support, Ubisoft will use a shader-based fallback, so even older GPUs can play the game. Visually, RT doesn't bring a lot here, it definitely helps with the reflections, which look fantastic—no glossy mirror spam like in earlier RT games. Overall, RT is nice to have but definitely not a must-have.

Hardware Requirements
Hardware requirements are pretty high, but not as crazy as some other recent titles. Still, most people will probably have to use some sort of upscaling. In order to reach 60 FPS at 1080p, Ultra settings without RT, you need a RTX 4070 Super, RX 7900 GRE or RTX 5070 Ti. Got a 1440p monitor? Then you need a Rx 7900 XT, RTX 4080 or RTX 5080. 4K60? Only the mighty GeForce RTX 5090 can achieve 69 FPS here. The RTX 4090 reaches around 59 FPS, AMD's RX 7900 XTX is close behind with 53 FPS. As always we opted for our own custom test scene, which is located in a larger outdoor area. The game does have an integrated benchmark, which is not terrible, but slightly optimistic. Since we know that you don't play the benchmark, we used a real-life test scene. We tested the public Steam version, which seems to fix several issues over the press build. We also used the latest game ready drivers from all three GPU vendors, which all support AC: Shadows—these came out just yesterday, so older articles aren't using them.

VRAM
VRAM usage isn't a big problem, the game is well optimized for the right allocations at the respective resolutions. 6 GB will be enough for lowest settings, 8 or 10 GB for ultra without RT, and RT + Framegen reaches less than 12 GB.