Things aren’t exactly going swimmingly at Ubisoft right now. The publisher has a serious 2024, which has Star Wars Outlaws failed to meet sales expectations and word of XDefiantdeath of comes about six months after the debut of the tactical shooter. Skull and bones finally arrived too, but it was a bit of a wet squib.

Among the rumors of company for sale or rotate some of its properties to a joint venture with TencentUbisoft really needs a win. It won’t have a better chance of doing that anytime soon than anyone else Shadows of the Assassin’s Creed. After some delays, the latest entry in the company’s flagship series is scheduled to arrive on March 20.

After a few hours with AC Shadowsthere are positive signs. The game at least looks and plays well for what Ubisoft needs, with the company walking the line between playing things too safe and trying something different.

After the successes of AC Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla (as well as fun less Mirage), Shadows marks new territory for Assassin’s Creed on a level. This is the first game in the series that feeds directly into the Animus Hub project (formerly known as Infinity).

Before you dive into the swan Shadows of the Assassin’s Creedyou will enter the Animus Hub. From here, you can access the various Assassin’s Creed games (Shadows and the previous four mainline entries) from the memory section. They are placed in an easy-to-navigate timeline.

The anomaly section of the hub includes missions for Shadowswhich will provide exclusive rewards such as weapons and gear. You can tweak the loading of your characters from the exchange section and explore the stories of modern AC games through the vault.

The Animus Hub will expand in the coming years as Ubisoft releases more games. This is an ambitious project that aims to unify the series. It is reported that the company will try to renew the series into a live-service project with the Animus Hub, and we saw glimpses of that in the missions. There’s not a ton of it as it stands, but Ubisoft clearly has big ambitions here.

Shadows brings the action to the long-awaited frontier for Assassin’s Creed: 16th century Japan. The other big twist this time is that you can switch between the two characters. Various points in the story will see you choose to play as Yasuke or Naoe and, at least in the open world, you can switch between them on the fly. The exchange can be used if one character is wanted by the enemies, because the other can be unknown.

Yasuke is the tank of the two, with the ability to ram even some doors while running. He can take advantage of ranged weapons such as guns and arrows, so some players like to use him to take out some enemies from a distance at the start of a mission. He can hunt down the bad guys with his canabó war club too.

Naoe plays like a traditional Assassin’s Creed hero. He is extremely agile and his parkour skills are on point. The shinobi can easily climb the sides of buildings and he has a grappling hook to help him reach higher parts of structures and slide through gaps. In direct combat, Naoe can spin an enemy in the teeth, or flip on their back to slash their throat.

Perhaps most importantly (at least from what I saw of the game), Naoe is the only one of the duo with the classic hidden blade. Yasuke can still sneak up on an opponent to eliminate them with a button press, but his “brutal execution” sees him thrust his sword into an enemy and lift them into the sky. Not exactly subtle.

The transition between Naoe and Yasuke is almost as seamless as the exchange between, say, Peter and Miles in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. The latter required a couple of quick in-game actions, and the action quickly shifted to another Spider-Man. on Shadows of the Assassin’s Creedswapping characters means going to the menu, holding down a button and just waiting a few seconds for another hero to replace them.

There was no immediate character change in the prologue, however, which was one of the two sections I played. Unsurprisingly, it acts as an intro to the story and how the game actually plays.

In a first for Assassin’s Creed, one of the game’s characters actually exists in real life. It won’t take long for players to learn how Yasuke, a black African man, became a samurai. After a brief drop in lore, we skip ahead six months to a battle sequence. This is an effective way to start getting what Yasuke can do, including special attacks like a fierce sword slash.

When her short action sequence ends, we return to earlier in the evening and Naoe’s introduction. After stealing an important box (the contents of which remain a mystery), he goes out to retrieve it from a compound. This short mission highlights some stealth features.

One of the cooler additions to this game is the ability to capture light sources at night to create ad-hoc hiding places in the shadows. Naoe can blow out candles and destroy lamps from a distance with a kunai or shuriken. That may not be necessary depending on the terrain (and difficulty level) and how quickly you can make it hotfoot on rooftops if you are spotted.

The second section I played was an investigative mission. I need to get to the bottom of a mystery by completing certain tasks and gathering information. This all leads to the inevitable but fun boss fight and a satisfying resolution to the quest.

The structure of Shadows of the Assassin’s Creed lends itself to multiple playthroughs for those who really dig it. I spent most of my preview as Naoe, but I’m interested to see what different things play out as Yasuke. There are dialogue options throughout the game but there is a canon mode that removes these choices and shows you the canonical story. Players may also be inclined to switch the dialogue languages ​​to Japanese and Portuguese for deeper immersion after beating the game in their native language.

Some of the gameplay changes that Ubisoft implemented this time really shook things up. The eagle vision ability now enables Naoe to locate and tag enemies through walls. His smoke bombs and distraction bells come in handy when there are too many enemies for him to defeat. Both characters can also lie, which offers many opportunities for concealment and concealment.

I then tried some side activities, such as the peaceful act of hiding animals in certain situations to sketch them. In terms of slowing things down for a bit of peace, it feels quite similar to the haiku composition sequences of Spirit of Tsushima (of note, the next game, Spirit of Yōtei is set for a release in 2025 and may provide competition for Shadows of the Assassin’s Creed.)

It’s not entirely clear based on what I’ve seen, but it feels like Ubisoft has cut out most of the cruft that usually populates Assassin’s Creed maps, which helps this game feel less overwhelming. Zooming in on a view and synchronizing only reveals the important locations, instead of everything worth looking at in the area. The company returned to the map bloat a little Mirageso it may have learned some positive lessons from that approach.

Add it all up and I came out of the session feeling on the right side of satisfaction. The game seems to be very good. It’s just about what you’d expect from an Assassin’s Creed game these days, but there are enough tweaks, new wrinkles and quality-of-life updates to make it compelling enough. It feels like a decent entry point to the series while still having enough interest for long-time fans. For what it’s worth, I’m willing to play more, as a finisher Assassin’s Creed Mirage but fell into Valhalla after about 10 hours.

I look forward to playing more of the Shadows of the Assassin’s Creed and seeing, for example, how the weather system changes things. The lakes freeze over in the winter, removing the ability to swim or hide underwater. Icicles can also be used as a distraction. I didn’t get around to testing the spy recruitment system, which seems to work during investigations.

Shadows of the Assassin’s Creed naturally has a leg up on many other Ubisoft games given the popularity of the series. It seems ready to do well, but it appears to be in good shape to be a success. If so, it could help Ubisoft finally redirect its ship off the rocks.

Shadows of the Assassin’s Creed will hit PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows, Mac (and eventually iPad), Ubisoft+ and Amazon Luna on March 20.