izigame.me

If you enjoy playing Assassin's Creed Shadows or you think you'll enjoy it despite the major problems with the game, I suggest you stop reading my review. I've played some bad games in the past that I enjoyed anyways, and I found that reading negative reviews beforehand tends to dampen the amount of fun I could get out of the game, and I'm someone who believes you can have fun playing a game no matter how bad it is, and that you can find the good in any game.
Again, if you enjoy the game or you believe you will have fun despite the flaws, stop reading and have your fun. Don't let anyone dampen it.
To start, no, I am not:
- a grifter
- a nazi
- a homophobe
- a racist
Whether or not Yasuke is a Samurai I will leave up to you, because this is apparently still a hot topic even though Japan directly stated he wasn't, but regardless of that, he shouldn't be one of the 2 main characters simply because it goes against Assassin's Creed as a whole.
I know someone's going to bring up the start of the game saying "it's a work of fiction based off of history, and it's not accurate", but this point is thrown out the window when: 1. every other Assassin's Creed game stays as accurate as they can to history, with the only changes being the Assassins, Templars, and, from what I've heard, some minor revisionism from Ubisoft (not enough to throw out a game, but still bad anyways) and 2. Ubisoft tried to claim that they were keeping it historically accurate with Yasuke despite Japanese historians telling them otherwise.
"oh, but other characters would interact with Assassins and Templars, that's not historically accurate" yeah, except that those interactions were always kept in the dark. Leonardo Da Vinci doesn't make it publicly known he's working with Assassins, instead he tries to be discrete, only meeting on benches after Ezio has been sitting there long enough for it to not be suspicious. These characters interact in ways that wouldn't make it into history books because the Assassins and Templars don't want to be known.
The next big problem is having Yasuke as a playable character. This is the first time they use a real person from history as a main character, which completely goes against every previous Assassin's Creed game. Assassins and Templars stay in the dark, they are never written about in any way because knowing about them allows people to connect the dots and start searching for the Pieces of Eden themselves, it directly interferes with both parties. Using a real person from history means their movements have been recorded, allowing for anyone to figure out there's more going on behind the scenes, and it's especially bad when gameplay allows you to smash through walls and kill people in the loudest way possible as Yasuke. The "historical fiction" part is supposed to be these loud moments, the stuff that isn't actually recorded, but having a person who is recorded in history as the main character and allowing him to be as loud as possible goes against everything about Assassin's Creed.
Now, to clarify, I'd be perfectly fine with Yasuke being an important character in the story, so long as he does as other characters do: work with the Assassins in secret. Yasuke could serve as an informant for the Assassins, letting them know what Nobunaga knows or has planned.
Now that I can finally edit my review, I want to clarify that this next point is incorrect. I wrongfully assumed that the Animus functioned the exact same throughout all the games, requiring your DNA to access your ancestors memories, but in later games, they changed it to allow access to memories from objects. I also believe this point is very flawed and very small compared to my other points, so I'm striking it out, but leaving it so comments don't look weird.
And finally, one last problem I have: both characters are gay. Now, I'm fully prepared for the idiots to start flooding replies with "your homophobic" or "your a nazi" or some other trash response like that without actually listening to why this is a problem. If Yasuke and Naoe are gay, that would imply they never have biological children. If you haven't played any Assassin's Creed game, the game is based around you playing as a guy who enters the Animus, a machine that lets you experience the memories of your ancestors *using your DNA*. If Yasuke and Naoe never have any children, you cannot experience their memories because you do not have their DNA. Sure, they can have children with other people, I'm pretty sure Yasuke can romance Nobunaga's sister, but that really brings into question: Why make them gay in the first place? If they can't have children without being straight, and we're playing through their memories as a descendant of these 2 (which, now that I think about it, doesn't make any sense at all), why make them gay?
As for the actual quality of the game, I wouldn't know. I couldn't get into the main menu because the game would freeze during the starting animation. Also for some reason the game detects my SSD as an HDD, but besides those 2 things, I won't actually be playing it for a long time, as I've been going through and 100%ing every Assassin's Creed game one by one, and I'm currently stopped at Black Flag because I have to go back and 100% some of the older games again after Ubisoft added achievements. But from what I've seen of it, I know the writing is bad and the voice acting worse (I don't really blame the voice actors, I assume Ubisoft just had them do one take and used that, and I wish them the best for their future). Oh and don't forget about Ubislop Disconnect, the worst service to ever exist.
I know someone's going to say "why buy the game if you hate the game/company so much", and that is because I believe Ubisoft is going to collapse, and when they do, I believe they are going to do what they did with The Crew: delete every game from everyone's libraries. I didn't buy all of their games for no reason, I bought them to back them up. I believe there is value in every game, no matter how bad it is. Bad games help to build amazing games by being the example of what doesn't work, what does work, and what mechanics could've been expanded upon. Every game is a derivative of another, deleting the bad games only results in more bad games.
Now, after this essay of a review, I want to say: I do not believe most of the developers at Ubisoft are bad people or are bad at their job. I believe most of them are just working to get by, and I think there is some real talent at Ubisoft that is squandered by the executives looking to make easy money, and it's a shame that this is how it is.
To the developers at Ubisoft, if I am right in thinking that the company is done for, I wish the best of luck to you all. Even if you disagree with me on a lot of things, I still hope you can create something that will absolutely blow my mind some day.