Assassin’s Creed Shadows Review: Ninja and Samurai go to war

It is not often that an A-list game like Assassin’s Creed Shadows arrives at Mac at the same time as the PC version. And in fact, Shadows is the first game of the long-standing Assassin’s Creed series ever released on Mac at all (though a few mobile games have been released in the iPad in the past). It makes the release of Shadows a bit of a landmark for Mac Gaming, and it’s also a great introduction to the series as Shadows looks like one of the best Assassin’s Creed Games in recent years and will participate in our Line Up of the best games for Mac users.

Shadows is doing a break with previous matches in the series and moving to Japan for the first time during a civil war in 1579, when the warlord Oda Nobunaga tries to conquer and with power unite the country’s warring factions. It also allows you to play as two separate characters, each with their own different skills and combat style. Naoe is a young girl trained as a shinobi (ninja) and specializes in stealth and agility using weapons like shurik (throws stars) and smoke bombs to mask her movements.

In contrast, there is also the powerful Yasuke, an African-born samurai and an actual historical figure, which is able to block and pair his enemies’ attacks and then cube them into blood-playing pieces with his sword. Fortunately, the game allows you to tone the settings for blood and degradation, but Shadows is very an 18-classified game and not suitable for children.

Originally, Naoe and Yasuke are on opposite sides of the war, but their paths are crossing soon and they find themselves working together to end the conflict. You switch between the two characters as the game progresses and their different skills and abilities provide plenty of variation when taking on different tasks and trying to eliminate your opponents. The game takes some time to get started, as it effectively has two introductions – one for each character – that sets the stage for the main conflict in the game and allows you to get some practice with the different combat styles of Naoe and Yasuke.

However, things will pick up soon and Shadows gives lots of tasks and struggles to keep you busy. It has a shine of role -playing elements with skills trees that allow you to improve your fighting skills and dialogue choices that provide a degree of freedom and decision making. But for the most part, it’s really about the wall-to-wall match, with lots of insidious and parkour style running and jumping to add variation.

In fact, the game even gives a ‘Canon’ mode that allows you to jump most of the dialogue and just slice-and-dice your way through the action by removing anyone who is unlucky enough to stand in your way. There are four difficulties available – which will be useful for Mac users who have not played any of Assassin’s Creed games before – as well as the ability to adjust the way Stealth works in the game, making it harder or easier to sneak past guards and other enemies.

But what most impressed me was the game’s 3D graphics. The graphics under the early clip-scene were very impressive, with some of the most detailed and photo-realistic effects that I have ever seen on a Mac. However, it happens with many games, and when the cut scenes are done, you find that the actual action in the game tends to offer a lower level of visual detail. But with shadows, the game just continues smoothly at the end of these clip scenes and maintains the excellent visual quality throughout the game.

However, there is a price to pay here as this level of graphic detail requires a rather powerful Mac. The Mac App Store says the game is running on any Mac with MacOS 15 and Apple Silicon, including even a basic M1 processor. That may be true, but an M1 or M2 processor will struggle to give smooth, responsive fight (and there have been complaints about this effect from people who have bought the game in the Mac App Store). In fact, the information the developers at Ubisoft have given us recommend either an M1 MAX or M2 Pro as a minimum, and also warn that most MacBook Air models – which do not offer Pro or Max processors – may not be able to run the game.

I managed to get a playable 28FPS on my MacBook Pro with an M2 Pro Chip as you ran the game on 1,800 × 1,169 resolution and used the game’s lowest graphics settings – and even on that setting still so the graphic still so pretty good. And on a new Mac Mini with M4 Pro, I zoomed in on 40fps at 2,048 × 858 resolution and medium -sized graphics settings.

The game has its own built-in benchmarking tool that allows you to experiment with the different and rather complex graphics settings, but it is a shame that there is no free demo available so that owners of less powerful Mac models could see how well the game is running on their Mac. This is especially true as the game is so expensive that costs $ 69.99/£ 59.99 just for the base game, with some expensive DLC also available. And at the moment, the Mac version of the game only appears to be available in the Mac App Store, which means that people who have already purchased shadows at Steam or any other online store will not automatically access the Mac version.

Should you buy Assassin’s Creed Shadows?

I am not entirely convinced of the claims that Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a true role-playing game, and RPG fans probably prefer the greater freedom and depth of rivals like the all-and-sore Baldur’s gate 3. And with its excellent graphics, Assassin’s Creed Shadows may be the first game released on Mac pointing to the next generation of games with almost photoresalist graphics.