Assassin's Creed Shadows: The Long Road to Feudal Japan
Fans asked for a Japanese Assassin's Creed for more than a decade. When Ubisoft finally made one, it brought two heroes, two delays, a culture-war storm and five million players. The full story of Shadows.
For years, "make an Assassin's Creed in Japan" was the most common request in the series' fan forums. Ninja, rooftops, hidden blades: it seemed an obvious fit. When Ubisoft finally did it, the result was one of the most argued-about games of 2025, and also one of its bigger commercial hits.
Assassin's Creed Shadows launched on March 20, 2025 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Mac, after two delays. A Nintendo Switch 2 version followed on December 2, 2025. By July 2025 it had passed 5 million players, and Ubisoft said it was ahead of Odyssey in consumer spending over the same period.
Two heroes, one war
Shadows is set in 1579, at the end of Japan's Sengoku period, in the Kansai region. It covers key real events including Oda Nobunaga's 1581 assault on Iga Province, the home of the famous shinobi clans.
Ubisoft Quebec built the game around two playable characters with very different styles:
- Fujibayashi Naoe, a kunoichi (female shinobi) from Iga, fast and stealthy, built for classic Assassin's Creed infiltration.
- Yasuke, an African samurai, based on a real historical figure who served Nobunaga. He is slow, strong and built for open combat.
It was the first Assassin's Creed made only for current-generation consoles, without PS4 or Xbox One versions.
Delays and storms
The road to launch was rough. The game was first dated for November 15, 2024. In September 2024, Ubisoft moved it to February 14, 2025, citing lessons learned from Star Wars Outlaws, cancelling the season pass and refunding pre-orders. In January 2025 it slipped again, to March 20.
At the same time, the game became a lightning rod. After the May 2024 trailer, some fans and commentators attacked the choice of a Black samurai as a lead, and the backlash spilled into harassment of developers and of a Dartmouth historian connected to Yasuke's history. In Japan, the concerns were different and more specific: a collectible figure resembling a damaged real-world shrine gate was pulled from sale, and leaked footage of Yasuke destroying a shrine altar prompted a response from shrine officials. After the issue was raised in Japan's parliament by lawmaker Hiroyuki Kada and addressed by then Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Ubisoft removed the ability to destroy certain temple objects and reduced blood in shrines and temples.
How it scored and sold
Reviews were good rather than great. Metacritic scores were 79 on PC, 81 on PS5, 85 on Xbox Series X|S and 80 on Switch 2, and 82% of critics on OpenCritic recommended it. Famitsu gave it 36/40.
Sales were stronger than the noise suggested:
- more than 1 million players on launch day and 3 million within a week
- a Steam concurrent peak of 64,825 during the first weekend, the highest for any Assassin's Creed on Steam
- the best-selling game in the US in March 2025, and the biggest physical UK launch of 2025 at the time
- the franchise's second-highest day-one revenue, behind Valhalla
Some of that success came through subscriptions: analysts at Alinea estimated that about half of early players came via services rather than purchases. Ubisoft's chief executive Yves Guillemot said development had cost more than €100 million.
The long tail
Ubisoft supported Shadows for more than a year. Its paid expansion, Claws of Awaji, developed by Ubisoft Bordeaux, arrived on September 16, 2025 with about 10 hours of story on Awaji Island. Free "Story Drops" ran from May 2025 to June 16, 2026, when a final major update added the "Black Tides" quest.
Why it matters
Shadows shows how hard it has become to make a huge historical game. Every choice, from a hero's identity to which temple objects can break, is now debated globally before launch. Ubisoft made changes where Japanese players raised concrete cultural concerns, and the game still found a large audience.
WGC's take: as a game, Shadows is the most beautiful Assassin's Creed and one of the most relaxed, with seasons that transform the landscape. Naoe's stealth missions are the series at its classic best. For more 2025 releases, see our 2025 AAA year in review.