I was skeptical about the quality of another AC game and waited for it to be on sale first. I'm actually impressed and enjoying this game more than I thought I would. I disliked Mirage, it felt so boring that I could only get to about 25% of the progression before uninstalling it. There was no level of reeling me into the story to get me hooked.  Anyhow, back to Shadows, so it's another AC game with the plot mostly about revenge, helping others and recruiting a team and assassinating persons of interest. The map is massive and I'm still chipping away at discovering every little mark on the map. Maybe I'm just a sucker for feeling immersed in old Japan but I gotta say, I'm loving the atmosphere and the graphics are incredible! I admire the feeling of seasonal change in the game to keep things feeling refreshed and immersive. About every couple hours, the season changes and the surrounding vegetation and tree coloring changes. You get bright summers, to monsoon raining, autumn leaves changing and snow. There's not too much wildlife when you venture off the main roads and you cannot kill any animals which is a little lame. It seemed like all other AC games, you could kill animals, get the skins to increase your hardware capacity but meh.  I do like the feel of Naoe, she's nimble, agile and you feel like a ninja with her. I don't like playing as Yasuke, he's a towering Juggernaut so he's mostly just a heavy hitting tank that can use large melee, rifles and bows. He doesn't jump well and not ninja like so whatever play style you want, that's your options.  Playing on a (ROG Strix Scar 18 laptop). It runs crisp and smoothly without any hiccups with all settings maxed out. There's been a few times upon launch that there's a bug between the keyboard input isn't going through to the game, a Steam to Ubisoft bug. No big deal. I definitely rate this game 8/10. It's much better than Mirage and Valhalla combined.
                                                                
                                                            
                                                            
                                                                
                                                                    
                                                                        
                                                                        
                                                                    
                                                                
                                                                
                                                                    
                                                                        
                                                                            
                                                                                The combat is extremely unbalanced. If you're fighting a higher level character your attacks are sort of like if a 5 year old was hitting the rock. it feel completely futile if you are using the girl main character. You could use the Black Samurai main character but then your big and sluggish. Also its not why most people bought the game. I definitely did not want to be a samurai, I wanted  to be the Shinobi. Which is why it was so disapointing that they made her so weak. I'm surprised because prior AC games were more balanced. Not sure what happened with this game but save your money.