Move over, Assassin's Creed Resynced, you've made me fall in love with AC Shadows

Published: July 30, 2026

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced quickly became one of my most anticipated games of 2026 once it was announced. But what I didn't expect was for it to help me fall in love with the previous game in the series that I so quickly shelved after launch: Shadows.

Listen, there is nobody out there that loves the high seas more than me. And water in video games. Don't ask me why; I've always loved it. As someone who has lived out on the ocean for months at a time and also happens to have visited the Caribbean, I would've bet Black Flag Resynced to turn out to be one of my favorite games of 2026.

But as 2013's Black Flag was when it launched, Resynced, to me, is a brilliant game. Its water physics are nothing short of spectacular - my jaw practically fell to the floor after seeing a storm and one of the rogue waves for the first time. And the shanties. And the story. And the islands! Look, it's great. This is not a hate piece on Edward Kenway.

But as someone who tends to flit from one hyperfixation to the next, and with Assassin's Creed being the latest, my brain did the thing that it always tends to do: ponder. So I searched for an answer to 'which game is better, Shadows or Resynced?' While most comments I came across landed on the latter, I still felt a pull to check Shadows out again. For curiosity's sake. See, following its initial launch last year, I spent about three hours exploring before feeling a disconnect and moving on. This is something I actively didn't feel in Resynced - I wanted to keep playing.

'Why not give Shadows another go?' I kept thinking. So, I dived back in to explore late-1500s Japan with Naoe once again, expecting to spend an hour or two at most with her. What I didn't anticipate was how it would consume the last few days of my life.

As a self-appointed graphics snob, I've got to start there. I've only scratched the surface of the map in my now 15-hour playtime, but I keep finding myself so overwhelmed at the beauty of the environments that I've been wandering around almost entirely on foot. I think it's the most visually impressive game I've ever played. I've already said how gorgeous the water is in Resynced, but there's a certain je ne sais quoi in Shadows that means even the crystal blue seas and sun-drenched islands of Black Flag's remake don't quite capture the wonder I've felt with Ubisoft's representation of Japan.

During my initial time with the game in 2025, I remember feeling that the world looked 'nice', but was slightly devoid of life. I've no idea what was on my mind back then for me to think that. Kyoto especially, as one of the bigger cities I've gone to so far, feels incredibly lived in. Whether my opinion on that changes as time goes on and huge open world game fatigue sets in, who knows. But right now, I'm hooked.

I've always preferred playing as female characters. It's helped me to insert myself into a story a little bit more, or better relate to the protagonist I'm playing as. It's why I loved Odyssey and Syndicate so much - especially with Kassandra being the canon character in the former. Aside from that, Naoe possesses a suite of movement entirely unmatched in the series, particularly compared to movement mechanics from a remake of a game that's over a decade old. And especially for someone who loves stealth gameplay.

That brings me on to my favorite thing about Shadows so far: The castle and temple raids. This is a first for me. I enjoyed pillaging an island base in Resynced - which was probably why I gave the raids a go in Shadows, sure - but I've completed five of them now as Naoe! In Odyssey and Valhalla, I actively avoided them. Going prone, sneaking in grass, double assassinations, and grappling my way around these environments to get all of the loot just feels so tactile. Throwing kunai to take down an enemy so you can rush in and assassinate another, or attacking an enemy with a katana to the stomach through a screen door is so adrenaline-inducing it's unbelievable.

Despite that, I can't say that every part of gameplay hits home for me. Take base building, for example. As a long-time The Sims and Second Life player, base building is, surprisingly, something I don't feel any pull towards right now. It feels so far removed from the narrative that I'm not finding any real reason to commit time into it. And speaking of narrative, how you go about progressing that central story feels incredibly unclear. There are all these small organizations to hunt down without a throughline to help me understand why they're relevant to Naoe's drive for revenge with the central set of targets. Buckets of assassination targets and side narratives are presented to you, but it's missing the cohesion of what feels like a strong central pillar to tie everything together.

But what I am loving, I'm really loving. And I've got you to thank for that, Edward Kenway. I'll see you again when I'm done with Shadows.