Assassin’s Creed Shadows: 20 minutes of new castle gameplay, launches March 20

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is just two weeks away and in anticipation of its March 20 launch on PS5, we’ve released 20 minutes of new gameplay showing Naoe and Yasuke infiltrating Nijo Palace, the castle complex (also known as a tenshu) in Kyoto, a major city in the larger region of Yamashiro.

Castles in Assassin’s Creed Shadows are strongholds, filled with hostile guards, valuable resources, and one precious loot chest. Conquering a tenshu means eliminating any Samurai Daisho on the premises, which unlocks the loot chest, giving you powerful gear. You can see the contents of these chests when you hover over the castle icon in the map.

Castles are just one of many activities in Assassin’s Creed Shadows that you can complete to increase your Knowledge Rank, which gives you access to higher level abilities and upgrades. Completing them will also earn you experience and mastery points, which you can use to directly upgrade Naoe and Yasuke’s abilities. Additionally, Castles are full of resources that you can claim for your hideout. Smaller resource bundles can be picked up manually, while larger stockpiles can be tagged by Naoe and Yasuke to be picked up and delivered to your hideout by scouts at the changing of the seasons.

Naoe stealth approach

Our walkthrough begins with Naoe’s stealthy approach at night. After dispatching a perimeter guard with her Hidden Blade, she quickly takes to the rooftops with the help of her grappling hook and begins to scout out nearby patrols. Unlike recent games in the series, in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you won’t have the ability to call upon an avian ally to scout from the skies for you. Instead, you’ll hold L2 to use the Observe mechanic and focus Naoe or Yasuke’s vision on an enemy/objective/loot to tag it.

While scouting, Naoe spots a Samurai Daisho, an elite guard that will have to be eliminated to conquer the tenshu and claim its ultimate reward. With her tanto blade equipped, Naoe can double assassinate targets, but the Samurai Daisho’s ample health means she can’t take him out with one hit…yet. Shadows’ gear not only offers distinct stat bonuses but unique engravings that can change your strategy at any moment. In this case, Naoe swaps her headgear to a piece that gives bonus damage on air assassinations — enough to take out the Samurai Daisho in a single blow.

Further into the castle, Naoe calls for help from one of her recruited allies, Gennojo. He’s able to stun a pair of nearby enemies allowing Naoe to close the gap and take them both out. Gennojo is just one of several recruitable allies that can be called up in the open world for help (fun fact, each ally is summoned with a different bird call). Once those guards are taken out, Naoe uses Eagle Vision to scope out the interior of a nearby building.

Hostile enemies appear in red in eagle vision, while civilians will cast an orange silhouette. Be warned, however: just because civilians won’t attack you, that doesn’t mean they won’t raise the alarm if they spot you. Thankfully, Naoe is able to utilize a host of new stealth features to avoid detection. She starts by extinguishing a nearby lantern, cloaking herself in darkness. She then uses her grappling hook to pull herself up to the ceiling to avoid a patrol before dropping down and assassinating a second Samurai Daisho through a shoji door with her katana.

Yasuke stealth approach

Now, let’s flip to Yasuke as he approaches the palace. Yasuke may be a one-man army in Shadows, but he’s still capable of sneaking around. Without a grappling hook, he uses a nearby low-hanging tree to take to the rooftops before pulling out his bow to silently take out a guard from range. Then, while crouching, he sneaks up on another guard and dispatches him with a brutal assassination with his long katana. It’s not as inconspicuous as a Hidden Blade, but hey, it gets the job done and doesn’t alert anyone else in the area.

Yasuke’s infiltration takes place during the daytime, so he doesn’t have the benefit of hiding in the shadows that Naoe did, but by sticking to the rooftops and using the geometry of the pitched roofs, he can stay hidden while crawling prone. Here, Yasuke calls upon another ally, Oni-Yuri, a poison specialist who can knock multiple enemies unconscious.

As he moves into the next courtyard, Yasuke spots a bell tower that can alert the entire tenshu to his presence should he be noticed, but with his bow (or Naoe’s shuriken or kunai), he can disarm the bell tower. Now, it’s time to go loud and make an entrance to take out the final Samurai Daisho. Yasuke starts by shooting a gunpowder barrel with his bow, taking out a nearby guard, before switching out his bow for a massive kanabo club. The hulking weapon’s blows overwhelm the Samurai Daisho, earning Yasuke another mastery point.

Naoe combat approach

Swapping back to Naoe for a combat approach, we see just how skilled a fighter she can be. This begins by exchanging her stealth gear for a more combat-focused headgear and armor that allows her to vault enemies by sprinting at them and knock them down by sliding into them. Finally, her tanto is replaced with a legendary kusarigama that increases damage to enemies over three meters away. The kusarigama is Naoe’s long range melee weapon, great for crowd control and fighting multiple enemies at once. It also enables Naoe to rush assassinate her targets (rush assassinate is a passive ability that is possible whenever the kusarigama is one of Naoe’s two equipped weapons and does not cost adrenaline to use) by wrapping one end of the kusarigama around them and using it to fling herself forward for the killing blow.

Once Naoe gets to an elevated position, she realizes that a servant that spotted her earlier has returned with reinforcements. Rather than dealing with them herself, she calls her ally Yaya, a hulking brawler, to take care of them for her. With the reinforcements handled, Naoe is able to use the Observe mechanic to scout out Takahashi Shiro, a member of The Twisted Tree family she’s been tasked to assassinate. This time around, Naoe’s air assassination attempt only does partial damage, meaning she has a fight on her hands. Using a combination of smoke bombs and her kusarigama, she makes quick work of the weaker guards as she dances around Shiro, dismantling his armor before going in for the killing blow. With her target assassinated and the Samurai Daisho eliminated, Naoe is free to scale Nijo Tenshu and open the chest, earning a new legendary armor set for Yasuke. Her run ends with her scaling the tenshu for a synchronization point, using the Observe mechanic to scout our nearby points of interest.

Yasuke Combat Approach

We end the walkthrough with Yasuke’s bread and butter, combat. As with Naoe, it begins with a gear swap as the katana and kanabo are replaced with a naginata and teppo (a single-shot rifle). Yasuke’s last armor was ideal for stealth as it provided a 200% damage bonus to ranged weapons while out of combat. This approach, however, will be loud so he needs a new armor set and thanks to a unique engraving, the new set allows him to parry unblockable attacks (red glowing attacks that can usually only be dodged). The armor pairs especially well with the accompanying helmet which grants 50% damage to the attacker on parry. Not only can Yasuke parry any attack now, but he’ll reflect 50% of that damage back on the attacker.

It’s not often you can go in “guns blazing” in an Assassin’s Creed game, but that’s exactly what Yasuke does, smashing down the door before executing the closest guard with his teppo. With Yasuke’s size comes a certain boldness (he can take and dish out more damage than Naoe in a straight up fight) and he sprints straight through the courtyard to confront Takahashi Shiro. Wielding his naginata and parrying nearly every attack thrown at him, Yasuke quickly dispatches all the guards, and even takes out Shiro without too much difficulty. He may not be the climber that Naoe is, but Yasuke still ascends the tenshu to claim the prized chest and conquer Nijo Palace.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ two distinct heroes offer up dramatically different abilities, weapons, and playstyles, but Naoe and Yasuke are versatile enough to change up their approach, allowing you to sneak or fight on the fly. Smash through the front door or lurk in the shadows for yourself on March 20 when Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on PlayStation 5.

Enhanced for PS5 Pro

As the first Assassin’s Creed game built solely for current generation hardware, Assassin’s Creed Shadows can be played at up to 2160p and 60 FPS on both PS5 and PS5 Pro in Performance mode. PS5 Pro is the only console that supports extended ray tracing, which offers ray traced reflective surfaces throughout the world. Check out the full breakdown of specs below.

PS5 – Performance Mode
- 2160p upscaled, 60 FPS, Selective* Ray Tracing
PS5 – Fidelity Mode
- 2160p upscaled, 30 FPS, Standard** Ray Tracing
PS5 – Balanced Mode (requires 120/240hz display and HDMI 2.1)
- 2160p upscaled, 40 FPS, Standard Ray Tracing
PS5 Pro – Performance Mode
- 2160p upscaled, 60 FPS, Standard Ray Tracing
PS5 Pro – Fidelity Mode
- 2160p upscaled, 30 FPS, Extended*** Ray Tracing
PS5 Pro – Balanced Mode (requires 120/240hz display and HDMI 2.1)
- 2160p upscaled, 40 FPS, Extended Ray Tracing

*Selective Ray Tracing used to compute global illumination for diffuse lighting in the Hideout portion of the game.
** Standard Ray Tracing used to compute global illumination for diffuse lighting throughout the game world.
***Extended Ray Tracing includes full support of ray tracing to compute global illumination for diffuse lighting and reflective surfaces throughout the game world.