Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Claws of Awaji is the action role-playing game’s (RPGs) first major expansion since launch, adding a whole new island to explore, and with a refined, handcrafted focus when compared to the base game’s sprawling offering. Over ten hours or so, Claws of Awaji finally gives Shinobi protagonist Naoe a proper ending, and it’s an essential experience for those looking to finish off Assassin's Creed Shadows’ story.
Claws of Awaji’s opening mission sets out what’s to follow clearly and creatively. Alongside Junjiro (the Hideout's rambunctious child), Naoe attends a puppet show, where details of the main protagonist’s long-lost Mother have started to emerge. This is when things take a turn, as you play through a 2.5D side-scrolling mission from the perspective of the mysterious Tsuyu, Naoe’s Mother, turned Master Assassin. You go from rooftops to a leap of faith into a darkened courtyard filled with enemies. Claws of Awaji places emphasis on the shadow-based gameplay that I found to be underutilized in the main game, as you extinguish candles and lights to close the distance on foes.
Chronicles of Tsuyu
Throughout this opening mission, I’m taken back to reflect on one of the most underrated games in the series: Assassin’s Creed Chronicles. This was a series of three side-scrolling vignettes set in China, India, and Russia, each focusing on a different Assassin and story.
Developed by Climax Studios and published by Ubisoft, these unique takes on the Assassin’s Creed franchise tend to go overlooked, with reception having been mixed when the third and final chapter was released back in 2015.
The shape of the Assassin’s Creed series has changed dramatically since then, with modern entries focusing on RPG mechanics and tending to leave out the Assassins vs. Templar narratives found in the earlier games. As an OG Assassin’s Creed fan, I’ve often found myself mourning the loss of what, to me, are integral parts of the series’ identity.
AC: Chronicles aren’t the best Assassin’s Creed games by a long shot, but they are interesting to go back to and be reminded that, yes, these games used to be about assassins. When placed alongside the context of the current and future AC games, Assassin’s Creed Chronicles has only gotten more intriguing and more worth your time as the years have gone by.
The ultimate weapon
Claws of Awaji uses the core of Assassin’s Creed Shadows as a starting point, before leading players through a tighter and decidedly more bespoke journey. Captains patrol the island and are alerted if you get into too much trouble with local guards. These formidable enemies are a challenge to defeat as Naoe, which in turn places a renewed importance on stealth and parkour.
I spent more time on rooftops, in bushes, and moving through the shadows than I ever did in the base game. This is easy, in part, due to a tighter design in the villages, enemy camps, and forest areas found in Claws of Awaji. While moving through a camp, I found clear routes laid out in front of me, routes that allowed Naoe to make use of grapple points, ponds, and patches of low grass to move toward targets without being detected. There’s an old-school AC feeling to the gameplay here, and it’s done better than the vast majority of the often-chaotic experiences of Shadows’ stealth segments.
Hit-list
Several major targets are given to you from the outset of Claws of Awaji, and there’s a unique design and theme around each of them. The eagle-eyed, teppo-wielding Nowaki hides out in a haunted forest filled with decoy statues, leading to a boss fight that actually uses stealth in interesting ways.
There’s a target that’s pretty much unkillable until you hunt down his captains, and a castle assault that caps off the final boss. You can complete optional quests to change the outcome and difficulty of this final mission, as you poison guards, remove supply lines that rob enemies of ranged weapons, and recruit allies to fight alongside you. It’s reminiscent of some of the missions found in Assassin’s Creed Unity, with ways to change the battlefield and make new routes to an assassination opportunity.
Claws of Awaji has so many subtle nods to the gameplay of older AC titles. While playing it, I was constantly reminded of why I like this series in the first place, and a little disheartened by how little of that feeling was echoed in my nearly 70 hours spent in the main game. The island of Awaji is much, much smaller than that of the mainland, and really, this highlights the main issue I have with the modern AC games: bloat. Smaller maps lead to more intentional and handcrafted design, something that games like Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, and even Assassin’s Creed Mirage really excel at.
Focus mode
Assassin’s Creed Shadows has dozens and dozens of hours of content to work through, a humongous map to explore, but at the end of the day, I found Claws of Awaji’s bite-sized version to be infinitely more compelling. It makes use of stealth to great effect, places an emphasis on exploration by removing the abundance of fast travel points, and all in all, makes proper use of the main game’s central mechanic, the literal ‘Shadows’.
It’s frustrating to see the final ending of Assassin’s Creed Shadows offered in a paid-for DLC, though this is a common theme with the last few major entries. Mostly, Claws of Awaji does everything that the base game does, but just a little bit better, and with at least some of the spirit of what this franchise used to feel like.
Hopefully, Ubisoft can eschew the giant, bloated open worlds and go for something more akin to the smaller, more focused world of Claws of Awaji. I’m unsure whether there will be another major DLC for Shadows, but even if there isn’t, Claws of Awaji finally delivers on many of the ideas set forth in the main game.
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