I have been excited for Assassin's Creed Shadows for quite some time. However, that excitement was quickly tempered after a string of terrible AC games and general Ubisoft controversies put me off the series for a while. Fortunately, the finished product has far exceeded my expectations, proving to not only be a phenomenal game, but also a significant step-up in design and storytelling for Ubisoft, offering a more mature and diverse experience that it has struggled to create since the likes of Far Cry 3 and, at least in my opinion, Far Cry 5.

Assassin's Creed Shadows gets a lot right compared to its predecessors. Its combat is significantly more nuanced and challenging, it puts a much bigger emphasis on stealth and parkour, and its world is more dynamic in believable and immersive ways. Simply put, Assassin's Creed Shadows is, for the most part, one of the better, if not the best, modern AC games. However, players may not experience all of that if, like me, they didn't pick the right difficulty option, as there is one that is definitely the best of the bunch and the one that highlights the game's biggest strengths.

Assassin's Creed Shadow Has Multiple Difficulty Options

It Can Be Incredibly Easy Or Very Hard

Assassin's Creed Shadows, like most RPGs, has four difficulty options. At face value, this may seem a little unimpressive, especially as it isn't the first game in the series to implement them. There's the Story mode for those who don't want to deal with challenging combat and would much rather immerse themselves completely in Assassin's Creed Shadows' amazing narrative. It still offers a fun experience, but the gameplay lacks the nuance it offers in harder difficulties. Nevertheless, I'm still grateful it is there for those who prefer it and for myself when a boss battle gets too tough.

There's the Forgiving difficulty option, which is more or less the same as Story, but Naoe doesn't feel quite as invincible. Normal difficulty is the one I assume most players will pick as it implies that it is the default and intended experience. However, one doesn't have to play on it long to feel like something is amiss. It isn't like Normal is ridiculously easy, as I kept dying in the early hours to some of Assassin's Creed Shadows' tougher enemy types. Rather, once players get their hands on Shadows' best early Legendary gear, combat feels trivial.

Stealth doesn't fare much better, either. I found I could crawl around in slightly tall grass right next to an enemy, and they'd barely react. The stealth meter would indicate that I was all but invisible, which is certainly how it felt. So, as I lay in that tallish grass, I switched to Shadows' final and hardest difficulty, Expert, and the entire game changed. Suddenly, I wasn't invisible anymore, but actually detectable, so detectable in fact that the soldier standing right next to me caught me. Simply put, AC Shadows' Expert difficulty is undeniably game-changing.

AC Shadow's Hardest Difficulty Options Completely Transforms The Game

Combat And Stealth Feel More Realistic

Assassin's Creed Shadows has amazing stealth - better than Ghost of Tsushima, in fact. It is so good that I regularly find myself preferring to spend hours on end skulking around Japan as Naoe, infiltrating castle after castle, stealing all of their precious loot. However, on Normal, all of that feels like second nature; large groups of enemies don't really pose a threat, and going prone on a rooftop is the equivalent of wandering Hogwarts in Harry's invisibility cloak. That wasn't the experience that I wanted to have, and switching difficulties, something I seriously recommend everyone does, helped tremendously.

Enemies will spot you on rooftops, and they'll spot you faster. It isn't enough to run away and hide in a bush either, as they'll search for longer and at greater distances, actually wandering into and chopping through those aforementioned bushes. It turns out a handful of leaves isn't enough to cover up Naoe's colorful Legendary hoods. It also means that if you get caught, you must rely on Naoe's tools to escape. Throwing a shuriken at an exploding barrel before chucking down a smoke bomb and grappling up the nearest building is a tense and exciting way of escaping.

Players can switch the difficulty of both combat and stealth at any point while playing Assassin's Creed Shadows. It can be done on the fly by heading into the settings menu and selecting Difficulty Tuning under the Gameplay tab.

Combat is also much harder when switched to Expert, although not as substantially so as stealth. Naoe needs to parry and dodge more to evade the brutish weapons of enemy ashigaru. Even Yasuke will struggle if players take too many hits, forcing them to rely on his impressive arsenal of weapons. It all makes for a far more gratifying experience, one that instills the level of dread and terror one should feel while attempting to infiltrate a castle full of armed and dangerous soldiers with nothing better to do than hunt down pesky shinobi attempting to root through their chests.

You Should Play AC Shadows On Hard Difficulty

It Makes The Game Significantly More Enjoyable

I would seriously consider switching to the Expert difficulty setting for combat and stealth an AC Shadows' best Legendary trinkets to get by, as some of their ive abilities helped significantly.

Expert is absolutely the intended experience, and that shocks me a little. It is surprising primarily because I never play on harder difficulties, nor do I find myself advocating for them often. I regularly express my desire for an easy mode in Dark Souls so that I can actually beat one of them. However, it is also a shock because, at least traditionally, developers try to make their Normal difficulty option the default. It makes sense that a game like Assassin's Creed Shadows would tailor its best experience around the majority of players, but that really isn't the case.

The Expert difficulty setting transforms Assassin's Creed Shadows into the game it is meant to be, while Normal keeps it more or less feeling like a traditional Assassin's Creed experience.

That's not to say that the majority of players would struggle tremendously with AC Shadows' Expert mode, nor is the Normal difficulty significantly less enjoyable. Rather, the Expert difficulty setting transforms Assassin's Creed Shadows into the game it is meant to be, while Normal keeps it more or less feeling like a traditional Assassin's Creed experience. I cannot more strongly recommend that everyone at least try Assassin's Creed Shadows' game-changing Expert difficulty and embrace dying more often.