Just played Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ final update “Black Tides” questline
Here’s my review of it and AC Shadows as a whole:
I am honestly pleasantly surprised to say that I really enjoyed this, It finally gives AC Shadows a satisfying ending to its story and succeeds at tying this game together with the rest of the franchise. It doesn’t fix Shadows’ story but it is 100% something that should’ve always been there since launch as AC:S completely lacked a real ending, and I am so glad we actually got a great one.
The barrier to entry for this is a bit high as you need to finish “A Critical Encounter” which is an OK quest but I was really upset “A puzzlement” is a requirement as that’s maybe the worst quest in the entire franchise, terribly written, terribly acted and requires you to wait a whole day between each part, in a game without a sleep system unless you grind hideout resources which I never did, so I had to leave the game running until a day passed.
Back to Black Tides, There are more mocapped scenes and great acting in this new quest than there was in the entirety of Claws of Awaji. While not all scenes are mocapped and many still use that awful procedural generated animation, the important ones are motion captured and provided an overall strong narrative that closes out the Shadows story decently well. There is a proper use of music here as well and a real final boss fight, it really gives Shadows the final act it desperately needed. I still wish the rest of the game and its DLC was as consistent as this questline, but I guess thats something to hopefully be addressed in Hexe.
Overall, AC Shadows was a mixed bag, it has some of the strongest gameplay in the franchise but maybe the single weakest story in the franchise, mainly due to how Claws failed to pay off Naoe’s arc. I really hope the massive improvements made in presentation, writing and acting in this free DLC is carried across an entire Ubisoft Quebec RPG one day.
I’ll rate this little DLC a great 8/10, and as for the rest of the game and its DLC as a whole, I am settling at a final 7/10. That is below my initial rating of Shadows due to the disappointment of the first expansion.