On September 16, the Claws of Awaji DLC was released for Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The original project was released in March and was met with mixed reactions — the storyline was clearly incomplete, which the DLC was supposed to help with. What it turned out to be and whether it was able to fix the problems of Shadows — you will find out in our review.
The add-on starts after the completion of the main storyline of the game — in the shelter, an assistant to Hattori Hanzo comes to the main characters and reports: a clue has appeared about the location of Naoe's mother and the last imperial regalia. Following the lead, the girl attends a certain theatrical performance and realizes that she needs to go to Awaji Island. Arriving at the place, the heroes quickly find themselves in the thick of things, encountering antagonists and learning about the location of the last macguffin.
The main question for Claws of Awaji appeared at the time of the announcement: why does the add-on, which is sold for a separate fee — even if it is given out for free to everyone who pre-ordered the main project — complete the plot of the entire game, which at one time turned out to be cut off? Moreover, it costs as much as 25 dollars, which is somewhat offensive, especially after the release of Hollow Knight: Silksong, which cost 20 "bucks" and gave hundreds of hours of content.
The story in Claws of Awaji turned out to be small — the add-on takes about 10 hours to complete — and controversial: there are no revelations here, and the main plot of the game ends too mundane and without much emotion. We defeat the villains, reunite with the remnants of the family, take the regalia and give it into the "right" hands. Too simple.
Moreover, everything is done as carelessly as possible. Yes, the antagonists here are finally Templars, which has not been the case, if I'm not mistaken, since Assassin's Creed Syndicate — and that's 2015 — but apart from a few phrases in the dialogues that hint at the difference in the philosophies of assassins and Templars, there are no differences from ordinary villains. As for the imperial regalia, it's just a macguffin for the sake of a macguffin: they are not shown, they don't talk about their future fate, and they don't affect the story themselves — they are not even artifacts of the first Isu civilization, as it has always been in the series. And even if they are, no one tells us about it.
It turns out that we have finally returned the confrontation between the two main opposing camps — and not even their predecessors: the Order of the Ancients and the Hidden Ones — but they did it in passing and nominally.
Moreover, Claws of Awaji does not fix the narrative problems of the entire game in any way — it is just a superstructure somewhere on top. If the antagonist from the add-on was the one who was behind everything that happened in the main story, it would at least slightly correct the fragmentation that was going on there. But no, the villain from Awaji feels like just one of many: if he was part of Shinbakufu, nothing would change. It was foolish of me to hope that a 10-hour DLC would fix the problems of a 50-hour game.
Living Island and Interesting Enemies
But in terms of gameplay, the add-on is excellent. Awaji Island is about the same size as one region from the main game, but it is better developed. It is interesting and even dangerous to explore it, and the battles with enemies have become better than in the original game.
In the course of the story, the player will face literally the entire island: soldiers who can easily recognize you; enemy shinobi who constantly appear and attack — sometimes immediately after a quick move; some NPCs will pretend to be kind travelers, after which they will attack from under the table. In addition, there are sometimes dangerous traps in the forests and mountains that can quickly send you to the save point. Even the wind will regularly whisper in your ears, only increasing the anxiety in anticipation of a new attack, and the use of scouts to scout the area will only increase the density of enemies in the selected area — in a certain storyline period.
From the new: Naoe has another branch of pumping — the Bo staff. This weapon does not have much damage and it is not so easy to fight large and armored enemies with its help. However, it is convenient against a crowd of light opponents, because it allows you to control them: hit them in the head, stunning them in the upper stance, and hit them on the legs, dropping them to the ground in the lower stance.
Yasuke did not receive new types of weapons, but he acquired a number of new abilities in various old branches, and both protagonists received many new pieces of equipment with different interesting properties, which can also be transferred to the main game.
The bosses were pleasing — there are four main adversaries in the add-on: the main antagonist and his assistants, each of whom needs a unique approach: the master of secrets Yasuhira, the leader of the Imagawa army Tomedzi and the raider-shinobi Novaki.
There is no battle with Yasuhira as such, but you need to go through a small story branch-investigation in order to find him: get a special disguise to get into the enemy's lair, impress the target with your spy skills and lure him to a "rendezvous", where Naoe will gladly deprive the enemy of life. In a cutscene. However, there is a more straightforward option that I have not tried — simply attack a crowd of enemy opponents.
Imagawa Tomedzi is the most difficult boss if not in the whole game, then in the "Fangs of Awaji" for sure: he has a huge supply of armor and health, and some of his attacks, although they are easy to get used to, can instantly demolish the entire strip of life of the protagonists — even for Yasuke, the battle with him is not so simple.
He also has a large number of mini-boss assistants who greatly interfere with the face-to-face duel: there are 14 of them in total and it is best to get rid of them in advance — at least most of them. The problem here is that they are not marked on the map in any way and you can only meet them by chance — I had to run around the entire map and arrange fights with soldiers so that they would call their superiors. Even so, I only managed to find 12 out of 14, which was generally enough — Tomedzi was alone during our battle with them.
But the battle with Novaki is the best confrontation not only in Shadows, but in all the latest "Assassins" at least. This is not so much a difficult as an interesting boss, made in the spirit of Metal Geal Solid, although Ubisoft is infinitely far from Kojima's level of development.
Preparing for the battle with the raider-shinobi is already an interesting process in which you need to go through a small forest filled with traps. During the battle, she lures the player to a separate location filled with stretch marks and decoy mannequins — you will have to play cat and mouse with her, calculating Novaki by sound and using her own traps to lure her out and strike with a hidden blade several times. Bravo!
These bosses are also notable for the fact that defeating them greatly simplifies further gameplay: after defeating Yasuhiro, no one will interfere with your scouts anymore, by defeating Novaki you will get rid of sudden shinobi attacks, and the overthrow of Tomedzi will reduce the number of patrols on the island.
But the battle with the final boss of the add-on, although not bad, is unremarkable — an open battle against another boss, who after Imagawa Tomedzi feels weak and puny. And this is taking into account that here we are playing as Yasuke without any alternative.
Steam is not worthy!
It is impossible not to recall that the Steam version of the game suffered the most, where many users complain about the inability to access the DLC. The introductory tasks are simply unavailable to them, and some players even get the message "Failed to establish the owner of this product". Users of the Ubisoft Connect service encountered this problem much less often, and there were none on consoles at all — the game works perfectly: no bugs were observed.
Otherwise, the project is still excellent in technical terms: stable FPS with excellent graphics and elaborate animations, all this is supported by the beauties of medieval Japan — a feast for the eyes, especially if you are a fan of this setting!
Diagnosis
The Claws of Awaji add-on turned out to be controversial — the storyline slightly returns the player to the origins of the series, but the story itself turned out to be superficial and unemotional. But the gameplay turned out to be diverse: exploring the island is fascinating; an enemy shinobi can attack the player at any moment; new perks and types of weapons that dilute the usual combat system; excellent bosses, each of which needs its own approach — "Claws of Awaji" can only be praised for this!
It's a pity that you have to pay separately for this — this add-on should have been part of the main game! If Ubisoft did not have time to finish its content during the development of the project, then the game should have been postponed, or Claws of Awaji should have been given out absolutely free to all owners, and not just those who pre-ordered!
Now, after the release of the add-on and the completion of the main plot, we can draw a final conclusion regarding Assassin’s Creed Shadows as a whole — the add-on very well characterizes the entire project: a superficial and dry story with excellent gameplay.
The world of the game is beautiful and atmospheric, it is interesting to clear the open world, and two protagonists with completely different gameplay styles only deepen the process — offering the player to solve game situations in different ways. But the narrative component is sad: Ubisoft not only cannot normally return the series to its origins, — although in Shadows and Claws of Awaji they at least try, — but also cannot holistically prescribe a local story. It remains to be hoped, again, that the following parts will correct this shortcoming.
