Key Highlights:
- Both Ghost of Yotei and Assassin’s Creed Shadows have been released this year.
- Both games cover similar niches and compete against each other.
- That being said, Yotei remains the superior game here.
2025 has been an exceptional year for video games, with back to back blockbuster releases such as Hollow Knight: Silksong and the rather recent Silent Hill f. This also brought with it some fierce competition, with games competing across similar genres, and at times even themes.
There is perhaps no better example for this than the recent Ghost of Yotei and previously released Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the latter of which precedes the former by a marginal 7 months.
All things considered though, Ghost of Yotei is shaping up to be a fantastic game that manages to outshine not only Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but also the prior Ghost of Tsushima.
Ghost of Yotei Manages to Trump Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Sucker Punch’s second entry in the Ghost franchise, Ghost of Yotei promises a lot of improvements over the first Ghost of Tsushima. These range from gameplay tweaks, more varied combat styles, and of course, a massive bump up to visual fidelity on account of the game being a PlayStation 5 native title.
Ghost of Yotei is far from the only Japanese setting based game out there though, and perhaps the best example of this is in none other than Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Both games take place in feudal Japan (albeit in different time periods), and feature action adventure elements tossed in with RPG mechanics and a rather in-depth combat system.
That being said, there is no room for second place in 2025, and Shadows unfortunately loses out to Yotei, and quite spectacularly.
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Yotei is straight up more polished, and offers a far superior narrative when compared to Shadows, which did feel a bit out of place at times. The usage of a dual protagonist was a novel idea, but failed in its execution, especially with regards to Yasuke (who is still quite fun to play though).
In other words, Ghost of Yotei is more cohesive. That being said, Shadows clearly has the superior combat experience here, especially if you choose to pursue mostly stealth. Yotei’s combat isn’t too bad, but it simply does not reach out to every niche.
Most critics seem to agree as well, and Ghost of Yotei seems to be a generational improvement over Ghost of Tsushima, far eclipsing what Assassin’s Creed Shadows has accomplished.
The original Ghost of Tsushima was already an improvement over Assassin’s Creed Shadows, so it would make sense that the acclaimed sequel will be far superior.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows Is Still a Solid Game
With all that in mind, Assassin’s Creed Shadows isn’t exactly a bad game by any means. Far from it actually, and Shadows is perhaps one of the better modern Assassin’s Creed games out there, and remains respectful to its source material.
While the game did manage to kick up its fair share of controversy in the months leading up to its launch, most of these appear to be unfounded, and Shadows might just be a step back in the right direction for Ubisoft.
Hopefully, this results in the company going back to the roots of its Assassin’s Creed series, back to the days of stealth over RPG riddled power fantasy tropes. Yes, Assassin’s Creed Mirage exists, but it was in no way near as good as Shadows.
It’s still worth a try, especially will all the frequent sales going on. It also happens to be optimized well enough, and should run on just about any PC, console and even Macs, assuming you meet the minimum system requirements for computer devices.
