Assassin's Creed Shadows has reviewed well… but it won't be a GOTY contender

It may not have gone as good as expected, but Assassin’s Creed Shadows has nevertheless got some good scores from the press.
At the time of writing, the game has an average score of 81% on OpenCritic (118 reviews). As for Metacritic, the PS5 version has a score of 82% (out of 62 reviews), 78% on PC (out of 40 reviews) and 87% on Xbox Series X (out of 16 reviews).
On the positive side, the game’s art direction is pretty great, the season and weather systems are convincing, and Naoe’s character really stands out. The combat system is enjoyable, the gameplay intuitive, the content gigantic and the exploration enjoyable.
As for shortcomings, the game’s finish is not up to scratch, with plenty of bugs so far. Enemy AI is far from good, the story is so-so and the formula ends up being fairly repetitive. Facial animations are also lacking.
- VG247: 5/5
- Game Rant: 9/10
- PC Gamer: 80/100
- IGN: 8/10
- Eurogamer: 4/5
- GameSpot: 8/10
- Gameblog: 7/10
- Screen Rant: 7/10
- Digital Trends: 3.5/5
- DualShockers: 5.5/10