Evaluating Boss Fights in Assassin’s Creed Shadows
The latest installment in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, presents an intriguing dual protagonist mechanism. However, the boss fights in this title leave much to be desired. While not the primary focus of gameplay, these encounters could benefit from more complexity. Aiming for multi-phase battles within grand arenas may not be necessary, but the overall execution of boss challenges feels disappointingly insufficient.
Throughout the storyline, players will encounter primary antagonists from the Shinbakufu, which are pivotal to the narrative. Players can choose to play as either Naoe or Yasuke during main story missions, and this choice extends to boss battles, offering opportunities to select between speed or strength in combat. However, the disparity in effectiveness between the two characters during these encounters detracts from the experience. When faced with bosses, the inequity between Naoe and Yasuke is glaring, resulting in an imbalance that affects overall gameplay satisfaction.
Yasuke Dominates the Boss Fights
The Triviality of Boss Fights
When playing as Yasuke in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, many of the boss fights can be overwhelmingly easy. Yasuke’s formidable strength allows him to dispatch foes with relative ease. This power becomes particularly apparent during boss encounters, where quick victories reduce what should be intense moments into mere afterthoughts following cutscenes. On Normal difficulty, bosses often fall within mere seconds, failing to provide the epic showdown one might expect.
Although increasing the game’s difficulty could enhance the challenge, it does not align well with the overall gameplay experience. This discrepancy tilts the balance of confrontations heavily in Yasuke’s favor, leaving Naoe feeling neglected. While she can still hold her own against bosses, the difficulty scaling does not equate the playing field, favoring Yasuke significantly.
Despite Yasuke’s overwhelming power, utilizing his kanabo can introduce interesting timing challenges against certain bosses, creating brief moments of strategy amid the chaos.
Addressing the Boss Difficulty Issue in AC Shadows
Rethinking Yasuke’s Ease of Use
To improve the dynamic of boss fights in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, developers could implement timing adjustments. Although Yasuke is characteristically slower than Naoe, he rarely feels so when facing bosses. By providing bosses with quicker strike speeds, gameplay becomes more challenging without unnecessarily compromising Yasuke’s effectiveness. Such an adjustment would enhance engagement for both characters and ensure a more balanced approach during encounters.
Furthermore, another viable approach could involve enhancing the environmental elements present during boss fights. Introducing verticality or alternative hiding spots for Naoe could add layers of strategy, allowing her flexible combat mechanics compared to Yasuke’s brute strength. This way, the gameplay could become more varied, preventing every encounter from favoring one character’s prowess over the other.
Future Assassin’s Creed Games Could Do Better with Boss Design
The Potential for Improvement
At this stage, it is unlikely that Assassin’s Creed Shadows will alter its boss fight structure. For players seeking a challenge, one can always opt for weaker gear or target Nobutsuna’s students instead. Personally, I find the stealth mechanics to be the more engaging challenge, allowing for immersive castle infiltrations instead of focusing solely on combat.
However, should Assassin’s Creed continue exploring a dual protagonist format in future iterations, I hope to see a more equitable distribution of difficulty among boss encounters. While Assassin’s Creed Shadows succeeds in showcasing the unique strengths of its two protagonists, bosses must be better integrated into this dynamic to achieve a more fulfilling gaming experience.