Timing. From music to cooking, it's an essential skill to truly master most crafts. Many video games employ this concept, demanding the player understand rhythm in order to progress. While most obvious with titles like Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero, it's often a key component of action-RPGs too – and Assassin's Creed Shadows is no different.
Both protagonists, Naoe and Yasuke, are able to parry enemies when they glow blue. It's a simple enough system, and deviates from the game's red attacks that will stagger our heroes when blocked, instead requiring a dodge. You can also evade the blue attacks, but learning to deflect them gives you a punish window where your foe is temporarily thrown off balance and too sluggish to fight back. However, the timing is not what I expected.
Not quite my tempo
Assassin's Creed Shadows review: "A titan in the same leagues as series staples Assassin's Creed 2 and Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag – and Ubisoft's best RPG to date."
I recently started playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, arguably the least "Soulsy" of Hidetaka Miyazaki's FromSoftware catalog, due to its lack of weapons and build variety. It's a game that gives you a sword and insists you become its student. Learn not just how to strike with it, but how to defend with it. This includes a perfect parry, not dissimilar from Assassin's Creed Shadows.
After about nine hours with Sekiro, I became more comfortable with its timings. Learning if and when to parry is a core mechanic, but didn't come that easy to a 35-year-old man with reflexes like an aged sloth on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It was also further complicated by my experience with Lies of P.
The 2023 Soulslike title is similarly built around a parry mechanic, although it offers more from an RPG perspective thanks to a wide array of weapons, stats and other items. While many of its enemies – including bosses – can be conquered without parrying them, players have to get on board with Lies of P's elite beat if they want to get all the way to the end, particularly if defeating the final optional boss is on their agenda. The issue here is the parry window is even tighter than in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
So, after more than 90 hours in Lies of P, and getting every achievement along the way, learning a new time signature for Sekiro proved a challenge, but one that I adapted to. I learned to not rush and bide my time, taking every conceded blow as a reminder to pay attention. Sadly, Assassin's Creed Shadows has now presented the same problem all over again.
Slave to the Rhythm
In terms of rhythm, the Ubisoft game is keeping a different beat. Sekiro wants you to parry just as the enemy strikes you, in a similar fashion to Lies of P. Assassin's Creed gives you a longer window, encouraging you to press the guard button when the blue flash appears as opposed to the moment of contact, but happy enough if you choose to delay by a half measure.
The result is pain for both Naoe and Yasuke, and it's all my fault. So drilled am I to reply at the precise moment of asking that a more forgiving game like Assassin's Creed Shadows is now killing me with that kindness. Try as I might, after 20 hours in Ubisoft's feudal Japan, I'm still having to actively remind myself to disregard my muscle memory.
This is entirely a skill issue on my part, but one that I can't help but find funny. Even changing the difficulty of Assassin's Creed doesn't help as it's just not trying to be a Soulslike, and I respect it for being its own thing. It also provides enough options in terms of weapons and playing styles that I can keep parries to a minimum if I want.
The thing is I don't want to. I enjoy the rhythmic combat and the test of patience it brings. The satisfaction of timing a guard just right is as thrilling as anything else Naoe and Yasuke's shared tale can offer. The problem is Miyazaki's theatrical brand of combat has taken hold of my brain and won't let me go. He grinds the organ and I dance to his tune, and I'll always find Assassin's Creed Shadows more challenging because of it.
Fancy a challenge? Check out the 10 best FromSoftware games you can play now.
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