Summary
Assassin’s Creed Shadowswas a commercial and critical hit for the beleagueredUbisoft, proving the series still has broad appeal, something people were beginning to question despite the runaway success of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
However, now that the dust has settled, players are beginning to critique the individual aspects of Shadows that they find irksome—these range from the non-linear narrative to the concept of canon mode to the seasonal mechanic.
Shadows has a dynamic seasonal system where seasons change after approximately two and a half hours of play. At the end of a season, alerts, locations and local factions will all refresh. However, certain actions manually change seasons, such as fast travelling and switching characters.
Changing of the Seasons
It’s the latter mechanic that has frustrated players, such asWillowSmithsBFFandDl4android, who created separate Reddit threads on the topic. In Shadows, you’re able to switch between Naoe and Yasuke in any neutral area. However, doing so advances the season, refreshing enemies in Japan’s various castles.
This can quickly become a frustrating chore for players. For example, say you enter a castle as Yasuke and clear out every enemy, but one of the castle’s collectibles is in a hard-to-reach area that requires you to play as Naoe. You’ll need to then leave the castle and switch to Naoe. However, since switching characters advances the season, all the enemies have respawned, and you’ll need to clear them out a second time as Naoe.
“This drives me nuts,” writesVisgethin a comment. “I like to use Naoe, to move around quickly to disable the alarms and mark the Daisho. Then head back to the viewpoint (if there is one) to switch and it’s frustrating when there’s a season change.”
Damhowsays the character switching is a “missed opportunity” as Naoe and Yasuke should be able to “tag team” castles, rather than the needlessly obtuse system that exists in the game.
To top it off, there isn’t really any reason for time to advance when you switch characters because Naoe and Yasuke generally travel together. There’s no reason for Naoe or Yasuke to take a whole season to reach their counterpart during a castle raid.
