Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Claws of Awaji DLC Review – The Final Verdict
[Music] Assassin’s Creed Shadow stands out for its excellent depiction of feudal Japan, strong characterization in its dual protagonists, Yasuke and Ni, and an overall engaging story. However, it’s no secret that the incredibly lengthy title, taking anywhere between 30 and 100 hours, depending on how much you want to do, has left a few plot threads dangling, even as it wrapped up its main story. Some of these plot threads, like the moccinations of the Templars and even the fate of Na’s mother, have now been expanded on thanks to the first major DLC for the game, Claus of Aaji. The premise of Claus of Awaji promises to be interesting. Right off the bat, our protagonists have learned that Ni’s mother, Tsuyu, is still alive and is being kept prisoner on the aonomous island of Awaji. Both Nawi and Yowske decide that it’s up to them to buster out with Suyu seemingly having a pivotal role in the ultimate fate of Japan in the shadow war against the Templars. The main antagonist this time around are the Szokua complete with their own hierarchy of captains, generals, assassins, and a spy master working under the primary villain for much of the DLC story, Yukati, who has her own grand designs for Aaji. [Music] [Applause] Get your heart on. [Applause] [Music] Throughout the time you spend on Aaji, the story keeps a relatively break neck pace with events seamlessly guiding you from one objective to the next. Sure, there are a few dips in the pacing, but that’s not a bad thing since it gives you time to catch your breath as you plan out who from the Szukua that you want to target next. Keeping in line with the general mission structure from Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Claws of Awaji also gives you a fair bit of freedom when it comes to deciding your next target as well as the methods you choose in doing so. The story generally has a short run time, especially when compared to the base game. This also adds to the feeling of Claws of Awaji offering a more focused experience where unnecessary fat has been trimmed off. The island of Awaji itself also feels like a more refined take on the more expansive land mass we get to explore and play around in the base game. At first glance, the gloomy island looks quite small, especially compared to some of the larger zones from Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. And despite its relatively smaller area in terms of raw square footage, the island of Aaji has been expertly designed to make sure that exploring it is still fun and rewarding without the excitement passing by too quickly. This largely comes down to the fact that the island has been designed with verticality in mind. Aaji is an incredibly mountainous island with plenty of hills, mountains, plateaus, and valleys. This means that targeting from point A to point B seldom ends up being a straightforward journey. Rather, the paths will have you spiral along the sides of mountains, navigate patty fields, and wade through thick forests as you try to get to your next objective. Even just traveling through the new island can also often be a more exciting affair than simply letting your horse follow a path to your quest marker. The paths are often lined with shinobi or even agents of the szokoipa who are trying to swiftly and silently get rid of you. Along with regular ambushes, these enemies also often set up booby traps that while avoidable if you spot them in time, can and will knock you off your horse if you trigger them. The island is split into four distinct territories, each with its own atmosphere and themes. Sumoto, Ishima Coast, Fukura Bay, and Ura. Since Claws of AI is essentially an endgame expansion, these zones aren’t really level gated. Since you’re more or less expected to have hit the level cap and be equipped to take out the appropriate threats. This means that after wrapping up the introductory quests, you’re free to leave the story behind and just explore the island, looting it for all it’s worth and getting some handy fast travel points under your belt to make the rest of the expansion fly by even faster. When it comes to the general atmosphere, Claus of Aaji does a great job of depicting a rather gloomy island that’s under constant oppression by its leadership. Military bases like massive castles feel like they were designed with more Spartan uses in mind rather than the more lavish setups that we’ve seen in the base game. Similarly, the roads also tend to have military checkpoints with soldiers constantly harassing villagers. When it comes to brand new additions to the game, Claws of Aaji has one headlining new feature in the form of a new weapon type for now, the bow staff. Rather than simply being a weapon like any other in the game, however, the bow staff has entirely new combat mechanics that players can learn through one of the earlier missions in the expansion. The bow staff is a versatile weapon, allowing Now to switch between attack types by entering three distinct stances: high, neutral, and low. As you might expect, each of these three stances has its own unique uses. High stance, for instance, focuses on dealing as much damage as possible with its forceful thrusts. Neutral, on the other hand, is useful for creating some distance between you and your opponent since it causes enemies to get knocked back. Low stance focuses more on controlling the fight since its attacks can trip enemies to the ground, opening them up to a devastating ground attack. Learning how to use the weapon as part of the expansion story also leads to an entirely new skill tree to level though. The skill tree adds more versatility to the weapon as a whole since it also tends to expand on the weapon’s capabilities thanks to moves like a flurry of quick hits, a grapple that can throw an enemy onto another, and several passive nodes that give the weapon the ability to better take down enemy posture and even their armor. Generally speaking, the bow staff feels like a great addition to Assassin’s Creed Shadows as a new versatile weapon that still manages to feel relatively balanced. You might not be replacing your simple katana with a bow staff, but you’ll likely end up finding a use for it alongside your primary weapon of choice. Claws of Aaji also tends to experiment a bit with some of its mission design, with a notable one being a few large-scale battles that you take part in early in the expansion. These experiments aren’t really expanded on over the course of the story. However, with the rest of it feeling quite similar to the base game and how it’s designed and laid out. This also means that aside from the inclusion of a brand new weapon, not much has changed for the core gameplay of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Since its original release earlier this year, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has seen several free updates that have brought them a host of improvements over time. These same improvements can also be seen on full display in Claws of Awaji since the expansion runs quite well when it comes to striking a balance between visual fidelity and performance. Running the game on a PC powered by an AMD Ryzen 77800 X3D CPU, 32 GB of RAM, DDR6000 RAM, and an AMD Radeon RX7800 XT GPU with 16 GB of VRAM. I was able to max out Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Claws of Aaji. On the graphics side of things while running at a resolution of 2560 by440, keeping FSR 3 set to quality, I was able to get decent frame rates between 70 and 80 throughout my time with the DLC with zero problems such as stuttering or poor visuals. Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Claws of AI is an interesting take on an expansion. The base game itself is incredibly long, which could in turn make returning to it a difficult proposition for those that may have already spent hundreds of hours with it. However, the fact that the DLC doesn’t really expect you to spend any time grinding up levels or gear means that its pacing doesn’t suffer from any padding. The story also feels incredibly focused and runs at a brisk pace with plenty of logical points where you can take a break. This coupled with the fact that it’s got an ideal runtime of between 10 and 13 hours for its main story makes Claws of Awaji feel like a refinement over what we saw with the base game. The bow staff also serves as an excellent new addition to further flesh out now’s toolkit and give her more options if she gets into a fight. [Applause] Feel his blood. Serving as a refinement over a game that was already considered to be a return to form is reason enough for us to recommend Claus Vaji wholeheartedly to anyone that might have enjoyed their time with Assassin’s Creed Shadows. If you aren’t already a fan of the base game, however, you won’t find anything in Claws of AI to change your mind, especially since you also need to go through the base game to access it. Hey, did you know that we at Gaming Bolt upload new videos every day? Stick around, drop a like, subscribe, and hit that bell. And let us know what kind of content you’d like to see in the future with a comment below.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows, already an incredibly large game by open-world standards, wrapped up its main story with a few plot threads still left dangling. One of these core plot threads, the fate of Naoe’s mother, is finally explored in the brand new Claws of Awaji expansion, which takes our dual protagonists to a new island zone: the eponymous Awaji, where they will have to take on the Sanzoku Ippa.
Shadows has managed to succeed quite well in executing its vision for the DLC, since it essentially feels like a microcosm of the core game, albeit with all the fat trimmed out. The new zone is small but feels dense because of its terrain, its atmosphere is a great rendition of oppression, and the story runs at a breakneck pace that never feels too rushed, while still giving you plenty of time to explore the world.