It felt good to see Assassin’s Creed Shadows protagonist Naoe’s face nearly healed after the 50-hour journey through 16th-century Japan. The wound that had once marred her face was mostly gone, with only a thin, barely discernible scar left behind. Naoe’s face slowly heals over the course of Shadows’ story and the changing of the in-game seasons, providing a visual metaphor for the game’s thematic journey through the ugliness of revenge, the healing process of forgiveness and moving beyond tragedy with enough time and support. It’s a story that has incredible moments between Naoe and fellow protagonist Yasuke but largely feels listless during its muddled second act. And although Naoe’s shinobi fantasy is the best Assassin’s Creed has been in ages and remains fun to play for the entire game, it makes Yasuke’s samurai gameplay feel subpar in comparison.

Naoe feels like the intended protagonist of Shadows. Save for a brief hour as Yasuke, the first 12 or so hours are spent solely playing as the shinobi. Even once Yasuke returns to the story, it’s in service to Naoe’s goal to kill a dozen masked individuals and steal back a mysterious box that she has to recover.

But even ignoring his narrative shortcomings as a secondary protagonist, Yasuke is not fun to play. Assassin’s Creed has never been a series where its individual gameplay components have surpassed those in other games. Its combat has never been as good as what’s available in other action games, other titles have stronger parkour mechanics, and the series always feels a step behind when it comes to stealth. The best part about Assassin’s Creed has always been that it brings those three styles of gameplay together in one cohesive package–a combination you don’t often see at the level of quality Ubisoft has managed to achieve with Assassin’s Creed. Naoe perfectly embodies that trifecta, even possessing new mechanics that make the stealth part of Assassin’s Creed a lot better than recent entries. Yasuke, on the other hand, doesn’t. Though he’s able to fight, Yasuke cannot use parkour, nor can he really rely on stealth. He’s only one-third of Assassin’s Creed. Although the idea of making an Assassin’s Creed protagonist who solely specializes in open warfare sounds cool, in practice it feels awful because that aspect of the franchise is still not up to snuff with dedicated action games.

Graciously, only a small part of Shadows forces you to play as Yasuke. Most of the game lets you choose between the two protagonists for both major missions and optional side quests, so it’s easy to opt into the clearly superior gameplay option. In terms of how she plays, Naoe is the best protagonist that Assassin’s Creed has had in a while. She’s armed with the traditional tools of the trade like a hidden blade, throwing knives, and smoke bombs, but also possesses tools the franchise hasn’t seen in a decade (a less-advanced version of Syndicate’s rope launcher appears in Shadows as Naoe’s grappling hook, for example) and brand-new abilities: movement mechanics like going prone, using a reed to breathe underwater, assassinating targets through screen doors, and latching onto the ceiling.

Light plays a bigger role in stealth too, with Naoe more easily remaining hidden in dark places and able to stay in shadows by blowing out candles or using a shuriken or kunai to knock out a lantern. And enemies are a lot smarter this time around–if they find a knocked-out or dead companion, they’ll alert their remaining allies and hunt for Naoe. If she’s specifically left behind evidence that points to her being a shinobi (like kunai left in dead bodies), they’ll even look up, meaning skulking on the rooftops isn’t the easy safe space it’s been for the entire franchise. And even though Naoe can hold her own in a fight against a few guards, she is woefully incapable of taking on large groups, even hours into the game, as enemy guards will intelligently do their best to surround Naoe and attack together to overwhelm her meager defenses.

This transforms every mission with Naoe into a puzzle in which the solutions can change depending on where you’ve decided to spend your Mastery points on Naoe’s skill tree and what the weather is like. As you play and time passes, Shadows loops through spring, summer, fall, and winter, transforming the landscape of almost every location. A pond in a garden is a great hiding place in the spring, but it may freeze over in winter and instead provide level ground you can use to walk up to a wall and grapple up. The thunderous storms of fall mask the sounds that Naoe makes, while winter’s vicious snow storms lower visibility for both her and her enemies. Running across a rooftop in summer is less risk-averse than winter–doing so during the latter may cause icicles on the edges of the roof to fall and shatter on the ground, alerting enemies. Guards and the average citizen behave differently during different seasons too–they’ll usually huddle closer together or stay indoors for warmth during colder seasons for example.

This constant need to adapt and strategize based not only on what season it is but what tools you have available keeps the loop of infiltrating castles and strongholds from growing overly repetitive. The exception is if you play as Yasuke. Though Yasuke can crouch in bushes, his large size makes him easier to spot. And although he can climb on top of low roofs, he cannot jump high enough to reach most places, and ropes will snap under his weight if he tries to use them to cross gaps from above. Even his assassination isn’t quiet–Yasuke shouts and announces his presence when he performs one. Every time you play as Yasuke, the answer to the puzzle in front of you is clear: Storm the enemy line and kill everyone. There’s rarely any need to worry about dying–Yasuke has a huge health pool and even starts out with gear that lets him parry unblockable attacks. Heck, one of his first Mastery skills is entering a state where he automatically blocks all attacks for almost half a minute. There’s no challenge or sense of reward for playing as him.

The few exceptions are a handful of levels and moments where you have to play as Yasuke, and since the developers know you’ll be playing as the samurai during these missions, they’ve clearly designed the level with that in mind. They still aren’t challenging, but these missions incorporate perfectly timed swells in the music and enemies with special moves and compelling back-and-forth with Yasuke that together create incredible cinematic moments that make you feel like a badass juggernaut. In these moments only did I enjoy my time with Yasuke, but they only further highlighted the shortcomings of playing as him in sections that need to accommodate gameplay for both protagonists.

Shadows’ core gameplay loop dominates Act 2, which represents about 35 hours of the game’s 50-hour runtime. With a dozen masked targets, Naoe and Yasuke work together to hunt them down, investigating leads–which are typically doled out in chunks so that you only have three or four going at a time–to ultimately track down the individual members. Along the way, optional investigations will pop up as side quests. Helping a woman track down paper butterflies leads Naoe and Yasuke to uncover a ring of child abductors, for instance, while an exasperated hunter of the supernatural invites the two into his world of investigating and debunking yokai myths. While there are a few exceptions, the entire game primarily sees you discover a hint that a group of people is up to no good, add the new circle of targets to your objective board, follow hints as to where these targets are hiding, kill them, and repeat.

It’s not a bad loop, but Assassin’s Creed has done it before and better. Odyssey (and to a lesser extent, Valhalla) united its targets in one expansive web, making the investigation feel like an actual investigation. Your target in Odyssey was the center of the Cult of Kosmos and you could only get there by finding clues on the bodies of their trusted allies, each of whom could only be easily found if you uncovered the identities of those beneath them. Odyssey’s Kassandra felt like a Greek detective, slowly working her way across the multitude of islands and piecing together who is responsible for the pain in her life. There was a consistent sense of progression as even discovering and killing members several degrees removed from the cult’s leader always provided some clue that would get you closer.

In comparison, Naoe’s hunt to track down the masked individuals who have stolen a mysterious box feels disjointed and purposeless. Each investigation exists in its own bubble, so the information you uncover in one never becomes important again. To balance the fact that Naoe’s search for the masked individuals can go in any order the player chooses, most of the members have no idea as to where the box is, what’s in it, or why they even had to take it. Some straight-up tell Naoe that they don’t even care about the box and after that happened a few times, I as the player began to wonder why I should even care.

You could argue that these masked individuals hurt Naoe so there’s justice to be served in killing them and claiming vengeance, but when Yasuke is reintroduced into the story, a huge component of him and Naoe working together is their shared realization of the unintended toll that can come with just killing without considering the consequence. Their goal then becomes not one of revenge for slights against Naoe, but in service of protecting Japan. They’re not quite sure how to go about it, though discovery of the remnants of the Assassin Brotherhood provides them a loose outline to follow as they hunt down the remaining masked targets.

Long-time fans will note Shadows takes place mere decades after the Ezio trilogy of games, but Japan’s isolation means that the largely European-centric conflict between the Assassin Brotherhood and Templar Order at this time can’t have had much consequence on the characters in Shadows. Naoe and Yasuke instead treat the Assassins and Templars like Japan at the time treated the Portuguese: a foreign culture. This is a fascinating concept for an Assassin’s Creed game–we see a shinobi like Naoe attempt to reforge her quest for justice into an ideal that others can follow while we as players know she’s just unintentionally becoming a member of the Assassin Brotherhood. That could have been the entire main crux of the game, and probably should have been, but Naoe’s search for answers and wisdom is pushed off to the side as its own investigation. You can do her personal questline at any time once you uncover it, but as a result, much like the other investigations, the themes and discoveries from that part of the game do not permeate to the others. You watch Naoe grow and regress in an odd and narratively unsatisfying way throughout Arc 2 and 3, and it muddies her motivation to hunt the masked targets. It really makes you ask why Yasuke is there too, because his whole motivation until the start of Arc 3 is to help Naoe–it’s only in the game’s last few hours that he finally gets some motivation that has nothing to do with his shinobi companion.

All of which is to say that Shadows is on the weaker end of the Assassin’s Creed franchise when it comes to story. There are fantastic moments, like Naoe and Yasuke bonding by cloud-gazing or the duo looking out at the ocean and Yasuke telling Naoe about the wonders and problems of the rest of the world that he’s seen but she hasn’t even heard of, given Japan’s isolation. But none of it feels earned. I can’t track the two’s relationship save for a few crucial moments. I like where they end up, but I don’t love how they got there. So much of that dynamic is the heart of Shadows’ story too, because most of the other characters aren’t all that interesting or memorable–there are clear standouts, but it feels telling that I can only name six of Shadows’ characters off the top of my head after meeting several dozen over the 50-hour story.

You can recruit some of these characters to your side as well, forming a not-quite-but-basically Assassin Bureau in Japan. These “League members” can be called upon to aid Naoe or Yasuke in a fight or use specialized tools to help out with stealth–I often kept the firearm-wielding and grenade-throwing shinobi on standby for fights Naoe was losing, and for my second option I rotated between the would-be Assassin who could silently kill two targets at a time and the pirate who could put a single target to sleep and stop reinforcements from arriving if Naoe was spotted. But the powerful monk, deadly ronin, and charismatic thief had their uses, too. In terms of gameplay, the League is fantastic. But their respective stories begin and end rather quickly and checking on them back at your hub-like hideout isn’t all that rewarding–they tend to spout a line or two of dialogue and a few can be flirted with and subsequently smooched, but it all feels so shallow. This has consistently been an issue with Assassin’s Creed’s optional recruitable companions, so really it’s all par for the course, but it’s still disappointing to see characters who are interesting for an hour or two get reduced to nothing more than a face for a cool combat mechanic.

As per usual at this point, the best-written character in Shadows is the setting itself. Unlike the other RPG-like Assassin’s Creed games, Shadows’ setting isn’t quite as wondrous to explore. Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla focused on places and/or time periods that–at the time–weren’t in a lot of mainstream video games. In comparison, we have a lot of games set in 16th-century Japan or that heavily borrow from that time period. Much like Assassin’s Creed III and Syndicate, Shadows feels like it’s set in a place I’ve seen before and incorporates major historical events and figures that I’ve read a lot about. That doesn’t diminish the setting by any means, but it does mean it’s easier to compare Shadows’ world to other video games and the draw of exploring an unseen piece of world history isn’t as strong. For me at least–your experience may vary.

Even if it covers familiar ground, Shadows feels like a world that Ubisoft Quebec has made its own. Tall mountains and dense forests create beautiful but clear guidelines for exploration as not even Naoe can easily navigate over or through them. Individual locations are miniature parkour playgrounds. I will always miss that these larger Assassin’s Creed games move the series away from the city-centric maps you could cross via rooftops, but Shadows keeps its open fields and winding roads interesting with picturesque views, amusing conversations from the odd passerby, and a world that feels more alive than Origins’ Egypt or Odyssey’s Greece, because it changes and evolves with the seasons. I could watch farmers plant seeds in spring, see the crops grow in the summer, and then return in fall to watch the farmers harvest their yield. None of this has any bearing on Shadows’ gameplay, but small details like this help keep things interesting as you’re riding on horseback between points of interest.

And said points tend to offer the playground of possibilities I want from an Assassin’s Creed, as buildings of various heights and shapes create 3D mazes to navigate and sneak through as Naoe searches for her next target. Naoe is quick and perhaps the best freerunner the franchise has ever had (she doesn’t have as many opportunities to flex her talents as Unity’s Arno so it’s tricky to make a clear distinction as to who is better), but she doesn’t easily snag on corners or unintentionally leap off rooftops like Kassandra or Eivor. For the most part, her movements are fluid and feel good. Yasuke is a lumbering oaf, but at least with Naoe, it’s a genuine joy to navigate Ubisoft Quebec’s vision of 16th-century Japan.

So much of Shadows’ issues come from Yasuke’s inclusion. Not because he’s a badly written character or because he doesn’t feel like he belongs, but because much of what makes an Assassin’s Creed game an Assassin’s Creed is stripped away to make his samurai fantasy work. Naoe’s shinobi fantasy works far better, effortlessly sliding into the gameplay loop of hunting down mysterious targets, puzzling through the best way to reach them, cutting them down, and disappearing without a trace. Naoe and Yasuke’s story could have used more unity, especially in giving the duo a shared purpose to drive the plotline and their character development forward. But at the very least, Naoe’s gameplay is the best that the series has felt since the transition to a more action-RPG format–Assassin’s Creed Shadows is an absolute blast to play.