Ubisoft
Currently holding a commendable score of 78 on PC and 81 on PlayStation 5 – based on 41 and 74 reviews, respectively – the latest installment in the Assassin’s Creed franchise is generally praised for its combat mechanics for both Naoe and Yasuke, as well as its immersive open-world that, according to some of the reviews, perfectly captures the essence of medieval Japan.
At the same time, gaming outlets were less impressed by Shadows’ gameplay as a whole, its storyline and writing, exploration, quest design, and its handling of settlement-building mechanics. Provided the game’s score remains unchanged going forward, Assassin’s Creed Shadows stands as the 14th to 16th best game of 2025 so far, sharing the score with Ivy Road’s Wanderstop and Sunblink’s Hello Kitty Island Adventure.
While Ubisoft is likely already popping champagne to celebrate the results displayed on Shadows’ Metacritic page, gamers – many of whom don’t place much stock in scores given by gaming journalists – have noticed a peculiar similarity across the reviews of The Gamer, Game Rant, Windows Central, and many other outlets – the repeated usage of the same phrase to describe AC Shadows – “return to form.”
The repetition of this exact wording across so many news websites has raised concerns that the early copies provided to websites by Ubisoft came with strict guidelines on what can and cannot be said in the reviews, which, had it been the case, would make the reviews and the game’s overall score compromised and not credible in the slightest.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that the “return to form” description was also used by multiple outlets to describe Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a game that even EA admitted was a failure and led to sizable layoffs at BioWare, fueling concern that a disconnect between critic reviews and consumer opinions could happen again with Shadows.
In general, the lack of correlation between critic reviews and user scores in AAA games has been a growing trend in 2024 and 2025, with examples like Star Wars Outlaws (75/100 critic score vs 5.4/10 user score), Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (82 vs 6.5), Concord (62 vs 1.7), Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League (60 vs 3.4), Avowed (80 vs 6.9), WWE 2K25 (80 vs 6.1), and Civilization VII (80 vs 3.9). With that in mind, the best advice is to trust no one and simply play the game yourself, because, at the end of the day, all tastes are subjective, and it’s perfectly normal for one to enjoy a 2.5-rated game and dislike a 9.9.
Don’t forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
