We shouldn’t be surprised to discover that an Assassin’s Creed game is good. Admittedly, Assassin’s Creed Shadows was beset by development problems and missed its release date any number of times, but as a series, Assassin’s Creed has earned its place as one of gaming’s key tentpoles. Shadows was originally released earlier in 2025, and proved to be another excellent action-adventure, its Japanese setting opening up a new set of features for the long-running series. Now, it’s arriving on the Nintendo Switch 2, and we’ve had the opportunity to discover whether Ubisoft have managed to stuff the huge experience onto Nintendo’s latest hybrid console.
There’s no getting away from the fact that you can immediately tell Assassin’s Creed Shadows is running on less powerful hardware, but what has been achieved with this port once again shows the level of polish that Ubisoft are capable of delivering and the adaptability of the Anvil engine. Just as with Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft have managed to bring across the core experience across in a deeply playable form by making smart decisions with regard to the visual nips and tucks they’ve had to make.
Clear signs include less-detailed floor textures, simplified water effects, static bodies of water, and mild pop-in, which seemed particularly prevalent in shadows. There’s also the tell-tale sign of anti-aliasing shimmer, and at times there’s a distinct line a few feet away from your character where it almost seems to present as screen tearing. That’s only visible under certain circumstances, though, and only when you’re not in motion.
All that considered, Assassin’s Creed Shadows still looks great on Switch 2. When the sunlight is shimmering through the trees, fronds of grass sway in the breeze, and fallen leaves shuffle underfoot, you can’t help but be impressed by the organic, vibrant world that Ubisoft have created. There’s baked in puddle reflections, which still carry a real sense of quality despite losing the ray tracing of the beefier consoles, while birds and beasts populate every scene, albeit with less definition than elsewhere. It looked incredible elsewhere, and still looks arresting here.
The real key is the frame rate. Assassin’s Creed Shadows aims for 30fps on Switch 2, and that does feel clearly slower and less immediate than its 60fps brethren. Depending on how sensitive you are to such things, that, in itself, might ruin the experience for you. It can dip from there at times too, especially through night scenes with an excess of burning flame effects such as in the opening battle, and even some of the cutscenes struggle to maintain a locked frame rate.
However, it mostly sits at or around 30fps, and in this context, that is a strong start. Given the continual patches we’ve seen for Star Wars Outlaws, you have to assume that Ubisoft will be refining the experience further in the coming weeks, but overall it’s absolutely playable at launch. It feels hugely impressive to have Assassin’s Creed Shadows in the palm of your hand, especially given the size and scope of the game, and I’ve really enjoyed returning to the world, even with the reduced graphical fidelity and lower frame rate. It was a good game originally, and it remains a good game now.
Of course, if you have the option of playing elsewhere, whether on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S or PC, Assassin’s Creed Shadows does look, play and perform better. That said, you can’t carry those out the door, and the core experience remains in place on Switch 2, whether you’re playing docked or handheld.
If anything, this is a game that works remarkably well in handheld, as you complete the odd mission here or trek across the map there, breaking the game’s huge number of quests and side missions down into something more manageable. Thanks to Ubisoft Connect, you can also carry saves over across platforms, so if you want to double-dip, grabbing the game to continue on the go is well worth considering.
There is one underlying issue here at launch, and that’s crashes. I experienced a series of hard crashes after the first couple of hours with the game, but at intermittent points, so there was no clear trigger for them happening. Restarting my Nintendo Switch 2 seemed to remedy the issue, but I made sure to perform manual saves afterwards, just in case. Here’s hoping that a day-one patch will wipe out the issue, especially as I’ve not been the only player to experience them.
