Assassin’s Creed Shadows Guide
How Long To Beat Assassin’s Creed Shadows
The main story in Assassin’s Creed Shadows takes around 40–45 hours if you focus mostly on story missions and only complete enough side...
Quick Answer
The main story in Assassin’s Creed Shadows takes around 40–45 hours if you focus mostly on story missions and only complete enough side content to stay properly leveled.
Players aiming for full completion, collectibles, optional objectives, contracts, castles, and exploration should expect the game to take closer to 80–100+ hours. The world is massive, and it is very easy to get distracted once the map fully opens up.
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Full Guide
How Long Assassin’s Creed Shadows Takes To Beat
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is one of the larger modern Assassin’s Creed games, but it sits somewhere between Origins and Valhalla in overall scale. The game offers a long main story, huge regions to explore, and a massive amount of optional side activities that can easily double your playtime.
How long your playthrough lasts mostly depends on how much side content you complete while progressing through the main story.
Main Story Completion Time
If you focus mostly on story objectives and only complete the minimum amount of side content needed to stay leveled, the campaign takes around 40–45 hours to finish.
However, reaching the credits still requires completing important missions connected to Naoe, so most players naturally spend extra time exploring castles, temples, contracts, and regional activities along the way.
The game encourages exploration constantly, which means even “main story only” runs usually become much longer than expected.
Full Completion Time
Players going for full completion should expect at least 80–100+ hours.
Optional activities include:
- Contracts
- Castles
- Temples
- Lost Pages
- Kuji-kiri
- Hidden Trails
- Kofun Tombs
- Synchronization Points
- Collectibles and exploration challenges
Many of these activities reward important progression materials, knowledge points, gear upgrades, or mastery points that improve your overall character strength.
Why The Game Takes So Long
The biggest reason Assassin’s Creed Shadows becomes such a long game is the amount of progression systems layered together.
You are constantly balancing:
- Story progression
- Character levels
- Gear upgrades
- Hideout upgrades
- Knowledge points
- Exploration activities
- Optional assassination boards
Castles alone can take a surprising amount of time because they often involve stealth routes, elite samurai enemies, hidden loot, and large exploration spaces.
The game also encourages slowing down and exploring naturally instead of rushing directly between story objectives.
Is Assassin’s Creed Shadows Longer Than Valhalla?
Not quite.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is still huge, but it is generally considered smaller and more focused than Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Most players will likely find it closer in size to Assassin’s Creed Origins while still offering a very large amount of optional content.
That said, completionists can still easily spend well over 100 hours exploring everything the game offers. Your backlog may start staring at you aggressively after a while.
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Story, Characters & Side Quests
All Romance Options In Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Assassin’s Creed Shadows includes multiple romance options for both Naoe and Yasuke. Relationships are built through companion quests, target questlines, and special dialogue choices marked with heart icons.
Naoe can romance Gennojo, Katsuhime, Koshiro, and Mayu, while Yasuke can romance Lady Oichi, Hori Hidemasa, Ibuki, and Rin.
You can romance multiple characters in the same playthrough without penalties or relationship conflicts.
Story, Characters & Side Quests
When Do You Unlock Yasuke In Assassin’s Creed Shadows
You unlock Yasuke as a fully playable character near the end of the Temple of the Horseman mission in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Most players reach this point around 10–20 hours into the main story depending on how much side content they complete.
To unlock him faster, focus mainly on the early story targets, especially The Wounded and The Golden Teppo. Once Yasuke joins permanently, you can freely swap between him and Naoe outside of combat and restricted areas.
Locations & Collectibles
How To Open Every Kuji-Kiri Meditation Location In Assassin’s Creed Shadows
There are 22 Kuji-Kiri meditation locations in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and they can only be completed while playing as Naoe. Each meditation spot appears as an orange meditation icon after discovering nearby white question marks on the map.
To complete a Kuji-Kiri, sit on the meditation mat and finish the rhythm-based QTE sequence. If the button prompts become too difficult to memorize, you can enable Auto Quick Time Events in the gameplay settings to automatically complete every meditation challenge.
Finishing all 22 Kuji-Kiri locations unlocks the Zen Master trophy and rewards knowledge points used for upgrading your skill tree.
Puzzles & Codes
All Hidden Vault Puzzle Solutions In Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Hidden vaults in Assassin’s Creed Shadows mainly appear as Kofun tomb dungeons and the massive Glyph Door mystery tied to the A Puzzlement quest.
Most vaults require either Yasuke’s strength to destroy debris and move objects or Naoe’s agility to crawl through tight passages. Several puzzles involve explosive jars, movable blocks, underwater paths, and hidden climbable ledges.
Completing these vaults rewards legendary gear, rare loot, and one of the game’s biggest secret discoveries.
Puzzles & Codes
How To Unlock Secret Castle Rooms In Assassin’s Creed Shadows
To unlock secret castle rooms in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you need to use environmental tools like explosive jars, hidden crawlspaces, grappling points, keys, and mechanical puzzle systems.
Most hidden rooms are tied to either Naoe’s stealth traversal abilities or Yasuke’s brute strength. Look for suspicious wall layouts, ceiling hatches, drainage systems, and locked upper keeps inside major castles.
Many legendary treasure rooms also remain locked until every Samurai Daisho in the castle has been eliminated.
Locations & Collectibles
All Legendary Armor Locations In Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Most Legendary Armor pieces in Assassin’s Creed Shadows are found inside Legendary Treasure Chests hidden within heavily guarded castles, forts, caves, and vaults across Japan.
Each armor set includes a head piece and body piece with unique gameplay perks designed specifically for either Naoe or Yasuke. To unlock castle treasure rooms, you usually need to eliminate every Samurai Daisho inside the area first.
Legendary armor automatically scales to your current level when found, making these some of the strongest gear rewards in the game.