The official Assassin’s Creed Twitter account decided to poll the players on what they felt about the Claws of Awaji expansion in Creed Shadows, which only came out a week ago. And wow, dysphoric to see the replies so varied! Some would really champion this aside from an incredible experience, while others wouldn’t even spare it a cursory thought. Almost as if the community has lost the date itself.
The side note again: For those who maybe fell off from the timeline, Claws of Awaji is the first main story expansion for Assassin’s Creed Shadows. It transports the players to a new island called Awaji with a fresh story and a new assortment of characters to meet, like this Tsuyu character everybody’s been chatting about. According to Ubisoft, the expansion will have 10-15 hours of content, which seems just right for some players. One very hyped man named Frogboyx1Gaming said, “Absolutely incredible š² I really like these types of expansions that add a new area and more story content that can be finished in 10 to 15 hours.” Luca backed him saying, “Keep on with the experiments on gameplay, always surprise the players,” which is strong backing for the devs.
Just scroll down a bit, and the vibes completely change. Justice bluntly stated, “…Didnāt bother. Reportedly too short, shouldnāt have to buy DLC to complete a story, and the new abilities, rewards arenāt worth it for the price.” Ouch! This is a rather common theme, feeling that a DLC for some reason is needed to complete the story of the main game. And it is a little touchy for many gamers. Then, Jared Gooch goes by the name OkinawanCowboy and rates the DLC as “6/10 kind of disappointing as a DLC” and drops a great point about how expectations for DLC have gotten messed up so much. More weapon variety or more lore related to the Isu and Abstergo are what he had his hopes set to. Fair enough.
Next layer down is the level of bugs and gameplay experience. Chris Lee had quite a few grievances, and while each one of them is personal in nature, you could smell the pain through his words. He talked about, “Ambushers can be oppressive with no good defense against shuriken” and absolutely mad complaints about “Captains come too soon during confrontations negating the need to find them.” Another bug mentioned was, “staff chain assassinations and attacks are often buggy.” Yeah, that’s annoying. Just when you’re supposed to nail that epic move, the game is like, “Nah.” Another player, Jaki Many, commented, “It was solid, but I am tired of wheels of targets to kill. Need more narrative based experience.” So perhaps for some, this stands as a burn, burn, burn classic Assassin’s Creed formula of “go here, kill this list of dudes.”
Wait- what was I saying? Ah, yes- noise from bugs and Structure. HecticSalad stated they expected something scarier with the announcements but were quite underwhelmed. Then there’s Alex Townley, who ran into a wall saying, “I couldn’t finish it because of that bullshit boss lol.” We’ve all been there, right? Being stuck on an absurdly unfair boss.
On the other hand, some went crazy for the improvements to the narrative with Jean, Alexis stating, “Glad you improve the narrative aspect ! With all the letters in the world it’s way more fun to understand where is the loot and why it’s there ! Also, people talking in the streets about the situaiton of Awaji so it’s more immersive. Continue this way Ubisoft ! š” So, they appreciate signs of life in the world, which is cool. Massive shout-out to the boss fights, especially Nowaki, a nice nod to Dead by Daylight in a quest too, which is kind of weird but awesome.
Then comes the other… layer of conversation. One user named “best game japanāļø” entered this discussion about some criticism of the game’s handling of Japanese culture, stating, “As a Japanese person, I don’t feel like this is a ‘spit in the face’ of our culture. If you play the game, you’ll see that it shows a great deal of respect for Japan. Frankly, it’s more awkward to see someone from another country trying to speak for Japanese people.” That’s quite a powerful statement and pretty much shuts the whole discussion down.
And here are some of the forward-looking ones: Gameplay videos asked if more would indeed be added to the island and a new roadmap for autumn and winter would be out; TSLstudio is basically begging for a conclusion to the modern-day story with Layla, Shaun, and the gang. And here kachigar is, “Still waiting for switch 2 version š.” The struggle is real for some of them.
So lastly, what is said about Claws of Awaji? Messy. Some see it as the perfect DLC, with praises for the new area and story content. The others rate the DLC as too short, frustratingly buggy here and there, and do not contain enough rhythm to be worth purchasing. Probably a good farewell to anyone still way deep into the Assassin’s Creed Shadows world and craving everything that game gave to them. But if you were already feeling a certain kind of ointment about the formula or expecting some kind of megalaunch, chances are you would walk away disappointed. It’s your classic Ubisoft DLC for better or worse. The Clawns are out, and the players are definitely not holding back their opinions.
