Playing Assassin's Creed shadows and here are my thoughts. MEGA SPOILER WARNING.
My main critique of this game is that it doesn't have structure if that makes sense. For instance, there is a certain path to be followed in Odyssey that helps sets the tone for the development of the story and Kassandra as a character. Shadows feels a bit more of a free for all that can make things muddy as it pertains to the development and movement of the narrative, I feel this especially with the development of the friendship between yasuke and naoe.
THOUGH, this may be the cause of my own doing as I waited a while just doing side stuff as naoe before advancing the story to the point where you unlock yasuke. The shinbakufu are probably designed to be taken down and are separated by level progression. And it could be that I very well fucked that up for myself by getting pulled into side stuff and leveling up in a fast manner.
I have the Fox, the Wise, Horseman, Ox, and Mitsuhide left of the Shinbakufu, so I feel like I can pretty deep into the main story itself. One thing that I have noticed is that there is so much that Naoe kinda has to grin and bear or just swallow down.
So many people that help her and Yasuke either had a hand in the invasion of Iga (like Yasuke himself) or they stood beside Nobunaga in some manner and are constantly glazing him (again like Yasuke). I have to give it to her, she just rolls with it but that is not to be mistaken that her disdain or hatred of Nobunaga is gone. She will never forget what he did to her home. And maaaaaaaaaan the way she reacted to the reveal of Lady Oichi 🤣🤣🤣. That shit lowkey had me dying.
She was really just like, "I ain't trying to hear that shit, you need to DIE." Which I 100% understand. It may not be fair but Lady Oichi represents so much of what destroyed Naoe's life and to be actively apart of the group that Naoe has dedicated herself to destroying.......... her crashout there was totally valid. I did let Lady Oichi live cause to me she came off as genuine (unlike Aspasia from Odyssey).
And with Yasuke, I find his drive to be an honorable samurai and how his honor binds him to avenge a tyrannical man who did honor less things so intriguing. And he is constantly reminded of the fact that the man who gave him some source of power and agency has striped it from others.
That conversation he had with Oichi where she explains what happened to her husband and how Nobunaga made a globet out of his skull. It shows the depravity of Nobunaga, and it's something that Yasuke himself would never lower himself to do. Another layer is added to if if you play yasuke to romance Oichi as I am. How can you honor the man who has hurt the woman you love the most? Yasuke is a good man and endlessly devoted to a very awful man. And in my playthrough, a good man who falls in love with a good woman who ended up way over her head trying to help the people of Omi. Utter mess this poor man's life is.