Shadows is a real step forward for the franchise, but it doesn't fix every problem. Having two protagonists with unique and contrasting skills and abilities is one of the biggest advances in merging the classic Assassin's Creed characteristics into the open-world RPG genre, letting players choose if they want to focus on the traditional Assassin's Creed stealth mechanics with Naoe or charge in with Yasuke's satisfying combos that were popular in previous games like Valhalla.

While Shadows has made big strides for the series, it has failed to address one glaring problem that the open-world Assassin's Creed games have had since Origins: the loot system. After more than 60 hours in Shadows, most of the loot I find is useless, and ignoring it becomes easier than selling or scrapping it for other resources.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows Has Too Much Useless Loot

I'm Tired Of Picking Up The Same Katanas Again And Again

The first time you get a Tanto or Kusarigama for Naoe or a Kanabo for Yasuke in Assassin's Creed Shadows is exciting. You've unlocked a whole new skill tree, it will have a new ability and, if it's a high enough rarity, you can engrave it to make it stronger. Then you find another one and another until your inventory is full of common and uncommon weapons that all look similar and have underwhelming effects. Once you've found a legendary piece of equipment you enjoy using, you can keep that upgraded throughout your playthrough, and all other pieces of loot become useless.

Assassin's Creed Shadows tries to make these redundant pieces of loot have some value through the resource system; you can dismantle gear to get materials to upgrade the weapons and armor you want to use. This also becomes useless quickly, as it's very easy to obtain plenty of upgrade materials from chests and fallen enemies throughout Japan. This ends up making the useless loot more of a pain because you have to spend time scrapping it for resources you don't need. While you can also sell extra loot to a merchant for mon, currency is equally easy to obtain.

AC Shadows Attempts To Address The Loot Problem

The Hideout Cosmetics Are A Step In The Right Direction

Assassin's Creed Shadows does improve its loot a bit, largely through the hideout system. To upgrade your hideout, you'll need a lot of resources to build and upgrade key rooms. You can find small amounts of resources to loot in enemy camps, but for larger amounts, you'll have to find stockpiles and tag them for your scouts to bring back when the seasons change. Because hideout resources are harder to obtain and are needed in larger amounts, it's more rewarding when you find them scattered throughout the landscape or when you've cleared out a castle and can tag all those stockpiles.

Upgrade your Stables to reduce the number of scouts needed to tag a stockpile, then upgrade the Study to get more scouts.

Hideout customization is another way Shadows has improved its loot. Your Hideout is somewhere you'll keep coming back to, so it's nice that there are pieces of art, decorations, and other customizations to make it feel your own. I get excited when I loot a chest and see I've unlocked a new tree or a fountain, and I instantly start thinking about where it's going to go when I get back to my hideout.

Having two protagonists has improved the loot system in Shadows, as it more than doubles the amount of Legendary equipment in the game. That means there are more exciting and rewarding moments when you complete a quest, clear a castle, or stumble upon a chest with a legendary piece of loot inside. That doesn't fully solve the problem, though. Once you've found your favorite pieces of gear and customized them to look how you want, all other Legendaries become as valuable as the common and uncommon loot you won't use, except you can't even scrap them for resources.

Assassin's Creed Needs To Rethink Discovery Entirely

Exploring The Open World Needs To Be Rewarding

Assassin's Creed needs to keep making changes to its loot system so it works with the rest of its open-world model, which is increasingly difficult as the worlds keep getting bigger. Aside from experiments like Mirage, it's unlikely Ubisoft is going to make Assassin's Creed games smaller in the future, so it needs to make its loot system scale with the worlds as they get larger.

One approach that the franchise could use is a randomly generated loot table, similar to the Borderlands games or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild​​​​​​. This would help loot feel fresh throughout the game and over multiple playthroughs. Even so, this would still need to go hand-in-hand with a reduced amount of loot spam, as even randomly generated loot can become tiresome when it's constantly available.

I like that equipment can be upgraded so you can keep using it as you level up, but you get strong equipment too early on in Shadows and can end up using it for the majority of the game. There need to be more impactful late-game items in Assassin's Creed Shadows and future games in the series — items that look different from previous loot and scale differently than what you would have used before.