The Best Difficulty Setting in Assassin's Creed Shadows

Today's Assassin's Creed games aren't really known for their difficulty, with most aiming to be as accessible as possible for both new and returning players. However, Assassin's Creed Shadows bucks the trend a little in this regard, as although it does offer a few different difficulty settings, the way that the game handles story progression and damage scaling can make them somewhat redundant at times.

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By Eric Warner

Difficulty in Assassin's Creed Shadows is determined almost entirely by the player's gear and level, meaning that those hoping to mainline the main story are going to be in for a fairly rude awakening as they start to dip down beneath the recommended level. Once this happens, the best difficulty setting is basically decided for them, and even then, they'll still need to complete some of the game's side content in order to progress.

Which Assassin's Creed Shadows Difficulty Setting Should You Choose?

Assassin's Creed Shadows has four main difficulty settings: Story, Forgiving, Normal, and Expert. Forgiving, Normal, and Expert serve as the game's Easy, Normal, and Hard modes, while Story is intended for those who want to focus more on the narrative experience. With this in mind, skilled players should choose Expert, while more casual players should opt for Normal or Forgiving. However, there's more to consider here than just combat skill alone.

Every main story mission in Assassin's Creed Shadows has a recommended level, and if players are too far beneath this, they'll find that completing the mission becomes pretty much impossible. Even when switching down to the Story difficulty setting, regular enemies will take countless hits to defeat and will kill the player with just a single blow. Every assassination attempt will fail as well, even when the target is sleeping.

As such, those who don't plan on completing much side content should play Assassin's Creed Shadows on the Story difficulty setting, even if this means having to settle for an easier combat experience than they would have liked. They'll still need to complete a fair amount of side content to be able to progress through the main story, but nowhere near as much as if they were playing on Forgiving, Normal, or Expert mode.

There are no difficulty-related Trophies or Achievements in Assassin's Creed Shadows and players will be free to change the difficulty setting at any time as long as they are not in active combat.

Difficulty Tuning in Assassin's Creed Shadows

After starting the game, players will gain access to a few new difficulty settings via the Difficulty Tuning menu. Here, they'll be able to determine combat and stealth difficulty separately, and will also have the option of enabling Guaranteed Assassination, which will instantly kill an enemy if an assassination attempt is successful. However, it's important to note that high-level enemies will still be able to block assassination attempts, thus making this option fairly redundant in most situations.

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