Is there New Game Plus in Assassin’s Creed Shadows – answered

For most, one swing at hunting question marks and ticking off boxes across the breadth of Ubisoft’s interpretation of Japan in Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be enough. It’s vast and generously decked out with tons of activities, quests, and optional contracts as we noted in our review.

However, if you still haven’t had enough and fancy another crack at playing through Naoe and Yasuke’s story, there are options to keep you going but unfortunately no New Game Plus. In this guide, we’ll walk you through all the details around Assassin’s Creed Shadows side stepping New Game Plus.

Does Assassin’s Creed Shadows have New Game Plus?

No, for those that complete the main story and roll the credits, there’s no option to start a brand new playthrough under the guise of New Game Plus. In keeping with what we’d expect from the feature, this would have meant restarting the story from the beginning with all your acquired gear, skills, passives, and weapons intact.

Instead, after watching the credits, you’ll be dropped back into the open world to clean up any pending side quests, hunt down collectibles, find all legendary gear and weapons, and tick off trophies. From there, you’re free to explore all the 9 regions as you see fit, but the story ends there and there’s no way to restart it without firing up a fresh save as if you were playing the game for the first time.

This isn’t uncommon for the series as we’ve seen a few titles omit the feature, including, most recently, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. 2023’s Mirage and Odyssey, which was released in 2018, both have New Game Plus. But, for the latter it took a patch months after release for the feature to be implemented, which means there’s hope that Ubi will do the same for Assassin’s Creed Shadows New Game Plus. We’ll have to wait and see, but for the moment it’s over to new save if you want to play the story again.