While I love my Steam Deck, I’ve come to accept that it won’t always be able to keep up with gaming in 2025. It’s a little over three years old now and is hit-or-miss when it comes to running Triple A games, as it was even when it launched. While something like Cyberpunk 2077 can look absolutely gorgeous on the Deck, a newer game like Baldur’s Gate 3 will be essentially unplayable after a certain point (its Verified rating be damned). Because of this, I wasn’t expecting much out of Assassin’s Creed Shadows on my Steam Deck and have been pleasantly surprised by how well it plays.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is already one of the year’s best games and on the Deck’s default settings it’s not too shabby either. While the environments don’t pop as much and the lighting isn’t as remarkable as when playing on console or a beefier PC, it still looks pretty darn good. The sweeping landscape shots when completing a viewpoint stun on the Deck’s 7-inch LCD screen and riding around the giant map on horseback is still a joy that can suck up hours of your time. Shadows can also maintain a consistent 30 FPS during gameplay, which can get hectic with multiple enemies barreling down on Yasuke or wandering a castle, waiting for Naoe’s blade.
Now, it’s not the best-looking game I’ve played on the Steam Deck, and there’s obviously a noticeable downgrade when playing for hours on a PS5 and then transitioning to the Deck. But for a 2025 Triple A release, it could look a lot worse on a handheld gaming PC. The only true complaint I have when playing Shadows on the go won’t be new to Steam Deck owners: it’s a certified battery assassin. On default settings with moderately high brightness, you’re lucky if you can play Assassin’s Creed Shadows for an hour and a half on the Deck before the battery is bled dry. It’ll have a tough time excelling as your airplane game unless you have an outlet at your seat or a power bank fully charged.
As for the content itself, the open world Japan in Shadows lends itself nicely to short bursts of gaming. While Naoe and Yasuke have a dozen Shinbakufu members to assassinate, there are plenty of side quests and secondary targets to go after. As you venture through the regions of Japan, you’ll encounter various NPCs who will add new targets to your quest board. There’s no end to the daikans to kill, yokai to investigate, and ronin to duel. Most of the side quests don’t take terribly long to complete either, so you can complete one or two before your battery eats it.
Of course, as with most Ubisoft games, the open world is populated by question marks after question marks beckoning you to check them out. Much of my time playing on the Deck has just been trotting from location to location praying at shrines or scouring kofuns for loot. Castles and forts are abundant, and assassinating or battling their Samurai Daisho makes for an enjoyable gameplay loop.
With Ubisoft Connect making cross saves possible, ending a gaming session on your desktop and picking up your Shadows save at the airport or hotel room on a Steam Deck couldn’t be easier. Assassin’s Creed Shadows plays great on the Steam Deck, both in terms of its performance and how its gameplay lends itself to short sessions on the handheld. Now, if only Ubisoft would get rid of the unnecessary Animus Hub launcher to create an even smoother gaming-on-the-go experience.
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