In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, your role is to murder members of a group called the Shinbakufu. You can either use Naoe or Yasuke, at times even both, for these assassinations and boss fights, all taking place in the vast gaming playground of Feudal Japan.

Before we get to the video walkthrough featuring all the major story boss fights, assassinations, and events, here are a few tips to get you prepped up for combat.

Raid Castles & Fortresses When Possible

As long as you’re within the level of the area, you should tackle castles for their main treasure, which is usually a Legendary or Epic gear, helm, or weapon. As Naoe, you have the ability to sneak and assassinate all the samurai daimyos required to unlock the main treasure, as well as climb up the eagle perch to unlock Fast Travel. Once you at least do the latter, and if you rather just tank through the castle, bring in Yasuke since he takes all the damage needed and hits really hard.

The Best Weapons For Naoe

For our playthrough, Naoe’s Kusarigama hits pretty far and wide when you use its heavy attack (where she swings the chain around). It hits everyone, and the Legendary/Epic ones usually have some element of Poison onto it, so you can affect everyone while they die from damage over time. She also has an unlockable special move where she becomes a chain whirlwind and hits everything within its wide radius, and is fast.

Her Tanto is close-ranged, but she can unlock a special where she tosses it from afar in a battle, then follows up with a rush attack that’s unblockable. Plus, the best Tantos have armor-piercing and armor-breaking properties to complement her Tanto skills and passives.

Above all else, learn to dodge at the last possible second. She deals the most damage to enemies when they’re in a vulnerable (yellow) state, and that only happens if you block enemy attacks at the right time and evade the red flashing ones at the last second.

The Best Weapons For Yasuke

Yasuke’s melee weapons are all great, but we feel that the Kanabo is best in breaking enemy guard and just kills things. Second place melee goes to the Naginata which hits wide and mid-ranged, dealing more damage when you hit multiple enemies with it. Big samurai dish out better damage with big and long weapons, so both the Kanabo and Naginata are the best choices.

For long-ranged options, both the bow and tenpo are great either way. You have multi-hitting and multi-shot specials with the former, and you have explosive properties with the latter. We personally went for the tenpo, but both are good at headshots and destroying alarm bells from far away.

For equipment, the best Legendary Armor is the Protector Armor, which grants Yasuke the ability to parry unblockable red attacks. This is very useful in the long run where the late-game bosses have unblockable attacks. Just save up your Gold to upgrade this armor to the highest current level.

Assassin’s Creed Shadow All Boss Fights