Assassin’s Creed Shadows: How To Unlock Yasuke The Samurai

There are two playable characters in Assassin’s Creed Shadows — but you wouldn’t know that right away. It can take 12 hours of gameplay before you’re able to recruit Yasuke The Samurai to your playable character team. If you want to unlock him as soon as possible, here’s what you need to know. There’s a specific mission in the story where he becomes available, and if you take a long time to get there, you’ll be waiting a very long time for Yasuke to join you.

Once Yasuke the Samurai is unlocked, you can quickly swap characters at any time from the inventory menu or when you fast-travel. Swapping characters will clear your wanted level — swapping characters also does not trigger season changes, so you can swap as often as you want.

How To Unlock The Samurai

Yasuka the Samurai doesn’t become available for a very long time in Assassin’s Creed: Shadows — you’ll need to progress with Naoe for several missions before you’ll gain the second playable character.

• At the start of the game, you’ll play as Naoe the Ninja. You’ll get a tutorial assassination mission and take out one of The Shinbakufo. After this, you’ll be able to freely explore the world map.
• After defeating two more Shinbakufo in assassination missions, you’ll unlock the mission to assassinate Nobunaga at Hinnoji Temple.
• Complete this mission. Afterward, you’ll permanently unlock Yasuke The Samurai — you can now swap between characters at any time.

Yasuke The Samurai is a powerful ally that specializes in melee combat. He can take out multiple enemies at once and comes equipped with a noisy black powder rifle for taking out enemies at range.

What’s Special About Yasuke?

Yasuke is a heavy, powerful samurai with a very different fighting style compared to Naoe. He’s faster in melee combat, but slower in his general movement speed. He’s a quick rundown.

• Yasuke has powerful abilities that make fighting melee enemies much easier. He can clear entire camps of enemies without needing to use stealth.
• Yasuke is so heavy, he can’t easily traverse certain areas. He can’t climb as nimbly as Naoe, and because he lacks tools, he can’t scale some walls and go through certain obstacles.
• Yasuke is strong, able to move large objects and smash through walls with his shoulder charge. If you’re stuck on a puzzle, try switching to Yasuke.

Yasuke is a brutal samurai that suddenly changes how you’ll tackle challenges in Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. Instead of stealthing around an area, you can easily kill everyone in your path with standard sword combat. Only the most heavily guarded castles can stop him, and most of the biggest barriers only exist because he’s unable to reach all the areas Naoe can go.