Ubisoft finally pulled the curtain back on the Assassin's Creed Shadows summer update, and honestly, it’s a lot more than just a few bug fixes and a new outfit. We’ve been waiting to see how they’d handle the post-launch support after that initial March release, and the roadmap for the middle of 2025 is pretty packed. If you’ve been wandering around feudal Japan wondering when you can finally stop standing around waiting for the sun to go down, this is the news you’ve been looking for.
The Big One: New Game Plus and the Level Cap
The meat of the July 29 update is basically built for the completionists. We’re finally getting New Game Plus. It works how you’d expect: you keep your character levels, your gear, and those hard-earned skill points, but the story resets. You can even skip the prologue if you don’t feel like sitting through the intro again.
But here is the catch.
They didn’t just give us NG+; they pushed the ceiling higher. The level cap is jumping from 60 to 80.
If you thought your Yasuke build was already overpowered, wait until you hit the new Knowledge Ranks 9 and 10. These ranks add passives that basically turn you into a wrecking ball, specifically boosting damage right after a kill or an ability use. It’s clearly designed to make the endgame feel less like a grind and more like a power trip.
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Fast Forwarding and Map Clarity
For me, the most annoying thing about Shadows at launch was the lack of a "wait" button. It’s a stealth game! Shadows are in the name! Why couldn't we just meditate like in Valhalla to reach the night?
Well, the September portion of the Assassin's Creed Shadows summer update finally fixes that. We're getting a fast-forward time of day feature. No more hiding in a bush for fifteen real-world minutes because you want to infiltrate a castle under the cover of darkness.
They’re also throwing a bone to the "map cleaners." You know who you are. The people who can't stand seeing a little bit of grey fog on the corner of the screen. Now, once you sync every viewpoint in a region, the world map will fully defog. It’s a small quality-of-life tweak, but it makes navigating Kyoto and the surrounding provinces way less of a headache.
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Claws of Awaji: The September Expansion
While the July stuff is great for replayability, the real "event" is the Claws of Awaji expansion. It’s dropping on September 16, 2025.
This isn't just a couple of missions. We're talking a whole new region—the island of Awaji, west of Osaka. Ubisoft is pitching it as roughly 10 to 20 hours of content depending on how much you side-track.
Naoe gets a new weapon here: the Bo Staff.
We’ve seen some early footage of her using it to vault over enemies and slam them into each other. It looks much more kinetic than the Hidden Blade or the Kusarigama. The story picks up right after the main game’s epilogue, so you’ll need to have the credits rolled before you can even set foot on the island.
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Why the Roadmap Matters
Kinda surprisingly, the game director recently confirmed there aren't plans for a second major expansion on the scale of Awaji. That makes this Assassin's Creed Shadows summer update and the subsequent DLC the definitive "Year 1" experience.
They’re leaning into "Story Drops" instead of a traditional massive Season Pass. We saw this with The Works of Luis Frois in May and A Critical Encounter in June. It’s a different pace for the franchise, focusing more on steady, smaller additions rather than one giant drop every six months.
What You Should Do Now
If you’ve put the game down, now is the time to check your gear. With the level cap increasing and the Claws of Awaji requiring a finished save file, you'll want to be ready for September.
- Finish the main questline if you haven't; you can't access the new island without it.
- Upgrade your Hideout buildings. The summer update added new tiers to the Forge, allowing you to hit Mythic and Artifact rarities.
- Check the Animus Hub. The "Mnemosyne" project is live, and the cycle for data fragments has been cut in half to 3.5 days, making it way easier to grab those iridescent armor sets for Yasuke.
The focus is clearly on refining the experience before the game hits the Nintendo Switch 2 in December. Whether you're in it for the historical deep dives or just want to see how Naoe handles a staff, the next few months are going to be busy.