As much as Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about Ubisoft’s stunning recreation of Sengoku-era Japan, it’s also about the wealth of characters you meet across the land and the interesting stories they have to tell.
Both Naoe and Yasuke can grow closer to some of these characters than others, eventually culminating in romance scenes after you complete a series of quests establishing their relationship.
Naoe’s romance scenes are more conventional, whereas Yasuke’s romance options are much more subtle and bittersweet. However, if you’re a completionist set on seeing everything Assassin’s Creed Shadows has to see, then you’ll want to experience all of the love and loss on offer.
Here’s where to find and complete each of the romance arcs in Assassin’s Creed Shadows for both Naoe and Yasuke.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows Romance
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Is Romance canon in Assassin’s Creed Shadows?
All of the romance options are optional in Assassin’s Creed Shadows and are not considered canon.
This means that if you’re playing in “Canon Mode” where dialogue choices are removed, romance is also locked out of your playthrough.
However, this also means that you don’t need to worry too much about who you choose to have a fling with and who you choose to ignore, since it doesn’t have a significant bearing on the ultimate outcome of the canon storyline.
Naoe Male Romance
Naoe’s first romance begins as part of the Shinbakufu arc “The Fool”, which takes place in the early-mid-game of Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Upon completion of the main story arc, you receive a new quest: “Sake and Swords” in the northeastern province of Omi.
Here you meet back up with the pugnacious, but obviously compensating and insecure, thief, Gennojo.
Sake & Swords
Following Gennojo’s intervention in the fight against Sadaoki, Naoe goes to meet him just to the north of Ogura Pond.
As she reaches the village, she finds an inebriated Gennojo sitting on his hoard of stolen finery, demanding the adoration of confused peasants and attracting the wrong sort of attention from nearby samurai.
After fighting them off, you get another romance conversation option.
He tells you to meet him at the tax collector’s house in Kyoto for a new quest.
Honor Among Thieves
Naoe meets back up with Gennojo in the north of the city, just to the south of Kinkaku-ji, at Kubo Sama Old Residence. Gennojo asks you to break into the estate and steal a scroll he says will help bring corrupt officials to justice.
Hop over the fence and either slip past the guards in the long grass or just defeat them as normal. At one of the blue dots in the middle of the compound you find a map of the Yamashiro area, which you can return to Gennojo.
Map in-hand, return to Gennojo and you get a pivotal romance option. Gennojo wants to return a stockpile of rice that was taken as tax from hungry villagers and agrees to join up with the League if Naoe helps him return it. Obviously you want him as an ally regardless of what you want to do with the romance, so agree and he’ll give you another quest.
Stolen Hearts
At the steps of Kiyomizudera, you find the meeting spot empty and a blood-splattered wall your only clue. The quest log quite unhelpfully says to use scouts here, but you’re supposed to ask bystanders whether they saw anything. The first two are stunningly unhelpful, but the third tells you that Gennojo spat at two samurai and was dragged away to a village to the north.
Follow the road along the river and as you reach the bridge you spot more blood smeared across the path.
Continue along the road and you eventually reach a small settlement with a yellow lantern swinging in the breeze.
In the yard behind the house with the lantern, you find a kneeling Gennojo about to be executed by two thugs. They’re perfectly lined up for a double assassination, but however you deal with them, untie Gennojo and you’re given yet another romance option.
As he reveals his backstory and the root of his burning hatred for the samurai, you’re offered your final romance option with Gennojo.
With your fling settled, you get one more quest to take back the rice for the villagers.
The Godless Harvest
This time you meet Gennojo outside Nijo Palace itself, with Naoe tasked with doing the recon to find the stockpile of rice.
You find it inside a storeroom on the far northern side of the palace, guarded by teppo-wielding soldiers. Defeat the guards and examine the rice to advance the scene, and as Gennojo laments his parents’ lot to be stuck with a screw-up son, their killer, Tatsugoro, appears to twist the knife in further.
Naoe steps in to fight the entitled samurai as Gennojo slips away to find the rice, and so begins a frustrating fight against a normal man who doesn’t flinch when sliced by a katana, who also calls in numerous reinforcements throughout the fight – with fighting multiple enemies at once being a major weakness of Naoe’s.
Focus on your abilities and dealing damage to Tatsugoro primary, only using his goons to build up adrenaline to spam your abilities some more and you should prevail.
After the battle, you find a distraught Gennojo has primed the rice stockpile to explode. After a brief exchange, you get a timed dialogue option that will impact Gennojo in the future. Choose the soothe option and Naoe will relate her own experience of losing her parents to Gennojo’s, who will see the error of his ways and back down.
With this you get the final option to invite Gennojo to become an official member of the League and an ally you can call on in battle.
Naoe Female Romance
Noae’s second romance arc begins as part of the Shinbakufu main story quest where she takes down “The Naginata” with the help of the old ninja master, Shotei.
After that mission’s completion, she receives another quest: “Letter from Katsuhime”, where she meets back up with Shotei’s daughter in the Shimmering Fields of Omi.
Letter from Katsuhime
Speak to Katsuhime overlooking the ruined town of Koga and she asks for a grave offering of sake to leave for her mentor. Drop down into Koga and search the cellar of the ruined building near the Kakurega.
At the bottom of the ladder you find an urn of sake and a rare chest.
Make your way back up the mountain to Katsuhime, hand over the sake, and the talk turns to your mission against the Shinbakufu. Katsuhime is hesitant about what your league can offer her other than more violence, but to continue your romance, all you need to say is that it offers more time together with you.
Before she’ll join though, you get another quest.
The Tale of Genin
Meet up with Katsuhime again in Wakasa, far to the north.
At Kumagawa Juku, conveniently right next to the Kakurega, you find Katsuhime looking for her friends – the only surviving family of her mentor. Interact with different parts of the crime scene, by the door and fence, then speak to the witnesses. On the other side of the bridge, examine the blood splatter.
Follow Katsuhide across the paddy then defeat the pirates to rescue Sada and her child. It turns out that the gilded rifle her mentor used to try and assassinate Nobunaga has been stolen and taken to Omizo Castle.
Naoe offers to help reclaim it, but not before getting another romance option in for good measure.
The Diary of Lady Rokkaku
Back in Omi, you meet Katsuhide at the gates of Omizo Castle on the western shore of Lake Biwa.
She’s not there when you arrive, and you overhear some men talking about a woman running quickly into the keep.
Read the letter left for you on the rooftop and a cutscene plays where Katsuhide is injured and captured.
You need to reach her in time, but there’s a straight run across the rooftops – although it is a little janky.
When the main threat is down, you then need to carry her down the stairs and through the castle courtyard to the door hidden behind the wall with the ladder.
As a thank you for saving her life, Katsuhide agrees to join up with your League to fight the Shinbakufu. If you’ve chosen romance options up to this point, you also get another quest.
The Jounin Pillow Book
This time, Katsuhide invites Naoe to the most northerly part of the map, Wakasa. Specifically on the western side of Sotomo Gate, at the gate to Jogu Shrine, just next to where you can see the gate-like rock formation on the unrevealed map.
Speak to her there and you run along to the seaside. There you get the final romance choice, where you can pick a love scene or just stay bestest buds. After a tender moment where you can choose to be monogamous or not, you’re given the Kaiawase Shell representing a token of their love.
Yasuke Male Romance
Yasuke’s first romance arc is found as a side quest in the town of Otsu on the southern shore of Lake Biwa in Omi, called “The Betrayers”.
At Miidera Temple, Yasuke will meet the samurai Hori Hidemassa, a former retainer of Nobunaga like himself, who has identified a series of traitors who helped bring out their Lord’s demise.
After you’ve defeated the first batch of targets, you’re told to return to Hidemassa, which is when your first romance dialogue option arrives.
Then, at the end of the quest, when you return to him for the final time you’re given more dialogue options culminating in a stronger romance scene.
Yasuke Female Romance
Finally, Yasuke’s second romance arc comes to the fore as part of the Shinbakufu main story quest involving “The Mourner”, who later becomes known as “The Wheel”.
Throughout that main story quest, Yasuke will be given romance dialogue options in his conversations with Nobunaga’s sister, Lady Oichi.
Upon completing the main story arc, Yasuke gets another quest: “The Wheel Turns”, where the romance arc concludes.
If your looking to make war not love, then there are loads of targets to track down including the Kabukimono, Twisted Tree and Origami Butterflies.