Assassin's Creed Mirage

This entry in the Assassin's Creed franchise provides a fairly compelling answer to the question of what a modern take on the gameplay style beloved by many from the classic AC titles would look like. Save for some clunkiness in the melee combat mechanics, the hybrid model works quite well; although, I would still like to see the scales tip slightly more classic if they attempt this style of game again (and I hope they do).

The game's biggest weakness is its story, but that seems to be a side-effect of its short length. With more screen time to flesh out the side characters and get to know the allies and villains of the game, they and the plot itself could have all been more compelling. As it stands now, Mirage's narrative is a nice extra chapter in Basim's story to supplement his character arc in AC: Valhalla, but this story on its own does not contain nearly as much substance as the earlier games it is paying homage to with its mechanics.

All told, Mirage is a good game that's worth playing if you're a fan of classic Assassin's Creed. If Ubisoft continues to refine this new take on the formula over future instalments, I would be happy to continue playing them.

I don't know why, but Ubisoft haven't evolved on the graphics on the Assassin's Creed series since Origins.

It's as dull as a ps4 game released 10 years ago. Shameful really. Apart from that, the story is almost twilight level bad and predictable with mediocre to laughable voice acting.

The bad out of the way, the assassin approach in this game in direct contrast to the past 3 RPG titles, is a welcome change. It brings a sort of mix of the rpg and the old AC vibes. It feels rewarding to be stealthy. The upgrades and tools also make for a good change of approach on your missions and it's fun for a good handful of hours, if you can refrain from cringing over the voice acting and bad facial expressions.

6/10.

Let's address the negativity growing around first off:

Yes the games is short in comparison to Origins, Odyssey or Valhalla however those iterations were more RPG the true assassins creed. In this version a solid return to stealth has been achieved and with out the easy wins.

In Origins you can wipe out masses with flesh decay, in Valhalla you can empty a camo with poisoned sniper arrows. Mirage you have to play as an assassin.

Don't get me wrong, they were great games, great fog games but nothing like true assassins creed.

Now let's look at the Mirage game: It's awesome!

The game has good exploration, lots of fantastic historical facts and insights.

Back to the roof tops which is great. If you mess up the assassination you her to employ run and hide tactics which can be challenging at time with enemies being smarter in this game.

The parkour of brilliant with some new moves and new assassinations.

Gear collection is not as simple as the RPG as you need to solve puzzles to gain access, which in enjoyable.

The gear collection is also not exhaustive like it is in the RPGs where your constantly selling/ buying/ upgrading, in this game there is still some of that but it's more meaningful.

The characters are engaging and storyline is solid.

I really liked this game and will replay it many times.

Assassin's Creed was one of my favorite franchises. When the first game was coming out, I was extremely excited about this new ip coming from one of my favorite developers. Mixing the genres of stealth and action with new social stealth mechanics.

But what truly made Assassin's Creed standout was the characters, the stories. I will always remember the emotion I felt during the end of Assassin's Creed Revelations or the memorable music like Ezios theme song. It's iconic. Ubisoft truly had made a generational hit. All these years later, the Assassin's Creed franchise has been reduced to nothing. Gone are the great well written characters, gone are the great emotional impacting stories, gone is the memorable music. What do we have in its place? Soulless, cheap, cashgrab titles that focus more on wasting your time rather than providing a meaningful experience.

Now what of Assassin's Creed Mirage. Is it truly the return to form that Ubisoft promised? Well, to that question, I answer as a whole no, but in small partial ways, I say yes.

So what does Assassin's Creed Mirage get right. Well, the atmosphere, Ubisoft truly did a wonderful job at bringing us back to the better days of this franchise as far as the world is concerned. The look is there, the feeling is there, and the games character animations are actually surprising well done, with almost no glitches or issues.

Probably the best part of this recent addition to the franchise is the costume design. The outfits you can wear are beautiful, personally myself. I was rocking Altairs' original assassin's outfit no one can beat the og! As for you, Ezio fans, don't worry. Ubisoft has you covered. You can unlock his outfit, too.

Having Altairs outfit was a tremendous plus for me because not only did it look fantastic in the games world, but it literally helped me role-play like I was back in the golden days of this franchise Believing myself to be Altair once more was such an amazing feeling. Then I had even more fun when the edition of the game I had came with a Prince of Persia costume pack. So I then also role-played like I was playing a new Prince of Persia title. I miss that franchise, too. But even with all this fun, I was able to have it doesn't hide the fact that this game is just so painfully average.

The voice acting is boring, the characters are boring, the writing is boring, the story is ok, but I barely cared for it. However it did I must confess to having an interesting twist ending. But I can tell you right now it wasn't the story that got me through the 17-hour experience of this game.

The world is well for lack of a better word dead. The npcs in this game are not reactive towards your actions. Obviously, they react to your killing, but what I mean is they lack any reaction to seeing a man cloaked in white climbing walls and jumping off roof tops. They don't say anything like past npcs did in the original Assassin's Creed titles. It's not a big deal, but it added to the grounded feeling those past games had.

The side objectives are ok and can sometimes lead to interesting things, but like recent Assassin's Creed entries, they're just busy work intended to merely expand the games time. While the rewards from said objectives are useful, I just didn't care enough to do them so much.

Disappointingly, the stealth mechanics in this game I found to be extremely choppy and half baked. Getting caught in instances and scenarios that left me thinking, "wtf, how is that possible?" I eventually gave up on stealth and said screw it, I'll just kill everyone." But the combat system is no better. The best I can say for it is that it's slightly better than the combat in Odyssey or Valhalla, though I barely touched Valhalla because a couple of hours into that game I could tell it was another Odyssey except with Vikings, and I absolutely detested Odyssey. I forced myself to complete that atrocity!

The parkour mechanics also felt choppy. I found myself on multiple occasions to be fighting the playable character in going in one direction, but the animation forced him in another. But to be fair, these issues have plagued the franchise since the start. So I can't really deduct points on that. Though you'd think all these years later, Ubisoft would have it fixed by now.

The nicest thing I can say about Mirage is that at least I didn't have to force myself to get through it, but after 11 hours, I was eager to be done. However the biggest problem with Mirage is that it requires a lot of "let's pretend" like let's pretend I'm back in the golden days of Assassin's Creed, let's pretend these characters are interesting, let's pretend I'm actually caring about anything in this game. If you are a fan like me and loved the original Assassin's Creed games as I did, then you will understand that this is not the return to form that was promised.

Now Assassin's Creed Mirage isn't the worst game in the franchise I can happily say, but it doesn't live up to the legacy of the original games that Ubisoft promised this title would go back to. Respectfully, I can say that Ubisoft did abandon the big open world, the boring rpg mechanics, and return to the days that we played in more of a sandbox with multiple avenues of completing mission objectives. But there's nothing exciting in these mission objectives. Literally, one mission objective was to get some flowers for an npc. How exciting! And I'm sorry, but I can't take anything seriously when the characters in the game themselves just don't seem to care. Literally felt like the voice actors phoned it in. But I will give Ubisoft credit in saying it seemed they did cast what looked like an entire Middle Eastern cast, so I can appreciate that.

Lastly, I will say that as a positive, this title is not a full priced game, $49.99 for the base game, then $59.99 for the deluxe edition. So, I am genuinely surprised by that price point. But considering this title is no where near as big or as long as recent Assassin's Creed entries I understand why but even then I'd rather play this smaller more compact game that the inflated nothingness that Valhalla and Odyssey were.

Overall, Assassin's Creed Mirage is a mild disappointment. It has some things that, as a fan of the original titles I can enjoy, but it relies heavily on your ability to ignore all the bad. This is why my final score is a bit difficult because I want to be generous, but at the same time all the games faults are blatant, yet I did have fun in the role-playing capacity that I had with Altairs outfit, still though I shouldn't have to play make believe to feel like I'm playing Assassin's Creed in an Assassin's Creed game.

So I will choose generosity and give Assassin's Creed Mirage a five out of ten. For merely being the most playable Assassin's Creed since Origins. But I will put Ubisoft on notice here by saying you have a chance for the next time you do a title like this to truly go back to the golden days of Assassin's Creed. Please go back to the roots that made this franchise great, I want to believe in you, Ubisoft. Make Assassin's Creed great again.

Final score: 5/10 3/5

Played on Xbox Series X and Ubisoft Connect on PC.

Assassin's Creed Mirage was a giant leap in the right direction after 3 massive open world RPGs. It took elements of those games and elements of the classic games before Assassin's Creed Origins. Assassin's Creed Mirage was about 20 hours long vs the 60 hours for Assassin's Creed Odyssey and 85 hours on Assassin's Valhalla, both of which were argued to be too long. The story was fairly average until the end when it got way better. The intro felt slightly rushed and the combat don't feel like a classic Assassin's Creed game not an RPG Assassin's Creed game plus the addition of the new teleportation mechanic. Fortunately, stealth is back and it is perfect. The developers really nailed that. So all in all, Assassin's Creed Mirage is a good game and worth your time, just understand this is not a classic Assassin's Creed game.