Assassin's Creed Mirage

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.