Assassin's Creed Mirage

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.

I have played all of the main Assasin's Creed games many times and I LOVE this game!!! I found the story to be quite interesting and the world and atmosphere alone are worth playing this game for! The focus on stealth is exactly what I like about this franchise and the tools make for a very interesting and fair stealth experience which (yes I know) really makes you feel like an assassin. They also made combat more interesting but also more difficult which encourages you to use stealth even more. Basim and his different robes look great and the blackbox missions, fantastic music, the many hiding spots and the more parkour-friendly open world make for a combination of the best features in the franchise.

I finished this game in about 26 hours and I'm not at all bored by it. In fact I kind of want to replay it again right now, unlike Vallhalla which I didn't like nearly as much as Mirage. It is really impressive how they made this game feel really different from Valhalla despite using the same engine, UI and similar gameplay systems. How they made it feel good again is a mystery to me but I love it.

I would highly recommend swapping (on xbox) RT (right trigger) with LS (left stick). This makes the game feel so much better as you have more control over whether you are sprinting or not and it feels like the good part about the older games; it makes you feel heavy. The tool wheel is perfectly usable on the left stick but you could also switch that around if you prefer something else.

In Mirage you'll be eavesdropping and tailing targets in some missions as well which I personally loved about the older games. The assassin fantasy takes center stage and even the larger story about the isu stuff, which I never really cared about until Valhalla kinda, is also really interesting to me here.

The voice acting and camera movement during dialogue and its animations could really use an overhaul though. Social stealth and blending options are here and they're great, but a lot more could be done with them. The parkour and combat also still suffer from the crappy animations from the previous few games but you can't really fault the game for this too much.

To me this game is much more than just a "trip down memory lane" which I'm a little bit sick of hearing by now. I think this is a very competent game which deserves its place in the series. Hopefully this wasn't the last game with this level of quality Assassin's Ceed-ness because this confirmed to me why I love these games.

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.

In my opinion this is just ok game. There are some interesting historical facts and you can learn come historical things by playing this game. It is a smaller assassin's creed title. For the main story with most of side missiuon it took are 22 hours for me to beat it. Graphicly in some places game looks really good and beautiful , but in some otheres there are graphical glitches. Story is so,so nothing special but not so bad. This game is mostly made for older assassin's creed fans like me. Stealth part of thne game is quite good I must admit that. Buy this game on sale and give it a try but don't have very high hopes.

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.