I had stopped to believe myself that I would ever reach this goal; after starting this journey - mentally - in 2017, and finally beginning the quest in 2020, it took me four years to get through every Assasin's Creed mainline title, and finally catch up with the series. So here we are. The - for now - final and newest addition to the Assassin's Creed line-up, the last to be made in the periode two of Assassin's Creed (as the next titles will again follow a "new design philosophy" that will apparently combine the best elements of the previous two periodes and combine them with their new idea of an interconnected hub). Also a Game that wasn't conceived of one, but rather as yet another DLC for Valhalla.
Thank God it got blown up into its own title. Mirage is the prequel to Valhalla; we get to play Basim, who is an NPC in Valhalla that turns out to be quite an important character for the story and the finale. Knowing what his role is, we already have a pretty good idea about things that we learn about him in Mirage: his weird dreams and visions of a monstrous Jinni that haunts him can only mean one thing...
But he is still young and doesn't understand it. Basim is a young street thieve that lives in a kind of thieving community run by a merchant who deals in stolen goods and sells his thieving services to people who need it - like those Hidden Ones that often want strange things stolen. With his best friend - Nehal - he gets on such a mission, but this time it gets terribly wrong, something strange happens, people die and he and Nehal need to flee the city. The thieving community gets killed and Basim looses Nehal in the trouble and gets taken in by the Hidden Ones, after they see what has happened and what he has brought them. Now Basim learns to become an Assassin - the training is hard, but he finally becomes an Initiate, and gets send back to his home town of Baghdad - in the time of the Islamic Golden Age under the Abbasid Caliphate - to find out things about a conspiracy that is taking place in Baghdad.
Mirage is in its entirety a homage to the entire series. The setting reminds us of Assassins Creed, with all the Bureaus, the gathering of information, the impossibility to take on multiple guards which forces us to be sneaky. It's also an homage to the Assassins Creed II series with the parkour, the notoriety level the wanted posters and announcers we can use to change this. It's further on an homage to Assassins Creed Unity - there is not one way to get in, not one way to assassinate - find opportunities and possibilities to achieve your goals. And it's an homage to Revelations; build your own tools, and change them to your liking. All combined in a periode two game play and setting, with an updated beautiful artwork and hit box fighting system, but with a much reduced availability of weapons as was the case in periode one games (basically you just have a sword and dagger but will collect about 6 different ones with different abilities to complement your play style). And a direct link to Valhalla. But also to all Assassin's Creeds that used ability trees (starting from Unity).
The map itself is dense and the game rather short, but coming from three massive titles that where real time sinks I was actually pretty happy about having a small game. Its less "ungided" even though you have choices of where you want to go and proceed next, and it is a vibrant and living world, with a lot of side activities and fun to play.
I was already intrigued by the Basim character when he first appeared in Valhalla, and after finally knowing what and who he is, and what special ability he has that will probably make him important for further games to come (at least form a modern-day perspective - if modern day will still exist in period three games?), he is defiantly a character worth to have a backside story to. And even though you might think you know where this is leading to, you actually don't and in the end get really surprised by some twists and turns the story will still take.
What can I say - I had a lot of fun with this game, both gameplay wise, as well as story wise - it is the best of Assassin's Creed accumulated in one game that has a beautiful map, an interesting time period I knew nothing about but learned a lot through playing this game; and I just loved that after having played 300 hours of Odyssey and Valhalla, that Mirage just asked me to invest 60 hours for a 100% complete game experience. I totally loved this one and hope that this is the game Ubisoft will take as a blueprint when designing the next titles.
Thank God it got blown up into its own title. Mirage is the prequel to Valhalla; we get to play Basim, who is an NPC in Valhalla that turns out to be quite an important character for the story and the finale. Knowing what his role is, we already have a pretty good idea about things that we learn about him in Mirage: his weird dreams and visions of a monstrous Jinni that haunts him can only mean one thing...
But he is still young and doesn't understand it. Basim is a young street thieve that lives in a kind of thieving community run by a merchant who deals in stolen goods and sells his thieving services to people who need it - like those Hidden Ones that often want strange things stolen. With his best friend - Nehal - he gets on such a mission, but this time it gets terribly wrong, something strange happens, people die and he and Nehal need to flee the city. The thieving community gets killed and Basim looses Nehal in the trouble and gets taken in by the Hidden Ones, after they see what has happened and what he has brought them. Now Basim learns to become an Assassin - the training is hard, but he finally becomes an Initiate, and gets send back to his home town of Baghdad - in the time of the Islamic Golden Age under the Abbasid Caliphate - to find out things about a conspiracy that is taking place in Baghdad.
Mirage is in its entirety a homage to the entire series. The setting reminds us of Assassins Creed, with all the Bureaus, the gathering of information, the impossibility to take on multiple guards which forces us to be sneaky. It's also an homage to the Assassins Creed II series with the parkour, the notoriety level the wanted posters and announcers we can use to change this. It's further on an homage to Assassins Creed Unity - there is not one way to get in, not one way to assassinate - find opportunities and possibilities to achieve your goals. And it's an homage to Revelations; build your own tools, and change them to your liking. All combined in a periode two game play and setting, with an updated beautiful artwork and hit box fighting system, but with a much reduced availability of weapons as was the case in periode one games (basically you just have a sword and dagger but will collect about 6 different ones with different abilities to complement your play style). And a direct link to Valhalla. But also to all Assassin's Creeds that used ability trees (starting from Unity).
The map itself is dense and the game rather short, but coming from three massive titles that where real time sinks I was actually pretty happy about having a small game. Its less "ungided" even though you have choices of where you want to go and proceed next, and it is a vibrant and living world, with a lot of side activities and fun to play.
I was already intrigued by the Basim character when he first appeared in Valhalla, and after finally knowing what and who he is, and what special ability he has that will probably make him important for further games to come (at least form a modern-day perspective - if modern day will still exist in period three games?), he is defiantly a character worth to have a backside story to. And even though you might think you know where this is leading to, you actually don't and in the end get really surprised by some twists and turns the story will still take.
What can I say - I had a lot of fun with this game, both gameplay wise, as well as story wise - it is the best of Assassin's Creed accumulated in one game that has a beautiful map, an interesting time period I knew nothing about but learned a lot through playing this game; and I just loved that after having played 300 hours of Odyssey and Valhalla, that Mirage just asked me to invest 60 hours for a 100% complete game experience. I totally loved this one and hope that this is the game Ubisoft will take as a blueprint when designing the next titles.