A much needed breath of fresh air for the series and a definite step in the right direction unfortunately held back by some budget constraints resulting in the story being a bit underresourced and gameplay that is a bit rough around the edges.
Assassin's Creed Mirage excels in taking the series back to it's original form and finally feels like it has recognised itself in name, making an assassin experience that has been yearned for by many since 2015, almost a full decade. What we get is a faithful, what I like to call, adaptation of the old days. The spirit is definitely there and can be felt in almost every aspect of the game, but unfortunately some elements introduced in the RPG trilogy remain and do hold it back quite a bit from fully feeling as things used to.
What I found issue with quite a lot was the combat, it's painfully oversimplified and not that at all interesting. An arguement could however be made for Mirage's front and centre piece, that being the stealth, but I think all aspects of a game should be given detail, refined and polished and not just... very clearly discarded in favour of something else. Another RPG trope that made it's return here was, of course, health bars and with them enemy types that in most cases required stronger weapons to use tools on such as throwing knives, but save for the bounty hunters? at least you can assassinate all of them without having to worry about this issue.
Positively, the parkour is great and as is the stealth. The developers really understood what made the original games so good and they do their best imitation of it. It can be a bit rigid at times, there were many animation cancel moments in the parkour that were quite frustrating and moments that were just very unsatisfying when you're in such a perfect flow of free running, almost as if the game is sort of insulting you for actually trying to achieve a nostalgic experience. The parkour controls are a bit too oversimplified to my taste, I was expecting to be able to use the original control scheme but, yeah, it's quite literally the same as Origins - Valhalla, but as fluid and satisfying as Unity thankfully. The stealth is really good, actually, probably the best in the series since Unity as well. The tool variation makes things much more interesting as you progress and Basim feels unstoppable, much more than the likes of Alexios / Kassandra or Eivor where it felt like combat was the more preferred course of action for every encounter. We also did away with the redundant RPG boss formula, a much needed change of pace, as well as the various item / level grinding and skill trees that look more complicated than a redneck's inbred family tree.
But... does it save the game overall? Not quite, because as aforementioned, the narrative was very lackluster. It felt rushed as fuck, I kind of struggled to keep up with it. Pieces fell together too quick and a lot of the narrative beats leading up to the blackbox assassinate the target missions (adopted from Unity) were very underwhelming. When the story sucks, at least Assassin's Creed has interesting ideas... that was not the case here, at least until the ending which felt a lot more of what I was expecting from the narrative. I liked Basim as a character, but he just lacked depth mostly, and I really wished other members of the Hidden Ones were seen a bit more of. Roshan was great, but I wanted to see more involvement? It was overshadowed by Nehal, a character I honestly didn't quite care about (until the end) and the story could really just be summed up in a singular paragraph, it really leaves that much more to be desired.
Also, a funny thing I noticed with the narrative as it developed. I can't help but think that it's a metaphor, at least for me, pertaining to the current state of the series. We start with Basim, optimistic and younger, delving into the world of assassins but as things progress he begins to drift apart and become something else, just hit a little too close to home lmfao
In the end, it's a pretty solid Assassin's Creed entry, a breath of fresh air that was long overdue. With a bigger budget, I think Ubisoft has a great concept on their hands that I hope they experiment with in the future, we need them to make more games in the series like this. It's honestly ridiculous that I have to say it, Assassin's Creed should always be Assassin's Creed, it comes with the literal title, but, that's the age we live in with this series now.
I would say I recommend Mirage, but maybe not at it's full price. It had a low budget and that definitely shows. It's really just mindless, nostalgic fun, don't go in expecting something grandiose, because it's not. It's a small little attempted love letter to what came before, just a decent one at that.
Assassin's Creed Mirage excels in taking the series back to it's original form and finally feels like it has recognised itself in name, making an assassin experience that has been yearned for by many since 2015, almost a full decade. What we get is a faithful, what I like to call, adaptation of the old days. The spirit is definitely there and can be felt in almost every aspect of the game, but unfortunately some elements introduced in the RPG trilogy remain and do hold it back quite a bit from fully feeling as things used to.
What I found issue with quite a lot was the combat, it's painfully oversimplified and not that at all interesting. An arguement could however be made for Mirage's front and centre piece, that being the stealth, but I think all aspects of a game should be given detail, refined and polished and not just... very clearly discarded in favour of something else. Another RPG trope that made it's return here was, of course, health bars and with them enemy types that in most cases required stronger weapons to use tools on such as throwing knives, but save for the bounty hunters? at least you can assassinate all of them without having to worry about this issue.
Positively, the parkour is great and as is the stealth. The developers really understood what made the original games so good and they do their best imitation of it. It can be a bit rigid at times, there were many animation cancel moments in the parkour that were quite frustrating and moments that were just very unsatisfying when you're in such a perfect flow of free running, almost as if the game is sort of insulting you for actually trying to achieve a nostalgic experience. The parkour controls are a bit too oversimplified to my taste, I was expecting to be able to use the original control scheme but, yeah, it's quite literally the same as Origins - Valhalla, but as fluid and satisfying as Unity thankfully. The stealth is really good, actually, probably the best in the series since Unity as well. The tool variation makes things much more interesting as you progress and Basim feels unstoppable, much more than the likes of Alexios / Kassandra or Eivor where it felt like combat was the more preferred course of action for every encounter. We also did away with the redundant RPG boss formula, a much needed change of pace, as well as the various item / level grinding and skill trees that look more complicated than a redneck's inbred family tree.
But... does it save the game overall? Not quite, because as aforementioned, the narrative was very lackluster. It felt rushed as fuck, I kind of struggled to keep up with it. Pieces fell together too quick and a lot of the narrative beats leading up to the blackbox assassinate the target missions (adopted from Unity) were very underwhelming. When the story sucks, at least Assassin's Creed has interesting ideas... that was not the case here, at least until the ending which felt a lot more of what I was expecting from the narrative. I liked Basim as a character, but he just lacked depth mostly, and I really wished other members of the Hidden Ones were seen a bit more of. Roshan was great, but I wanted to see more involvement? It was overshadowed by Nehal, a character I honestly didn't quite care about (until the end) and the story could really just be summed up in a singular paragraph, it really leaves that much more to be desired.
Also, a funny thing I noticed with the narrative as it developed. I can't help but think that it's a metaphor, at least for me, pertaining to the current state of the series. We start with Basim, optimistic and younger, delving into the world of assassins but as things progress he begins to drift apart and become something else, just hit a little too close to home lmfao
In the end, it's a pretty solid Assassin's Creed entry, a breath of fresh air that was long overdue. With a bigger budget, I think Ubisoft has a great concept on their hands that I hope they experiment with in the future, we need them to make more games in the series like this. It's honestly ridiculous that I have to say it, Assassin's Creed should always be Assassin's Creed, it comes with the literal title, but, that's the age we live in with this series now.
I would say I recommend Mirage, but maybe not at it's full price. It had a low budget and that definitely shows. It's really just mindless, nostalgic fun, don't go in expecting something grandiose, because it's not. It's a small little attempted love letter to what came before, just a decent one at that.