Assassin's Creed Mirage

I had high hopes for this game, following Odyssey and Val Halla, but was very disappointed. I honestly wish that I'd not wasted my money.

The storyline was very short, with nothing in terms of character development or adventure.

Once again we were uncovering a hidden/ancient group of cultists, just like the in Odyssey, but outside of that was nothing.

If you're looking to buy this game, I'd say don't waste your time. I wonder if this game was just a short term money maker, while they develop the next real adventure?

Very disloyal to the lifelong players of Assassin's Creed, by teasing with vague elements of the original games.

3 years since Assassins creed Valhalla, AC Mirage goes back to somewhat of its roots with the toned down rpg elements and more approaches of stealth. However it does feel like I'm just playing a re skin of Origins. Baghdad, while beautiful on my console is just boring.

The dialogue is atrocious. I hope they get new writers for the next game because the acting and dialogue is just plain awful. You can tell they're not even trying to act. Character animations seem like they haven't been worked on since origins. Hopefully this is the last of this engine because I don't feel any emotional attachment to characters that are blatant npcs. Unlike Ezio and his family.

There's loads of parkour options but the buildings aren't as tall as previous games and there's no giant monuments like pyramids. Although I do like the smaller map. It feels like I don't need to just fast travel everywhere.

The combat is very clunky, the standard enemies are fine and perfectly balanced however the fast bounty hunters are almost impossible with their incredibly fast attacks and insane damage. Brutes are easy to kill with a few dodges.

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.

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.

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.