My history with Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise was generally rather favorable growing up. It was the dependable open world game you more or less knew what you were going to get during the holidays that year. With repetition of course, can also come with tedium and exhaustion. Over time, players began to get less and less interested, even if the games they were releasing were quite solid. After a relatively short hiatus, the franchise returned with “Assassin’s Creed: Origins” and “Odyssey” not long after that. Games that while are very good, took the franchise to way more ambitious heights. These games no longer became the normal stealth action games in a decently sized map, but became sprawling huge RPGs that could take tens and tens of hours to finish. In the case of their last release, “Valhalla” had more than a hundred hours of in-game content. I, myself, find that even more of a daunting task for a gamer and stepping into “Valhalla” was just overwhelming to the point of being a non-starter for me. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone in that feeling and Ubisoft heard the player feedback and with the release of this new one, “Assassin’s Creed: Mirage,” they go back to basics giving us players a much simpler and more refined Assassin’s Creed that is easy to jump into and reminds you why you fell in love with the franchise in the first place.
One of the things I love so much about this franchise is the attention to detail in not only the maps, but the era they take place in, giving each game the feeling of time traveling back into time and simulating what it was like at that certain place and time. Being an Italian I hold the Ezio Trilogy very dear with the amount of respect they gave my heritage. With “Assassin’s Creed: Mirage,” you’re taken to the city of Baghdad. You play as a young thief named Basim who of course rocks the signature Assassins Creed staple, the hidden blade. The city of Baghdad is absolutely beautiful in this game, I have very little knowledge of the location and the age of the Abbasid Caliphate the game takes place in, but another thing that this franchise does well besides entertain, is that it also takes a moment to educate, and I feel like I learned quite a bit. Exploring the map, which has been increasingly shrunk down comparatively to the more recent, is a lot more fun, there is no need to use some kind of mount to ride around to get from point A to point B. There are also occasions where you do travel outside the city and get to explore more of the sands and beautiful dunes.
Our street thief hero, Basim, is the usual local pickpocket type, doing what he can to survive. The story begins with him beginning to do jobs for “The Hidden Ones” (the original assassins), after a heist goes incredibly wrong, Basim tragically loses his family. With nowhere else to go, he decides to join the assassins and learn the ways of the hidden blade. Unfortunately, the story itself is actually the weakest part of the game for me. Everything about this revenge tale is something we have seen several times in other places and while Basim has a decent arc, he never really grabbed me as much as some of the previous assassins did. The side quests can also get tedious and repetitive at times. The character faces and facial animations also look very dated, I know this is a lower budget game, but this choice can often stand out like a sore thumb. Those are pretty much the worst knocks I have to give this game, because everything else, every choice made, for the most part worked for the better. One feature that I appreciate being gone is the leveling system, for normal RPG games I love that system, but here, it never felt right when attacking enemies that some would be stronger than I was, even if I stealth attack them. The result is making me feel like I’m a true badass assassin where no one is safe from my blade and I can walk around and pickpocket anyone I wanted.
It has been a minute since I played an Assassin’s Creed game, but all the fundamentals really feel refined. The parkour is really sleek and smooth. Parrying and dodging feel really good and forgiving, I love the feeling of just attacking a group of enemies and then just running up a wall and escaping, or hiding in plain sight in a crowd. What I also really enjoyed was there being a good balance with options on how you want to approach a specific mission, depending on the task I could do it very stealthily and perhaps bribe a person to look the other way or be a distraction, and of course there’s the loud and bloody way too. An aspect I brought up earlier, about the leveling system, while it is gone, we do still have skill trees and do earn skill points as we progress through the game. There are three branches to choose from in this skill tree; Phantom, Trickster, and Predator. What I do appreciate is this skill tree isn’t overly done and it’s rather simple and easy to digest. Going off of playing “Cyberpunk 2077” where the skill trees get rather insane, it was cool to see that the simple way is also still an effective way.
While “Assassin’s Creed: Mirage” isn’t a perfect game by any means, it is a simpler title on purpose, but in conventional things such as the story I was pretty underwhelmed with. As a general playable video game, it’s actually quite fun. I hope many gamers gravitate to this and remember how it feels when a game doesn’t over complicate itself. I don’t know if these shorter sixteen-or-so hour games will continue in the franchise, but I hope they do and continue to learn from each previous installment. If this is, indeed, the future of Assassin’s Creed, this game laid out a pretty awesome groundwork to continue to build itself on and refine.
8/10
For more information about Assassin’s Creed Mirage, please visit: assassinscreed.com
Related: Nick Navarro Reviews
Gaming since I was given an original Nintendo as a kid. I love great storytelling and unique ingenuity. When both collide in a single game, I'm a happy gamer. Twitter/IG @NickNavarro87
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