Developer: Ubisoft Bordeaux, Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on Xbox Series X/S
Assassin’s Creed Mirage – Review
The Assassin’s Creed franchise has been around since 2007, and back in the day, it was an absolute revolution in terms of gameplay. The parkour combined with action-packed gameplay and beautiful sceneries won over the hearts of many gamers, and thanks to this, the game spawned many sequels. Sadly, as the years went by, Ubisoft seemingly forgot the target audience of the series, and the company tried to embed more and more mechanics into the newer iterations hoping to pad things out. While some of the sequels were certainly entertaining, they felt more like standalone experiences with the Assassin’s Creed moniker slapped on. Now, Ubisoft has heard the collective cries of Assassin’s Creed purists and the publisher decided to go back to basics. We do wonder if this was the best choice, however.
Story
Assassin’s Creed Mirage takes place in 9th-century Iraq, where we meet Basim, who in a very Aladdin-esque way lives the life of a thief. Basim is a kindhearted man, but he wants to get ahead in life, and when a new job presents itself he not only decides to prove himself, but he also wishes to get into good graces with his contractor. This contractor happens to be part of the Hidden Ones, a secret organization that clearly has a lot of power. Sadly, things go awry, and Basim’s failure ends up costing the lives of many of his friends. Even so, he is recruited by the Hidden Ones to become their eyes and ears in Baghdad, where he might be able to exact his revenge upon those who brutally murdered his friends.
Let’s be quite blunt here: Mirage doesn’t really have any likable characters. Every character, Basim included, feels very generic and lacks motivation for the roles they’re playing. It’s not as if the characters themselves are bad, but you don’t really end up caring for them as the story progresses. Due to this, you’ll focus more on the actual gameplay rather than the plot that unfolds after every successful mission.
Graphics
In all honesty, this newest iteration of AC does have a lot of beautiful vistas, and exploring a historically accurate version of Baghdad is quite entertaining. We loved the gorgeous backgrounds, the lively city streets, and even the fields outside of the city evoked a certain sense of tranquility. Sadly, when looking at things from a closer viewpoint, Mirage starts showing its many cracks. When running through the crops outside the city, you’ll just clip through the crops, for example. The many NPCs in the streets are a bit rough around the edges, and these also weren’t immune to us clipping through. While many of the graphical issues are clipping errors, we did notice a lack of asset variety and limited exploration options. Almost none of the houses are accessible to the player.
Sound
While Mirage’s sound design isn’t bad, it sometimes feels off, especially when it comes to the voice acting. Don’t get us wrong, the voice cast does a decent job bringing their characters to life, but we couldn’t help but feel annoyed by the fact that the game seemingly can’t ‘pick a language’. Coming from a country that has a lot of different languages that are used in daily life, we don’t have an issue with foreign languages in movies, music, and even games. Assassin’s Creed Mirage, however, fails to create something coherent in this regard, and it follows the same formula as Disney does for some of its cartoons. In Mirage, you’ll have English voice acting with a few classic Arabic words slapped at the end of a lot of sentences. We would have heavily preferred it if the game was just in classic Arabic, or if it was just English, but not an annoying hybrid. This might just be a personal thing, or perhaps we’re nitpicking a bit too hard, but even so, it felt a bit unnatural. That being said, the soundtrack is great, and it has a proper adventurous undertone that lays the foundation for an epic tale.
Gameplay
Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a stealth-based action-adventure game. You’ll spend the majority of your time in Baghdad gathering intel, sneaking through guard-infested areas, and taking out high-profile targets. We say the game is stealth-based, as this latest iteration of Assassin’s Creed goes back to basics, and it’s a lot harder to just go in guns (or swords in this case) blazing. The offset of Mirage is fairly straightforward, and you’ll quickly get the hang of things.
Ubisoft decided to basically strip all the RPG mechanics for this one, except for a very basic skill tree and a simplified gear system. The skills in Mirage are mainly passive upgrades, which give you more assassination options, grant you mobility upgrades, or even allow you to enhance your bird companion. Overall, the skill tree was still fun to mess around with, but we would have perhaps liked a few extra active skills to use, outside of your arsenal of additional tools. These tools are items such as torches and throwing knives. You’ll also be able to equip different sets of armor, talismans, swords, and daggers. Armor and your weapons can be upgraded. These items all give you passive boosts again, where one armor type might make your assassinations more quiet while the other set may provide you bonuses for successfully parrying enemy attacks.
The stealth-based gameplay was quite enjoyable, but the controls aren’t always great in Assassin’s Creed Mirage. You’ll once again be able to do some impressive parkour, but sadly, the controls don’t feel that intuitive, and it’s more than often a hassle to simply drop down from buildings or ledges. Of course, it’s also a matter of getting used to the game’s mechanics, but we did feel like the controls were a bit rough around the edges.
Outside of the main story-based missions, you’ll also have a few side objectives for you to clear. You can do some exploring in Baghdad, which can earn you new items or materials, which you can use to upgrade your own equipment. There are also contracts to complete, which will once again net you extra materials if you complete them successfully. Even so, Assassin’s Creed Mirage perhaps felt a bit too basic at times, as there wasn’t that much incentive to go around exploring. The foundation of the game is very good, but the developers toned down things too much, making this a rather short Assassin’s Creed adventure.
Conclusion
Assassin’s Creed Mirage offers a welcome return to the roots of the franchise, but it fails to captivate the same impressive feeling as the original did back in 2007. While we quite enjoyed playing through Basim’s adventure, there weren’t any real likable characters to be found, and the gameplay was a bit too bare-bones at times. On top of that, we did miss a few of the more modern mechanics and options. Even so, the game is still decent and fans of the original will probably still enjoy this latest entry. Those looking for an experience like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla may be left disappointed, however. We feel as if the developers had a lot of good ideas for Mirage and taking the series back to its roots is certainly a great step in the right direction, but we missed a bit more depth.
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