Assassin's Creed Mirage

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a condensed version of the modern Assassin’s formula. That may disappoint some who hoped for something that felt new while also significantly harkening back to the series’ past. Stealth does get a boost, alongside occasional engaging narrative and characters, but there’s plenty of padding that dampens the fun.

Assassin's Creed Mirage is a nice reminder of what this series can do well. Movement through the densely populated cities can feel kinetic and slick whilst stealth is straight-forward and easy to plan. Combat is serviceable, if a little clumsy when multiple enemies arrive. There's a sense of nostalgia I get from what is ostensibly a more complete and considered take on the series' first steps. I wish the story had more weight to it but the actors do a good job of delivering what they're given. It's not a stellar example of the genre but a rather solid one.

Assassin's Creed Mirage was full of promises. In the end, it's more of a tribute than a true return to its roots. The game offers a melting pot of the latest episodes, stripping out all the RPG progression and its open world, leaving us with the most basic things the license has to offer. It does manage to give a nostalgic vibe in its best moments, but this throwback is combined with a lack of modernity, originality and technical shortcomings that are hard to forgive in 2023, especially in terms of AI and parkour. It's not bad in itself, but it clearly doesn't live up to its promise. Hopefully, Ubisoft will be able to turn this around in the future, because while Mirage leaves us wanting more, it clearly whets our appetites.

Assassin's Creed is going back to its roots, substituting the vast environments of the previous entries for a much more concise experience. This may be a welcome retread for fans of the series but, at the same time, Ubisoft doesn't seem eager to take risks with this formula or fix some of its prevalent issues.

Assassin’s Creed: Mirage is a decent reflection on the essentials, but is often too timid and unimaginative.

I'm not sure who's the target audience for Assassin's Creed: Mirage. It goes beyond returning to basics and is just basic. It's not terrible or unplayable, and if you enjoy the core Assassin's Creed gameplay or want a chance to run around Baghdad, it might scratch your itch. The problem is one that I've never had with an Assassin's Creed title before. They have problems, flaws, and issues aplenty, but each one felt like there was ambition behind it. Mirage feels unmemorable and bland and plays like a phoned-in Assassin's Creed title.

A return to the past with all the pros and cons that go with it, but also a mixture of mechanisms that don't always go well with each other. If you're longing for assassins that used stealth as a prim, you've come to the right place; however, don't expect a novelty that could surpass the older parts of the series.

Assassin’s Creed gets back-to-basics with a shorter, more focused – if slightly less polished -campaign, and a return to an impossibly beautiful looking early-era Middle East.

I hope Ubisoft continues to make city-based Assassin’s Creed games because it’s refreshing to play something this tight and focused after the more bloated, RPG-focused AC games, but the developers need to update it for modern tastes. From the tech powering it to the structure and base mechanics, I’d love to see where the series could go with a proper overhaul. I’m not asking for a completely different game, but the physics and parkour controls feel drastically dated, and it’d be nice if they could find a way to let us infiltrate buildings beyond making us search for keys like it’s Doom.

Despite its faults and playing it very safe, Assassin's Creed Mirage is a step in the right direction for Ubisoft, an exercise in concision and a solid attempt to rekindle what made early AC games memorable.

Assassin's Creed Mirage will appeal to anyone who's been pining for a return to the old school open world stealth of the earlier games. It's pretty much exactly that with a few extra refinements and additions. Some of those additions are a bit distracting and immersion breaking, but nothing gets in the way of some good old fashioned assassinations.

I reiterate many times that the real question should not be what a game is about but how it is about it, and to a certain extent, it's unfair to mark Mirage down because it's trying for a solid base hit. But I do think it's fair to mark it down for not just playing it safe but playing it way less than it could be. I characterized Valhalla as a game well worth playing even if you aren't generally fond of this franchise, but Mirage? It's just another Assassin's Creed game with no ambitions of being more. Far from feeling like a loving tribute on the anniversary, it feels like coasting…If you've loved this franchise since the first game, you're going to have fun with Mirage. But just like its namesake, there's less here than there appears to be, and beneath the surface it's lacking. Not enough to be bad, but enough to be just rote. And that, ultimately, is a letdown even if the game can play the hits well.

Assassin's Creed Mirage is a solid adventure with an entertaining story and many engaging challenges. Sneaking in the shadows and picking off one guard after another is and will be great entertainment, and that's one reason why there are still new chapters in the series.

A true return to the origins of the license, suffering from an outdated engine.

Assassin's Creed Mirage sets off in search of its roots, and it finds them — both for better and worse. Undeniably basic in its approach to stealth and combat, it feels oddly dated in terms of design, but it's also a refreshing reminder of the series' original strengths. Ultimately, it's a solid sandbox title, and it successfully scratches the hidden blade itch that was so clearly absent in Odyssey and Valhalla.

If you are stripped far enough, you will eventually be in your shirt. Assassin's Creed Mirage also experiences this. Everything that does not have to do with assassinations is omitted, but nothing new is added either. The result is at times nostalgic and entertaining, but ultimately as fleeting as a mirage.

Assassin's Creed Mirage recreates the city of peace wonderfully in terms of architecture, visuals, and audio presentation. Though storytelling isn't free of Orientalism and its stereotypes guilt. However, its the gameplay where Mirage falters in our opinion, as the AI is weak and swordplay is mediocre. The whole game loop is repetitive overall.

Glimmers of a great throwback are here but nothing holds up upon close inspection. Missions lack depth while this combat was better left in the past. [Issue#34, p.86]

For a story centered on revolutionaries, Mirage is oddly conservative, mired in the middle ground between honouring tradition and embracing innovation. Ubisoft has seldom felt closer to delivering on the power fantasy promised by Patrice Desilets in 2007; equally, it has never felt farther away from its contemporaries. [Issue#391, p.108]

After releasing at least one new game almost every year, developer Ubisoft simply fails to surprise with Assassins Creed Mirage. What was supposed to be an homage to the first games feels too much like déjà vu. The same moves, the same controls, the same missions in a similar setting. There is wear and tear on the golden formula of yesteryear.

When it comes together, Mirage does manage to evoke the same feelings I had back in 2007 running round Acre for the first time. There’s an exquisite stealth sandbox nestled away in here, but a few excellent missions don’t make up for the frequent bugs, lifeless city, utterly pants combat, or the fact it completely wasted The Expanse’s Shohreh Aghdashloo on some of the flattest, most perfunctory writing the series has ever seen.

Outside of its stunning setting, Assassin's Creed Mirage doesn't have anything exciting or new to offer. It's a mixture of the worst parts of classic and modern Assassin's Creed, sacrificing both storytelling and exploration in an attempt to appease fans from both eras.

While I adore the mood, vibes, and look of Assassin’s Creed Mirage, it is also one of my least favorite games in the series in recent memory. It is a step backwards in pretty much every sense of the word, for better and for worse. I admire the idea of going back to the roots with inspiration from games I enjoyed more than a decade ago, but it creates mixed results because of this.

I wish Mirage were the game I’ve been waiting for as a fan of the franchise, but it’s not. The developers’ desire to make it similar gameplay-wise to classic installments of the series is obvious and welcome, but as a whole, this is a surprisingly bland product with an average story, poorly written NPCs and embarrassingly weak dialogues. Moreover, Basim’s adventures do not bring anything valuable to the series. It’s a hollow, shallow and basically unnecessary game developed to showcase the Middle Eastern setting.

With so many games on the horizon, the series is threatening to mimic sports franchises on an action-adventure level; the addictive same-old repackaged and resold back to you year-on-year. Mirage might promise a fresh oasis from afar, but get closer and it’s the same formula, drier and less quenching than before.

In the end Mirage was mainly one thing: boring. It is not a game with embarrassing bugs or crashes, but one that fails to fascinate. It took hours to get going, after which it told a lame story and didn't introduce any cool new ideas. I worked my way through it reluctantly. It's great that the game handles its setting a little better than the first part, but that one bright spot does little to make the game worthwhile.

While its brevity impedes the story, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is thankfully a lot shorter than the last few entries. However, its relatively slender figure only points out how the series has used quantity to overcompensate for its stagnation. This is laid bare in Mirage, as its stealth and open-world design all pull from eras that have long since fallen out of style — an unforced error that is mostly because of Ubisoft’s decade-long overreliance on that structure. Baghdad’s potential as a classic setting in the franchise has also suffered because of this and has been undermined by the artificiality of its blueprint. Mirage was designed to go back to basics, but it just ended up being too basic.