When Assassin’s Creed Mirage was first announced, many wondered what Ubisoft had planned for their next title following Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Planned originally as an expansion for Valhalla as a celebration of Assassin’s Creed‘s 15 Year Anniversary, Valhalla’s essence can be seen in Assassin’s Creed Mirage; however, despite being able to see Valhalla‘s influence, something within the game feels different. This difference in feel is ultimately due to Ubisoft’s wanting Assassin’s Creed Mirage to celebrate the original game. Due to this return of form, multiple aspects players have become accustomed to since AC: Origins are missing and will take a while to get used to.
Although the gameplay many have become accustomed to might have changed, the major question at hand is how these changes impact Assassin’s Creed Mirage‘s gameplay and story. First, let us go over Mirage’s story and how it compares to other Assassin’s Creed titles.
Mirage Story
Assassin’s Creed returns to the Middle East with Assassin’s Creed: Mirage. The game’s story takes place before the events of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and follows a wannabee turned hidden one Basim Ibn Ishaq. With a desire to be more than a petty thief, Basim’s overzealousness throws him unknowingly into the conflict between the Assassins (Hidden Ones) and the Order. Determined to get them to notice him, Basim with the help of his friend Nehal breaks into Winter Palace to steal the mysterious item that The Hidden Ones seek. These actions cause a tragedy to befall Basim but ultimately get him noticed by Roshan and recruited into the Hidden Ones.
Mirage‘s story follows Basim as he and the Hidden Ones attempt to stop The Order from recovering the ancient relics while liberating the citizens of Baghdad. Similar to some of the other Assassin’s Creed titles, the player has to explore and uncover clues in order to progress the story; the game does offer help with the investigation menu allowing for objectives and targets to be tracked, At times, this mechanic can be frustrating with the clues given not being helpful enough to find the next point of continuation.
Short Story
The original Assassin’s Creed‘s influence is felt within Assassin’s Creed: Mirage without making it into a carbon copy. Yes, the city and environment are familiar but it still feels like there is something new that you can discover. The only real downside to Assassin’s Creed: Mirage’s story is its overall length; in a way, it brings players back to early Assassin’s Creed games with the story length. At 9 hours in, even with exploring, we were over 45% through the game. This means that the game’s overall story is under twenty hours unless you explore significantly which is a drastic decrease compared to the most recent Assassin’s Creeds.
Despite being a shorter story, Assassin’s Creed: Mirage does a good job of giving players a better look at Basim before he was a master assassin. Is he rough around the edges? Yes, but he does still have room for growth and helps expand the Assassin’s Creed: Mirage franchise and story. Hopefully, they will expand the story with future DLCs.
Gameplay
Assassin’s Creed Mirage changes the formula yet again by returning to some of the earlier franchise’s basic mechanics. Stealth and assassination have a bigger focus in the game than just fighting; yes, you can still do that, but it isn’t as impactful and your parrying and dodge mechanics must be up to par. Mirage ditches the level system and replaces it with enemies that are tankier and hit harder. Rather than unlocking new items as the story progresses, tools are locked behind one of the skill trees.
The game features three skill trees that will aid the player in becoming a master assassin; the three skill trees are Phantom, Trickster, and Predator. The Phantom skill tree grants perks that help the player with stealth, assassinations, and counterplay. The Trickster skill tree focuses on the use of tools and items to help the player. Finally, the Predator skill tree focuses on improving Enkidu’s assistance for the player between detecting enemies and aim assistance. Skill points are earned by completing missions rather than leveling like in prior games.
Negative Gameplay
What is arguably one of the worst additions to Assassin’s Creed: Mirage is the token system. In prior games, you could get rid of your notoriety or pay civilians with the game’s currency. Now players need special tokens in order to have someone get rid of their notoriety, recruit allies, or even blend into special crowds. These tokens are not easily earned and are hard to come by. The player can still reduce their notoriety by ripping posters off the walls but this takes time.
Another flaw lies with the game’s DLC; in a way, the DLC is a pay-to-win mechanic with Basim gaining special abilities thanks to the Prince of Persia Sands of Time equipment. By getting the Deluxe edition, the player unlocks these items early on and can upgrade them completely, curving the difficulty of the game drastically. In fact, there seems to be a lack of variety in weapons and armor the player can use within the game.
Although it is not a massive flaw. Mirage‘s map size feels drastically tiny for a main title entry within the franchise. While playing through the game, the notion that Mirage was just a Valhalla expansion that got too big went through my mind. Yes, it is fun to explore but you can get from one side of the map to the other fairly easily.
Controls, Graphics, and Music/SFX
Assassin’s Creed Mirage utilizes all the improvements and mechanics that the Assassin’s Creed franchise has established and worked to improve on over the last 15 years. The game’s base controls are fairly easy to use but players who want to change the controls can. Players can adjust the sensitivity of the controller’s sticks and which stick does what. For players who want to play with a mouse and keyboard, they can and they can adjust the controls. Despite releasing tons of Assassin’s Creeds, Ubisoft still has not managed to perfect wall running/climbing.
For graphics, the player can adjust the frame rate, the color filter, the brightness, and contrast, and even enable colorblind mode. Colorblind mode allows players to choose between Tritanopia, Deuteranopia, and Protanopia. In addition to adjusting the color visuals, players can turn off blood, screen shake, text size, icon size, and notifications. These settings to make adjustments are fairly helpful if you are playing on a smaller screen or are easily overstimulated by visual input. The game does have some visual bugs that are pretty for the most part, however, we did come across a few that required us to reload our save. The most annoying issue we faced was a boss enemy falling through the level.
For the game’s audio, players can turn on Closed Captions to help when there is too much noise or if they are hearing impaired. Players can adjust the music’s frequency and edit the volume levels to meet their needs. The game features five different subtitle languages (Spanish, German, Italian, French, and English). The game comes with eight auditory languages. Players can even turn on menu narration for the visually impaired.
Replayability
After playing Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, I can’t say that it stands above any of the previous entries. It is a good game with a decent story, but its story does not really outshine most of the titles within the franchise. It is still better than Assassin’s Creed 3, but for character’s sake, even the 2D games are better than that. The story is fairly short, so it is pretty easy to replay, but with its lack of variety, it doesn’t feel worth the additional time; this is especially true due to everything coming out soon.
Verdict
At the end of the day, Assassin’s Creed Mirage feels like a canceled Prince of Persia reskinned to be originally a DLC turned into a standalone title. The game by far isn’t bad but it feels inferior compared to its most recent predecessors. For a game that feels like a DLC, the $49.99 asking price seems a little bit too high. Ultimately it will be a great game to pick up for family or friends for the holidays but it isn’t a must-have. The game does have a good variety of accessibility options which will make it easier for almost anyone to play. It’s a solid game but not one you have to go out of your way to play.
A digital copy of Assassin’s Creed Mirage was provided by Ubisoft for review purposes.
