Assassin’s Creed Mirage Review (PS5)

Started as an expansion for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Mirage has been morphed into a standalone game to fill up Ubisoft’s yearly lineup of Assassin’s Creed titles. Chronologically, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a prequel to Valhalla, which makes sense considering this was supposed to be an expansion (or DLC) for the latter.

But that’s not why Mirage is important for the Assassin’s Creed series, it’s the fact that it’s a return to the traditional stealth-oriented formula that made the first games so popular among fans of the genre.

Set in Baghdad, one of the largest and busiest cities in the Middle Ages, Assassin’s Creed Mirage follows the story of Basim, a young thief trying to survive another day in a harsh world.

Unlike in the previous several Assassin’s Creed installments, Mirage is all about being stealthy. Basim employes a range of thief skills that allows him to infiltrate well-guarded location and kill the target without being seen or triggering any alarms.

However, any illegal action that Basim is seen executing, including stealing, pickpocketing and killing, will increase his notoriety bar, which means that guards and patrols across town may recognize and attack him on sight. On top of that, civilians might recognize Basim and call the guards.

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To lower the notoriety bar, Basim must remove the “wanted” posters found around town or pay heralds. It’s an interesting system that prevents players from pickpocketing and stealing from civilians without repercussions.

It’s nothing overly complicated and certainly not a hindrance once you get the hang of it, especially since “wanted” posters will start spawning close to Basim once his notoriety level starts to rise.

But what I really loved about Assassin’s Creed Mirage is how the game presents you with different ways to tackle an assassination mission. Since this isn’t focusing on combat any longer, you’ll have to infiltrate a location as stealthy as possible, but before you do that, you have a few options at your disposal.

For example, you can pay a musician to attract a nearby guard, pay a merchant patrol to move within their group without being seen, or even pay a group of mercs to attack nearby military guard.

Every one of these options will allow Basim to infiltrate a location without being seen, but you can definitely reach the same result even if you don’t use any of these options. Especially since the three factions only accept “Favor tokens,” a separate currency used in the game that you can get by fulfilling contracts for your guild.

Some can be also obtained after finishing main and side quests, but you’ll never have enough of these without completing contracts. I think it’s safe to say that using these tokens is a bit of an “easy mode,” not necessarily because it’s easier to infiltrate a location when it’s attacked by a band of mercs, but rather because it saves you a lot of time to find another infiltration route.

When it comes to combat, there’s little to say about Assassin’s Creed Mirage. The game features a barebone combat system with just four actions that you can take: parry/block, dodge, light attack, and heavy attack. After a successful parry, you can execute a finishing move, but that’s about all there is.

More importantly, if you’re attacked by 3-4 enemies, you’ll have a very hard time getting out from the fight alive unless you run. However, once you get the hang of it and your reflexes are relatively good, you’ll probably have no issues fighting multiple enemies at once.

On the bright side, Basim has an entire arsenal of weapons and tools at his disposal, which encourage covert actions. The blowdart and throwing knives remain my favorite ones, but you can also use bombs and traps to lure enemies or put them to sleep.

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The myriad of items from Assassin’s Creed Origins and Valhalla is now gone, so don’t expect too much gear. By the end of the game, I think I had about 4 different main weapons and four different suits of armor. The armor that you put on Basim is now a single piece that offers one perk. Both weapons and armor can be upgraded a few times to increase their damage and improve the benefit of the perks.

Ironically, the best amor is the one you start with because it’s the only one suitable for a stealthy approach. Obviously, I’d encourage everyone to experiment with any of the other armors, but I mostly used stealth in my playthrough, so the starting suit of armor was perfect for me.

Moving on to the story, Assassin’s Creed Mirage doesn’t really come with anything new. There are no plot twists or anything surprising, but that’s understandable considering this is a prequel to Valhalla.

What it’s change compared to the previous titles is how the story unfolds. Basim will now have to complete investigations to advance the plot, each culminating with an assassination mission.

Progression is now tied to story and side quests, as well as other activities in the game (tales, contracts, etc.), so you’ll receive new skill points once you complete these rather than taking out enemies.

There are three different skill trees in the game, which will help Basim improve his performance. They aren’t as expansive as I would have liked and a little bit “boring.” It kind of makes sense since developers have replaced action-oriented combat with a stealthier approach.

Basically, combat has been designed as a last resort tactic for Basim, which has been accurately translated into gameplay. There’s one gameplay feature that’s extremely powerful, so I thought I should highlight it here for everyone to use it extensively: assassin’s focus.

As long as you’re not in combat, you freeze time and select a number of targets for Basim to assassinate almost instantly. The number of targets depends on the focus bars you have available. Every time you stealthy kill an enemy, Basim also fills the focus bars used for his ultimate power.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion