When Assassin’s Creed Origins launched in 2016, one of gaming’s largest franchises received a makeover the likes of which had never been seen before. A stealth-action game that had basically iterated upon itself nearly every year for a decade had suddenly become an open world hardcore RPG with more than a few DLCs, hundreds of hours of content, and lots and lots of numbers. I had just recently jumped into my first entry in the series, the immediately preceding Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, and was fascinated by this turn. While I loved Origins and its near-identical sequels Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, I was ready for a return to the smaller, simpler game that that name Assassin’s Creed used to promise. Ubisoft has delivered.
Step into a tightly crafted replication of 9th Century Baghdad, filled with fine details, beautiful colors, and plenty of variety. Assassin’s Creed Mirage delivers a beautiful thing to players; the smallest and densest map the series has featured yet. If you don’t engage with the side quests (which you should), you’ll be done with the campaign in about 13 hours. There’s plenty of open world goodness to be had – collectibles, radiant quests, legendary loot and the like – but even if you were to try and 100% Mirage I’d wager it’d take around 30 hours at most. That’s less than half the time it takes to speedrun the campaign of Valhalla, and to that I say “Thank Odin”.
Baghdad is gorgeous, and is aesthetically my favorite Assassin’s Creed map to date behind Syndicate‘s presentation of Victorian London. The map is quite small, just about the size of three kingdoms of Valhalla, and it’s the perfect size to ensure you never feel like it’s empty. The streets are bustling, all building interiors are packed, and the hot Arabian sun glares down on the desert while the wealthy lounge in their shaded valley bungalows. Mirage has done a decent job of presenting the wealth gap between the rich and the poor, with Baghdad’s ancient rounded walls keeping the lower class in the worst parts of the city. And like any Assassin’s Creed game, we fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.
I have only two complaints with Mirage, but they are both significant; the campaign story is fairly boring, and our protagonist, Basim, is the least likable the series has ever had. In fact, if players are familiar with Basim’s true identity, revealed in Valhalla, they’ll likely be unable to care about him or his plights at all. For that reason I recommend Mirage all the more if you skipped out on Valhalla. Regardless, well-written side characters like our assassin mentor Roshan and tech specialist Rebekah carry the story segments of Mirage until you can get parkouring again. Setting aside the writing, I must commend Ubisoft for the excellent full Arabic dub which I have been using since the start – not only does it help with immersion and representation, the outstanding performances kept me on the edge of my seat even when the story was lacking.
Structurally, Mirage is almost identical to fan-favorite Assassin’s Creed II with a load of quality of life updates from Valhalla. The eagle companion, one of the best features from Origins, makes a triumphant return to The Fertile Crescent, albeit without the ability to attack enemies. The UI is very reminiscent of the recent Ancient Trilogy, and is much the better for it. RPG stats are completely gone – the only thing you need to look at when choosing a weapon is what has the highest attack power. No +4% poison damage here, and good riddance. The skill tree has also been simplified and shrunk down and armor stats have been streamlined to a single number as well. Mirage is Assassin’s Creed as it was originally intended with lots of small upgrades from its predecessors.
Combat plays second fiddle to stealth, again identical to Assassin’s Creed II. If you find yourself in a fight, you’ve already done something wrong, so most likely you’re booking it away from the guards that spotted you. If you’re seen, your wanted level rises, but that’s easily fixed by tearing down your wanted posters around town, a system I absolutely love. But if you’re determined to stay and fight, there’s a quick attack, heavy attack, a parry for when the opponent’s weapon flashes yellow and a dodge for when their weapon flashes red. Perfect parries auto-kill guards. Combat is a last resort, so using your small selection of tools is also a must for escaping confrontation. The smoke bombs have become my best friends, alongside the throwing knives, poison traps, and blow darts of course. I am ecstatic that every aspect of combat is about getting you out of the fight to return to the shadows – I finally feel like an actual assassin again. You are presented with many ways to sneak into fortresses with assassination targets, some overly complex in the best way. You truly get to customize your approach to all camps and forts.
The campaign consists of investigations into the big dogs of Baghdad: find out who’s running things behind the scenes, where they’re hiding, and how to eliminate them. As usual, these large assassination targets are influential and have their fingers everywhere in the city. This time, however, there’s only five of them instead of fifteen as in the Ancient Trilogy. This makes each assassination more satisfying, more personal, and more significant to the world. Assassination animations are also much more satisfying now, with dozens of unique animations to go along with them. Unfortunately, sometimes the animations look off, such as when a guard stops and turns around to look at you for a full three seconds before you kill him. Mirage comes with some of that classic Ubisoft bugginess as well, with the AI sometimes freaking out, although it’s more polished than Valhalla was at launch.
I have had a handful of minor performance issues playing at 1440p 60 fps on high settings. Mirage conveniently has an in-game meter in the options menu telling you how much of your computer’s power you’re using with current settings, and I stopped mine at about 2/3 capacity. Realistically I shouldn’t be having any frame rate drops, but they almost always happen only when going from an interior to an exterior (which is seamless). I suppose I’d rather the frame drop to seamlessly move between inside and outside than a loading screen, but I hope Ubisoft fixes these small problems in the future. I also want to give a shout out to the developers for the immense dedication to accessibility options. It’s no The Last of Us Part II, but it’s certainly one of the most comprehensive attempts at accessibility I’ve ever seen in a AAA game.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage is so damn enjoyable for me mostly because I am a huge history buff, and this entry delivers what only this franchise has ever been able to – walking through a painstakingly realized historical setting. The developers once again pay attention to every detail, making sure every textile, fruit, nail, or weapon you see was actually present in Baghdad in 861 AD. Many games leave notes around for the player to collect with little bits of lore about the game world; in this case, these notes have comprehensive history of the real world of Baghdad. Every piece of Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a love letter to the old Muslim world, highlighting their place in history preserving ancient art, literature, and music through the Christian Dark Ages when the Church attempted to destroy all existence of the world before Christ. The good people of 9th century Baghdad are a major reason we know anything at all about ancient Greece, or Phoenicia, or Egypt. Mirage also moves away from the Ancient Trilogy’s embrace of mythology, sticking to cold hard factual history everywhere except Basim’s visions of evil djinn.
Overall, Assassin’s Creed Mirage has delivered to me the biggest thing I asked from it: a way to enjoy and peruse history by being a part of it. While the story and protagonist fall flat, the side missions called The Tales of Baghdad are so well written that I recommend you do all of them. Hopefully the next protagonist will have more personality than a wet paper towel. The world is well-realized, with excellent malleable gameplay that lets me take different approaches, and none of it gets overwhelming. Mirage is the perfect length and doesn’t outstay its welcome, and provides some incredible architectural recreations that will leaving you standing and staring. If you were a fan of the old-school Assassin’s Creed games, Mirage is one of the best of them and is a must-play. Likewise, if you weren’t, skip this one. Mirage promised me I’d get to be an assassin in an authentically and lovingly recreated Baghdad of centuries past, and in that it excels.
Nirav reviewed Assassin’s Creed Mirage on PC with a copy provided by the publisher. Assassin’s Creed Mirage is also available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
