It has been nearly three years since 2020’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which represents the largest gap between mainline games in the series’ history. Did that extra time allow Ubisoft to craft a better experience overall, or was all the waiting done in vain? Our Assassin’s Creed Mirage review is ready to settle this question.

Shorter Game, Familiar Feel

Assassin’s Creed Mirage looks pretty damn good. Ubisoft’s Anvil game engine can do vast cityscapes at great scale. The various cities Basim and crew find themselves feel lived-in, with hundreds of citizens going about their daily lives, and thanks to Basim’s thieving past, many targets ripe for the pickpockets. Of course, side missions and activities can be triggered with some exploration, and chests and caches of all kinds are peppered throughout most areas.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a single-player-only game, with a campaign playthrough time of around the 15-20 hour mark. While there is a large, open map of about five square miles, it is easy to stay on the main quest. The story is enjoyable and something of a coming-of-age tale involving protagonist Basim Ibn Ishaq, a common street thief who dreams of one day joining the Hidden Ones, as the Assassin Brotherhood was then known. By circumstances beyond his control, his somewhat dangerous but mostly anonymous life is upended by the Caliph, or more specifically, the shadowy organization the Caliph had dealings with. It’s an engaging, well-acted story that is intriguing to watch, with multiple cases for Basim to solve as he attempts to destroy the Order of the Ancients by taking out key members.

Like You Never Even Left

Regarding controls, Assassin’s Creed Mirage feels like riding a new bike. It’s familiar, but with a couple of tweaks your old bicycle didn’t have. Holding down the cross button while running is the easiest way to traverse the city’s many buildings tops, with devices such as hooks and lifts available at key moments to help you up and over obstacles. Basim’s arsenal is small but efficient, and mostly things we have seen before in other installments. He has the hidden blade that he had to pay dearly for in order to use, a dagger, a main sword, and various assassin tools of the trade, such as smoke bombs, throwing knives, poison darts, and more. Some of these weapons are particularly flashy, which is kind of unrealistic in a game centered around stealth, but hey, it’s a video game – some suspension of disbelief is required.

What’s not required this time around is spending extra time buried in menus as you sort through dozens of abilities and compare countless stats between equipment. Assassin’s Creed Mirage is less focused on RPG elements, though they are still present, just to a lesser extent than before. You can upgrade weapons and equipment a couple of times each, and Basim’s skill tree is more of a grid, not too deep in terms of layers, and easily remapped for most abilities. Leveling up happens sparingly, as the game seems to want the player to focus on the simple joys of stealthily killing your enemies instead of overwhelming them with force as could be done in, say, Valhalla.

Slow-Motion Powers, Activate!

Indeed, combat in Assassin’s Creed Mirage is deceptively simple. Tapping R1 performs a light attack while holding it initiates a charged, heavy attack. Pressing L1 will attempt to block, and if it is timed right, it will trigger a parry, where the enemy is stunned for a few seconds. Tapping square will dodge, which is crucial to perform when enemies use unblockable attacks, where they are briefly enveloped in a red aura as a warning sign that such an attack is incoming. Double-tapping dodge will move Basim more quickly out of an area at the cost of some stamina. Finally, a new ability dubbed Assassin Focus is unlocked at a certain point, which makes a sort of Red Dead Redemption-style slow-motion move where Basim can target up to five enemies while time slows down. Once the targets are selected, things resume, and Basim dispatches those chosen targets in quick succession. Of course, this ability must be charged first by defeating enemies the old-fashioned, non-slow-mo way. It’s a bit over-the-top but fun and useful to pull off.

Missions outside of the tutorial are pretty freeform, allowing the player to come up with the opportune time to take out their enemies in order to progress or to simply bypass those they deem unnecessary to take down. It is rewarding to learn the patrol routes of multiple guards and then take them out one by one, with each unaware of their imminent demise. Hiding in the bushes and waiting for the right time to strike may be cliché, but it still feels good.

Not Too Challenging

Maybe it’s because I’m now a veteran of Souls-like games, but on Normal mode, Assassin’s Creed Mirage doesn’t pose much of a challenge. Enemies are quick to lose interest, even when whistled at to the same spot several times, and once the initial shock of seeing their dead comrades passes, so too does their attention. Naturally, the hard difficulty setting helps to rectify some of this, but Assassin’s Creed games are not known for their difficulty, and most players should have no issue finding the right level for their experience with this genre or desire for a challenge. One thing that will seemingly always remain an occasional challenge lies in the Flow-like mechanic that is any Assassin’s Creed traversal scheme. For the most part, the game understands where you are trying to go. But sometimes, and this is usually when the action is the most intense, and you are trying to get away from someone or a group of people, the game gets it wrong, and Basim leaps down the side of the wrong building or hides in a closet despite his pursuers being right behind him, or worse. It’s usually funny when it occurs, but repeated failures of traversal can get annoying.

Basim has an aerial companion, much like in Valhalla. This time around, it’s an Eastern Imperial Eagle named Enkidu, who can help the player pinpoint places of interest or specific targets. Getting too close to city archers can result in the eagle getting shot at, which ends the scouting session temporarily. There are also mounts in the form of camels and horses. While the area of Baghdad depicted in Mirage is smaller than other Assassin’s Creed maps, it is still a large area, and occasionally using a mount or simply fast traveling is your best bet at getting around.

Comfort Soup for the Nostalgic Soul

If there’s one phrase that could describe Assassin’s Creed Mirage, it’s comfort food. There have been so many Assassin’s Creed games since the original in 2007, two whole video game generations ago, that after nearly three years since the last mainline entry, playing Mirage felt comforting. Its shorter length is actually disappointing in that regard – I wanted to have more new things to discover, enemies to tackle, or conflicts to arise in this recreation of 9^th-century Baghdad, and knowing the ending is never too far away will be bittersweet to some.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a great return to form for a series that had sort of lost its way. A concise, single-player campaign with a story that has its share of twists and turns, a sprawling desert and surrounding wilds to play in, and even a new ability helps to return Assassin’s Creed to its roots while adding to the core feature set in a meaningful way. Fans, new and old, will want to check out Assassin’s Creed Mirage.

Score: 8/10

Pros:

• Tighter, concise story
• Great recreation of 9th-century Baghdad
• Classic Assassin’s Creed combat and stealth

Cons:

• A shorter story may disappoint some
• Flow controls don’t always get things right

Assassin’s Creed Mirage review code provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.