Having spent twenty hours playing Assassin’s Creed Mirage so far, my gut feeling is that this is going to be a divisive game. Reception will be shaped by what players expect of an Assassin’s Creed franchise entry. 

Because if all you want of Mirage is a return (or homage) to the series’ earlier days, with a gameplay emphasis on stealth, combined with all the visual bells and whistles, and control sensibilities, of new-gen gaming, it ticks every box. You can stop reading now because you will love Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Lead studio Ubisoft Bordeaux delivers exactly what it’s been promising – a tighter throwback experience that plunges you into a lovingly realised moment of history, and forces you to consistently and credibly act like an assassin, sneaking around and striking from shadows. The game is similarly sleek and focused; as polished in performance as protagonist Basim’s all-important hidden blade.

This said, if you felt your passion for the franchise reinvigorated by the trilogy of Assassin’s Creed Origins (2017), Odyssey (2018) and Valhalla (2020), you will feel acutely how much has been excised from Mirage. And that sense of being stripped down is double-edged, again like the Hidden Ones’ signature weapon.

A lot has been sliced out of the latest franchise entry, which dials down the roleplaying elements, and dials up the stealth. Assassin’s Creed Mirage is still open world, but it’s a much smaller hub, centred on 9th Century ADE Baghdad, during the Abbasid Golden Age. Overall, there’s a sense of less choice in Mirage, which may or may not be a bad thing, depending on player perspective. While you can upgrade your weapons at blacksmiths, your outfit at tailors, and there’s transmogrification in the form of costumes, you’re not constantly playing mix and match with armour bits and enhancements this time around. There’s also far less gear to find and modify, and the same for collectible resources.

Gone is naval combat and ship customisation. You’re not constantly attacked by aggressive wildlife as you explore the wilderness outside Baghdad. And, importantly, there isn’t a copy-paste side quest every 100 metres, which in the Origins-Odyssey-Valhalla era would typically have you searching for people, retrieving items, or infiltrating bandit camps and heavily guarded fortresses. You can still pet the local cats though, who will happily purr and knead in your arms.

Like I said, the omissions aren’t always bad. A lot of bloat had crept into the Assassin’s Creed franchise in recent years, overwhelming players with things to do. Personally, after investing 60+ hours in Origins and over 170 in Odyssey, I couldn’t face that kind of commitment for Valhalla.

For the record, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is described officially as a 20 – 25 hour experience if you stick to the main storyline. You can expect to play for much longer though – likely doubling that figure pre-DLC release. At 19 hours in, I was sitting at 51% story completion according to Ubisoft Connect, and a lot of that had to do with riding my camel off the beaten track, plus the amount of time stuck in Mirage’s primary gameplay loop of sneak, wait, assassinate, flee, hide, and return to take out the next target.

That structure has a lot to do with the narrative focus of Assassin Creed Mirage. Existing as a prequel to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – in fact kicking off 11 years before Eivor’s epic tale – Mirage tells the backstory of Basim, a street thief turned Hidden One who later pops up in Dark Ages Britain. You don’t need to have played Valhalla to make a Leap of Faith into Mirage, and in fact it may be to your advantage if you want more plot surprises. The point, though, is that Basim is deep in the proto-assassin universe central to the franchise’s universe.

As such, Basim’s investigation of the Order of the Ancients’ cruel and oppressive activities means the game leans hard into its antihero side. Pickpocketing, eavesdropping, bribery with money and factional favour tokens, blending in with crowds, and the occasional use of disguises all feature in Mirage. At the same time, caution is the order of the day. Commit crimes in front of people and citizens will alert guards to your presence. There’s a GTA-esque notoriety scale, which can make your life very difficult if you don’t reduce it through coin and ripping down wanted posters. Archers even target your eagle in high security areas, taking away handy surveillance.

Mirage provides players with an experience that’s very different to the likes of Origins and Odyssey. In those earlier games you could brute force your way out of trouble, with combat that is fast, free-flowing and pretty forgiving when equipped with the right gear. Mirage, by contrast, actively discourages you from trying to go toe to toe with enemies. Combat is a clunky hit and parry system against multiple foes who don’t stick to a set attack pattern. You can’t even dodge and roll away endlessly thanks to a quickly depleted stamina meter. All you have to keep you on your feet are your reflexes and a couple of elixirs under your belt. Annoyingly, if you’re used to it, your health refuses to replenish over time.

There are also very few traditional boss fights, with those encounters typically given a puzzle aspect. Players must use their surroundings to vanish from sight and then strike the heavily armoured enemy from behind or above for an insta-kill.

Combat becomes a bit more interesting and satisfying as you expand your tool repertoire. You’re an assassin, so you have smoke bombs, blow darts, throwing knives, traps, and noisemakers to play with – each of which have three tiers of upgrades, and one interchangeable benefit you can choose from each tier. Overall, though, Mirage demands cautious play. Your tools are just as useful in battle as when you’re sneaking around. And every stealth kill fills up your Assassin Focus metre, which allows you to chain multiple assassinations instantly, but only outside of fights. Prepare to rack up a lot of flight and hiding time in Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which won’t be everyone’s idea of an enjoyable gaming session.

Out of interest, you don’t earn XP for kills, again discouraging a murder spree. Skill points and advancing up the Hidden Ones ranks from Initiate to Master are achieved by progressing along the main storyline, and dabbling in the literal handful of side activities. These optional missions include collecting lost books, completing contracts, solving Enigma riddles, and running with concise Tales of Baghdad quests. One of the game’s highlights (especially for history buffs) is seeking out points of interest across the world map, which unlock a rich codex of information about the region and period. Who knew that camels as a preferred mode of transport would impact city roads and architecture?

As a fan of the newer generation of RPG-lite Assassin’s Creed games, I’ll say it’s the immersive world and mystery narrative that has compelled me to keep playing Mirage. It’s definitely not the stealth-centred gameplay, which starts to feel one-note and tedious if you play in long stretches.

Basim too, at least initially, is a dull and overly earnest protagonist, lacking the dazzling charisma of the likes of Bayek, Kassandra and Ezio. Things aren’t helped by the fact he has fewer interactions with others to show his warmth, and he comes off as a lot less interesting than his enigmatic mentor Roshan (memorably voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo). Then again, Basim’s is arguably a darker journey, as he struggles with nightmares and a refusal to let go of motivations and loyalties from his life before joining the Hidden Ones.

Ultimately, I can’t flaw Assassin’s Creed Mirage technically, and in how it’s stuck to its guns in realising its vision for the game. However, it’s not quite my flavour of fun. I miss the boisterous energy and power fantasy of Mirage’s recent predecessors. I don’t think I was made for the Brotherhood. But that’s just me. I’m sure many players will be delighted that they can return to hiding in plain sight and dispensing justice for the oppressed with a hidden blade.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is out tomorrow, 5 October 2023. The game will be available on PlayStation 5 and 4, Xbox Series consoles, Xbox One, Amazon Luna, and Windows PC. Players can also subscribe to Ubisoft+ to access the game at launch. A standard, deluxe and collector’s edition are all available.


Assassin’s Creed Mirage review

It’s hard to score this one. If all you want of Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a next-gen return to the series’ earlier days, with a gameplay emphasis on stealth, this sleek, focused and impressively polished game ticks every box. However, if you’ve come to prefer the flavour of fun offered by its immediate predecessors Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla, with their role-playing and action-adventure leanings, you may be struck by a sense of how much is missing, and find it all a bit dull and tedious.

 8
Assassin’s Creed Mirage was reviewed on Xbox Series X