Assassin's Creed Mirage review — a successful parry of franchise fatigue

Here's everything we thought about stealth, parkour, and every element of Basim's adventures in our full Assassin's Creed Mirage review.

Heidi Nicholas

Published 04 Oct 2023

After playing and loving the huge scale and RPG elements of the later Assassin’s Creed games, I had no idea what to expect with Assassin’s Creed Mirage — a game that promised to go back to the roots of the franchise with a great focus on stealth. After having spent over 20 hours pole-vaulting, tumbling, and leaping around Baghdad, springing out from bushes onto unsuspecting guards and high-tailing it away after being spotted, I can say I’ve had an absolute blast with Mirage. It seems Mirage has mostly delivered on what it promised — a compact, enjoyable experience; one made all the better by the fact that it doesn’t shoot itself in the foot with its own ambition. Instead of collapsing under the weight of an endless open world and a disheartening amount of tasks, Mirage is more condensed, and therefore more impactful. It has its issues, but Mirage is a welcome change of pace.

I absolutely love games that offer you hundreds of hours of content, but Mirage really does well in keeping things shorter for a more rounded experience. We know a Mirage completion will take up to 30 hours. And sure, the game does still have an achievement for fully exploring all territories — and one for synchronizing all viewpoints — but while this is nothing short of terrifying in Valhalla, with all its endless activities and huge stretches of empty map, it feels much more manageable (and more importantly, enjoyable) in Mirage. One of the things I was left wondering after our Assassin’s Creed preview was whether the game’s huge refocus on stealth, theft, and assassination would eventually turn into a repetitive experience — “steal this for me. Good, now kill that guy. …Oh, and actually, can you backtrack and steal this for me too?” But Mirage’s activities work well to break up Basim’s experience. Sure, there is a lot of theft and killing, but there’s also solving riddles and puzzles, stumbling upon little encounters in the city, gathering up clues, and generally soaking up the vibrancy of Mirage’s world.

The Explorer achievement in Assassin's Creed Mirage worth 62 pointsFully explore all territories

The Fearless achievement in Assassin's Creed Mirage worth 52 pointsSynchronize all viewpoints

Without a lot of bloated content, Mirage’s characters and stories feel more impactful. Basim encounters plenty of people, but the particularly important characters in his story stand out. Basim himself is a great protagonist with a strong sense of justice and an origin story that has you rooting for him from the start. While you can decide to ignore the story for a bit and faff about doing other things instead, Mirage’s shorter length stitches those important story beats closer together, meaning the narrative maintains its pace and urgency.

The world is beautiful. The Assassin’s Creed games always do a great job of making a city feel busy and full of lively clutter, and this shines through again in Mirage. Baghdad, as a center of trade, learning, and culture, is full of vibrancy. Some of the city’s most important buildings are just wonderful to explore, and the little details — mosaic patterns on the floor, butterflies fluttering around the trees, rich tapestries and rugs — flesh out the world still further. I’m a little torn on the NPCs — in recent Assassin’s Creed games, they’ve been little more than something to shove past as you race towards your next objective. They’re still bizarrely easy to shove around (Basim is incapable of walking past someone without shoving them) but they feel more impactful due to the game’s notoriety system.

This notoriety system means Basim actually needs to keep an eye on his illegal activities. The more times he’s witnessed doing something like thieving or killing, the higher his notoriety rises, meaning people will recognize him, heckle him, and call the guards over (if it rises still higher, you’ll get an elite guard hunting you down). Instead of sauntering through the streets and killing willy-nilly, Basim has to rely on his stealth training. It’s doubly important since Basim, who’s primarily a stealthy fighter, can quickly become overpowered as more soldiers appear. He can fight (we’ll get onto this later) but he’s not an overpowered viking with a clan of warriors behind him. If he can’t get away in time, he’ll be very much in danger. On the other hand, there’s a strange disconnect between how citizens react to Basim compared to how enemies react. Several times, I’ve performed assassinations which were stealthy enough that nearby guards didn’t notice, but that had all the citizens in the area screaming and running away. They also don’t seem inclined to humor Basim in being invisible: on one occasion, I was infiltrating an enemy base and had swooped into a hay cart when no one was looking. I was invisible to the guards, but a random worker came up and started chatting away to the hidden Basim as if entirely unfazed that he was at the time completely submerged in hay. Plus, I know it’s unusual for people to move as stealthily and with such agility as the Hidden Ones, but it gets pretty old that every time Basim drops down from a stall roof or over a wall, the citizens around him gasp as enthusiastically as if they’ve never seen such drama as a grown man popping out of a hay cart.

Now, onto stealth, which is something I really want to talk about. It’s a big part of the game and a big part of Ubisoft’s promise of taking players back to AC roots. Instead of just one option (which didn’t really make as much sense for a viking or a mercenary) it’s what the game encourages you to do. Everything from Basim’s training to his tools to the city’s layout and the story itself emphasize this, and the stealth aspects of the game are hugely enjoyable. From the start, Basim can hide as usual in grass, bushes, and haystacks, and quietly take enemies down one at a time. He can whistle to distract them, and eliminate them with throwing knives. As he progresses, however, these options open up. Certain skills let you chain assassinations, and the Assassin’s Focus ability gives you even more reach, letting you eliminate small knots of guards in rapid succession. Other skills let you unlock more tools, such as smoke bombs and darts, which can then be upgraded for still more versatility in your approach to stealth.

ac mirage gear packs microtransactions cosmetics

There are more options for stealth in the world, too. Social stealth lets you blend in with crowds or on benches. You can hire people like singers or mercenaries to provide distractions. There are more places to hide, such as gazebos, and, when hidden and timing your attack correctly, you can eliminate guards in plain sight without anyone noticing. Correctly timed assassinations also let Basim pop out from his hiding place, complete his kill, and then drag his targets back a little to where he was hiding, making stealth more seamless rather than picking up and moving bodies. Basim can leap down onto targets, reach up to pull them over walls, throw out a smoke bomb to disappear, and fall back on his Assassin’s Focus to quickly deal with anyone that spots him. It all adds up to make that core, iconic gameplay loop — scout out an enemy base, infiltrate it, and deal with its guards one by one — as enjoyable and impactful as we’d hoped it would be. I enjoyed being as stealthy as possible, and learned to fall back on combat as a last resort. Managing to move further into a base, sneaking right past its vigilant guards without being spotted, was hugely satisfying.

Parkour plays into this in a big way. On the one hand, movement in Assassin’s Creed Mirage feels smooth and fluid. When parkour works, it looks fantastic and seamless. Yet Mirage doesn’t seem to have fully delivered on the completely faultless parkour it promised. Sure, a lot of this might be down to how I was playing, but it still feels clunky and illogical at times. It still has that old problem where one infinitesimal push of the thumbstick can either send Basim easily onto the next logical and clearly defined step ahead of him, or else plunging randomly off into the side and undoing all your progress. It’s an irritating setback that breaks into any seamless gameplay. It’s the same with climbing. Mirage is more careful with its climbing options, encouraging you to plan routes up buildings so you don’t come to a dead end, and this is good for helping you to really think about your approach. On the other hand, it’s sometimes frustrating when again, one apparently wrong push of the thumbstick sends Basim happily diving backwards from the building so you have to start again. Plus, it sometimes looks a little silly when this extremely agile individual can soar from the heights and run across tightropes but can’t hop up two feet to a clearly visible ledge. For the most part, however, parkour feels natural and plays in wonderfully to the idea of Basim as a stealthy, subtle assassin.

If things do come to combat, Basim is an able fighter. He’s armed with a sword and dagger, and can parry and perform light and heavy attacks. It’s great that the game is slightly more realistic than its most recent predecessors, making Basim more vulnerable to large numbers of enemies, and therefore encouraging you still further to avoid open combat when you can. Correctly-timed parries look and feel great, opening up an opportunity to finish off enemies, but I did run into a few instances where Basim for some reason couldn’t attack, and I had to keep dodging until things worked again. You can always fall back on stealth again, dropping smoke bombs to make an exit or finish off more enemies. If you manage to dodge out of sight quickly enough, your last known position is shown to your enemies, making Basim once again feel like a stealth master as he creeps around behind them.

If you like bringing in others to help your stealth approach, you can make use of tokens. These are a different form of currency in the game, and can be earned by pickpocketing or helping people. There are different tokens for different groups, such as mercenaries or scholars, and can be used to bribe them to create a distraction. Tokens have other important uses too, and so encourage you to rely on pickpocketing. What’s interesting in Mirage is that looting pots and baskets as usual and selling what you find doesn’t bring you too much money. It’s pickpocketing that rakes in the most coins, and this again asks for stealth — timing your pickpocketing correctly so that you aren’t spotted, and then getting away before your target notices they’ve been robbed and call for the guards.

Another thing that works well in Mirage is that loot and gear feels more measured. I love finding new gear and appearances for mounts and your eagle, but new gear pieces aren’t handed out too often, making it feel like a big deal when you discover something new. On top of that, you need to find the schematics to upgrade it, and you can hunt for dyes to further change its appearance.

Summary

Mirage performed seamlessly for most of my playthrough, although later on I encountered a few crashes, framerate stuttering, and one alarming moment where my Xbox was shut down completely. Visually, however, the game looks beautiful. I also enjoyed the rate at which I earned the Assassin's Creed Mirage achievements, as it felt both more generous than the last few games while also still rewarding difficult challenges and your own efforts. Overall, while Mirage does have its issues, I keep finding myself reluctant to put the controller down. I want to get back into Baghdad and hunt down every last treasure. I don’t have the same fatigue, this far through the game, as I might have felt when trying to mop up achievements in Valhalla. Mirage feels like the perfect length — far from outstaying its welcome, I want it to keep going. This refocus on stealth is so much fun, and while I’ll still be playing the next open-ended Assassin’s Creed game we get, it feels like Mirage pretty much achieved exactly what it set out to do.

* Heidi played just over 20 hours of Assassin's Creed Mirage, unlocking 22 achievements as she did so. A review copy was provided by the publisher and played on an Xbox Series X.

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Written by Heidi Nicholas

Heidi tends to lean towards indie games, RPGs, and open-world games on Xbox, and when not playing Disney Dreamlight Valley, happily installs every new wholesome game that appears on Xbox Game Pass, before diving back into favorites like The Witcher 3. She's looking forward to Age of Mythology Retold, Everwild, Fable, and Avowed on the Xbox horizon. Heidi graduated with an MA in English Literature before joining the TrueAchievements team.