➤ Assassin's Creed Mirage, the review of the episode that returns to the origins of the series 🕹

The mysterious and tormented past of Basim Ibn Ishaq, the thief turned Hidden One, is set to be revealed in the Assassin's Creed Mirage review.

What is Assassin's Creed? Climb a tower, scan the horizon and launch yourself into the void without suffering a single scratch. Run across the rooftops, jump from one building to another, walk through the streets as day gives way to night and you are surprised to admire the architecture of an ancient town. Stay in the shadows, hide in plain sight, attack and disappear.

Series Ubisoft It continued with this formula for years and then revolutionized it for the latest trilogy and introduced action RPG mechanics that probably still represent the future of the famous intellectual property. However, not everyone digested this change, and as time went by it became more and more insistent. the nostalgic need for a return to origins.

Well, Basim Ibn Ishaq's adventure set against the backdrop of XNUMXth century Baghdad represented the perfect opportunity to create a tribute to the classic chapters of the saga, and we can say that the development team fully achieved the goal... for better and for better. bad. What does this mean exactly? Continue reading the Assassin's Creed Mirage Review and the truth will be revealed to you.

History: yes zero but a lot

Assassin's Creed Mirage, the review of the episode that returns to the origins of the series — Assassin's Creed Mirage, Basim and Nehal at the beginning of the story

A monstrous being torments young Basim in his dreams, but luckily every time he wakes up there is his lifelong friend, Nehal, who is willing to comfort him and accompany him on new forays through the streets of Anbar, the small town in the province. . from Baghdad where he begins the history of Assassin's Creed Mirage, in the year 861 AD.

The two basically act like big brother and sister to each other. a thieves guild who survives thanks to some petty theft, and who at a certain point finds himself in charge of a mysterious group fighting for freedom, the Hidden Ones. Their leader, Roshan, immediately catches the attention of Basim, who would like to prove to him that he is worthy of joining the brotherhood.

Unfortunately the boy goes too far, an attempted robbery within the walls of the Winter Palace ends in tragedy and the price to pay for his failure is very high. Torn by pain, Basim is saved at the last moment by Roshan, who at that moment sees no other solution: the young thief will have to abandon his life and become an occultist.

Years later, at the end of tough training, Basim returns to Baghdad to investigate theOrder of the Ancients: extremely influential people, who hide their identity behind a mask and maintain their power with violence, but it is never enough for them: that is why it seems that they have ordered the search for mysterious artifacts with extraordinary powers.

The plot is a back-and-forth of good intentions and quite obvious problems, mainly the one related to enemies: The investigation structure is the same as that introduced with the last trilogy, with a series of missions to complete to reveal the identity of the member of the Order that we will then face, but in almost all cases these are figures that the game does not deepen or enhance it, with the result of making them fundamentally anonymous.

Furthermore, unfortunately this time too, the director's attention is missing, which could have given depth and meaning to certain sequences, but he does not do so by rushing the times and shortening them. He Spanish dubbing, good but not always focused, manages to mitigate these shortcomings only partially. In short, after sixteen years, the enormous narrative potential of Assassin's Creed remains unexpressed.

Setting: the golden age of Baghdad

As revealed by Ubisoft itself, Assassin's Creed Mirage was born as a Valhalla DLC but the developers realized that the events of Basim would have deserved more than a simple expansion, so here is the idea of a substantially different chapter than the gigantic proportions of Origins. , Odyssey and Valhalla, shorter and more compact (The average duration of the campaign is approximately twenty hours), also offered at a reduced price.

In intention, what appears before our eyes is, therefore, a heartfelt tribute to the classic episodes of the series, in particular the original Assassin's Creed, also thanks to a setting not far removed from the one in which Altair moved, both from a chronological point of view and from the atmosphere and architecture, which are precisely those of Baghdad in the era of Islamic gold. .

The "city of peace" is inevitably the true protagonist of the adventure, which marks what is important return of parkour giving us exciting running sessions on the roofs of the houses, spectacular jumps, some new elements (see the poles that bend under our weight letting us land on the adjacent platform) and even some boat rides on the wide canals that surround the central area .

Visually the landscape is absolutely spectacular and it is undoubtedly the most successful aspect of the production: the developers have rebuilt where possible, invented where necessary, and the end result is an evocative setting both day and night, thanks to the sophisticated technologies used to illuminate it; alive and populated as you would expect from a new episode of Assassin's Creed.

La map In reality it includes little else and undoubtedly confirms the intention of creating a compact experience: to the north and south of Baghdad we find some small settlements but also many desolate lands, while the iconic landscape of Alamut can only be visited at specific moments of the adventure, without therefore the possibility of freely reaching it.

We mention the architecture and we want to reassure those nostalgic for the Ubisoft saga: in Mirage you can climb a lot of towers, all fascinating and scalable in a way that is not always immediate, since sometimes it will be necessary to know where to hold on, although in this sense it would have been possible to do more. Once synchronized, we can use these places as a reference for fast travel.

Gameplay: pure Assassin's Creed

We said at the beginning that the developers of Assassin's Creed Mirage have certainly known how to pay tribute to the classic chapters of the series, for better or worse. So far from the RPG mechanics of the last trilogy, which had also given some depth to both the combat and the interaction with the characters, we returned to the action-adventure structure of the origins.

The idea was to realize a stealth-focused experience, with a balance of difficulty such that it imposes a sudden retreat from groups of enemies, if any are discovered, as well as an improvement system capable for once of not turning our character into a war machine, ending up completely banalizing the challenge .

The point is that these good intentions were not followed by actions. Yes, stealth in Mirage is predominant and also fun, although it is based on mechanisms already widely seen and explored within the series; but the new features introduced for the occasion, in this case a skill called Assassin's Wits, soon end up being break the game due to an unfortunate balance.

Using this power, Basim can essentially exploit a glitch in the Animus to distort his position in space and time. thus eliminating up to five enemies after marking them and staying where the last in line is. Movement doesn't work at a certain distance, it's true, but there were situations where we managed to use it to get to places that would have required turning and reasoning.

However, preparation is not the only ace up the protagonist's sleeve. always well supplied throwing knives, sleeping darts, smoke bombs, explosive traps and firecrackers: all upgradeable tools, which in most cases allow you to defeat even large groups of adversaries, in addition to solving the massacres of the most vulnerable targets. in the space of a few important moments.

This broad and effective repertoire absurdly translates into a gradual decrease in difficulty during the campaign, and not the other way around; and the hand-to-hand combat, which seemed to offer the much-needed challenge, also proves very inconsistent as a well-timed parry is enough to open up the enemies' defense and expose them to instant death. For once they didn't attack in turns.

It's a shame, because all the conditions were there for a solid and relatively punitive stealth, but It's clear that something has gone wrong.This is demonstrated by several elements that have been included, but that we end up completely ignoring, such as the possibility of causing scaffolding to collapse while we run to block the path of the pursuers or the usual groups of mercenaries or minstrels that are hired to distract the guards.

Other aspects, however, have survived what seems to be an ongoing rethink: the valorization of pickpockets (even special ones linked to a specific mission), given that our Basim never sails in gold during the campaign, or the use of special currencies to carry out certain operations. The arsenal is also deliberately limited in the number of items and their power, and they are back. posters to break to restore alert status.

The eagle solution for marking soldiers and points of interest before entering a guarded settlement has been revived, with the addition of marksmen who can sometimes inhibit this function until they are eliminated, while the side missions They can be useful for raising money and materials: they seem better designed than in the past, but there are not many types.

Ubisoft finally integrated the Discovery educational component directly in the game: during exploration we can collect fragments that will unlock historical information about that particular place or custom and that we can consult within the Traditional Codex, accessible from the options screen.

The best moments of Assassin's Creed

The Assassin's Creed series is, without a doubt, full of iconic sequences, which have been engraved in the memories of many fans of the saga: a while ago we dedicated a special to this topic with the best moments of Assassin's Creed: take a look at it for an (more) immersion in the past.

Technical realization: something shines, something does not

We have already talked about how the setting is the true and great protagonist of Assassin's Creed Mirage: the XNUMXth century Baghdad reproduced for the game is broad, multifaceted, fascinating and it lends itself to very solid and fun parkour-based navigation, which will not fail to bring a smile to those who missed it due to the architecture that in recent years did not lend itself to this type of interaction.

Lighting, textures and effects are what we are accustomed to in the latest version of AnvilNext, Ubisoft's proprietary graphics engine, but for character models A separate discussion must be made: some are decidedly well made (although far from what Unreal Engine 5 currently offers, let's be clear), others seem somewhat dated.

On PS5 you can use of different graphical modes: one focused on quality, which runs at 4K and 30 fps per second; the other focused on performance, probably running at 1440p and 60fps. The latter is in our opinion the preferable option, given that 30 frames do not provide a sufficient sense of fluidity and it is worth losing a little sharpness in exchange for superior performance. There's also a "classic filter" that, once activated, reproduces the light blue color palette of the first Assassin's Creed.

Charging on the Sony console is very fast but not instantaneous on fast trips, while the peculiarities of the DualSense are exploited somewhat marginally. There is a photo mode through which to create beautiful postcards of Baghdad and the audio sector can boast, in addition to the aforementioned dubbing into Spanish, a soundtrack of quality and depth, with some important references to classic Assassin's Creed themes.

Conclusions

Tested version PlayStation 5 digital delivery Steam, play, playstation store, Xbox Store Price 49,99 € Holygamerz.com 7.5 Readers (58) 7.7 your vote

Assassin's Creed Mirage is a passionate tribute to the origins of the Ubisoft series and those who missed those mechanics, those atmospheres and those architectures will surely not be disappointed with the game, which is also offered at a really interesting price. Unfortunately, it's clear that something has gone wrong in the delicate balance between the stealth and combat phases: Basim can rely on an excessive number of skills and gadgets that make the challenge progressively easier rather than increasing it, and consequently even hand-to-hand combat. -Manual combat, right? They are the bogeyman we were waiting for. After all, we said it: Assassin's Creed, for better or worse.