Assassin’s Creed Mirage – PC Review

Assassin’s Creed Mirage

I am sure many were pleased to hear that coming from 200+ hours of AC Odyssey & AC Valhalla
that AC Mirage would be a game on a smaller scale, returning more to the roots of Assassin’s Creed
instead of an massive undertaking that has been the last 3 games in the series.

I have to admit that I got exhausted playing the main AC Valhalla game, but loved the shorter
DLC addons that were released later on, Ragnarök specially. It somehow just felt about the right
length and AC Mirage does that perfectly here for me, clocking in at a shorter 15’ish to 20 hours
depending on your play style, you won’t be exhausted by the time you finish it.

You might have noticed that main character for Mirage, Basim had an appearance in AC Valhalla.
Mirage time wise is set before Valhalla happens, and tells the story of him, who he is, where he came
from and what he will become.. this happens around 10 years before the events of Valhalla.

I won’t spoil the story as usual, but what you can look forward to is missions with a variety of ways
to complete them, stealth being the preferred way of playing for an easier time, Mirage’s combat
is fun, but getting over run by guards even at low levels can have you accidentally die with enough
hits coming in from the enemies on all sides.. I found that out the hard way per usual.

Whilst in combat, one thing that annoyed me as the level up system is based on at where in the story
you are, starting at novice .. you don’t have particularly any skills, weapons besides your dagger
and starter sword.. but even as you progress you cannot pick up weapons that the enemies drop..
A design choice I am not particularly fond of, I guess I got too used in the other games grabbing
a bow & arrows.. with plenty of ammo around. Here as you progress you can get throwing knifes but
again ammo is scarce so you might want to hold off on using it just for the heck of it style.

Talking a bit more about the story, as you investigate the Order of Ancients and find out more
about them, their intentions and what they do, there is 5 acts to go through in the game with a total
of 42 missions to complete, all in all the story is fine as it progresses and due to the shorter
length overall of the game, it’s easier to jump in and remember what has happened compared to previous
entries where there was so much introduced and happening that you would need an hours recap honestly
to be on top of everything if you take a few days break from gaming.

Whilst not doing main missions, Baghdad is a fun little playground to explore and take advantage of.
The game is absolutely gorgeous, and if you have a PC that’s up to the task with a heftier GPU you
can really see the shine. Below you will also find the PC requirements for Mirage and above in the
beginning I have included some screenshots I grabbed early in the game to give you an idea of
what the game looks like.

But like I said earlier, Baghdad is a fun little playground to take advantage of
and there is activities you can do besides Synchronization points high up in the sky to get a fantastic
aerial view of the ancient city. Pickpocketing is one of those fun activities which can garner you items
, money, or even favors that you can cash in when perhaps completing a mission, or if you got into
trouble with guards, you could use a favor to make them forget about you. Another activity within
the city is wanted posters of you, that you will want to remove, these are based on a notoriety system.
You will also find side activities that grant you favor tokens like undertaking world contracts,
or returning lost books, and mysterious shards that can be traded in for gear.
The city itself is divided up in districts, and each of these districts also have their own unique feel
within the city. Guards are basically everywhere in the game, and if you’ve been up to no good, like
I mentioned before wanted posters start appearing and even civilians will yell at guards if they
recognize you. So truly taking a stealthy approach wherever you go in the game is probably the best
course of action.

So how does it run? With a 12600kf and 32gb of ram & a RTX 3070 playing at 3440x1440p very high detail
gave me around 105-115fps in general. Above is also a in game benchmark in the screenshots you can take
a look at.

Final word

Compared to the older AC games, Mirage feels like a modern game that has taken proven working ideas
from the old games and incorporated it succesfully, the combat (specially sword) is fine, but not
as gruesome as the older titles, and it’s been perhaps a little bit too simplified to the limited
types of enemies there are this time around. Voice acting, Music, and general world feel is something
Ubisoft excels at, and it’s more than satisfying.. you might even learn a few arabic words, phrases
if you pay enough attention.

I definitely would suggest you give Mirage a try yourself, if you like an open world to explore,
stealth, parkour, and side activities to complete and have 20+ hours to spare.