Steven Horvath

There's things to love and things to hate about Assassin's Creed Mirage. If you're a history buff and are into Middle Eastern culture you might find a few interesting tidbits. If not, you'll miss out on quite a bit of what the game presents to you sadly. When you look at the map, Baghdad is absolutely stunning, especially when you're exploring the Round City. Nothing is quite as tall as previous AC games but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The city feels lived in and it's quite vibrant. There's far more chances of parkour lower to the ground. The story could honestly be better overall. The characters are shallow, and the voice acting leaves much to be desired. Honestly I could forgive this in a video game, however..... The main reason for 3 stars is the movement and the combat. Ubisoft gave themselves almost 3 years to get this right. Traversing around the map just feels sluggish, especially compared to previous entries. You often find yourself stuck on the smallest ledges, or Basim will just jump onto the most random things, often out of view behind the player. They should've taken Unity's system and refined it. Instead, we get a parkour experience that's honestly worse than any of the other games in the series. Combat, sadly, isn't much better. You hit, you dodge, you parry, you repeat. Even when getting attacked by multiple assailants, it just feels bland and clunky. If Ubisoft were trying to push you to more stealth, this sadly isn't the way to do it. With 3+ years of development given to an AC title in the last decade, I was hoping for more, sadly much here feels like a step back. I enjoy AC going back to its roots, however it misses the mark.