Assassin’s Creed: Mirage seems to be a solid return to the series’ roots

So, how has this more condensed and streamlined game reviewed? Pretty well, it seems. Over on Opencritic, Mirage currently holds a ‘Strong’ rating of 76 across 79 different reviews. By comparison, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla holds a rating of 82, indicating that while many critics are enjoying the latest game, they aren’t as impressed with it.

Jarrett Green of IGN was fairly impressed with it, awarding the game an 8 out of 10 and saying,  “I’d recommend Mirage to anyone who’s lapsed on Assassin’s Creed, as its back-to-basics approach is a successful first step in returning the feeling that the earlier industry-defining games gave me so long ago.”

Those words resonate with me because I’ve been one of the people missing the older games’ focus on sneaking around and assassinations.

Meanwhile, Jordan Ramée of Gamespot noted that it felt like the story really struggled to stand on its own, requiring knowledge of prior games to enjoy properly, especially Valhalla. But he also praised the investigation-driven assassinations, awarding the game a 6 out of 10. He writes, “Mirage does get back to the basics that first defined the series by refocusing on social stealth and making it fun to learn about a city’s history, but a weak cast of characters keeps it from reaching the same heights as some of its earliest predecessors.”

One of my favourite reviewers, SkillUp, published a video review that states he does not recommend the game overall. In the video he says he loved being an assassin again and preferred playing Mirage over the sloppy action-combat of the RPG-focused AC titles. But he also said that after a few hours without the gameplay evolving, “it dawned on me that Mirage is what we all kind of feared it might be: it’s the old formula shuffled out the door for one more go around with very little effort made to evolve what that formula is or how it might be used.”