I played AC Mirage back when it came out and if I was apathetic towards the game. My apathy towards the fandom of the franchise combined with me not feeling in the mood to play it in the moment made me much harsher on the game. Having played most of the non RPG games again, Shadows and other Ubisoft open world games by extension, I've come to appreciate Mirage a lot more than I did originally. By no means would I consider the game great but as far as dumb and enjoyable moment to moment fun, Mirage is better than many of the games in the series. The free DLC, the updates the game got plus me strongly disliking Shadows made me go like, "ah let's play Mirage again".
The story is mostly "fine". Nothing good but nothing outright bad. The story shines in the early hours all the way up to the death of Al Ghul since Basim's growth and the plot is at it's most prominent. Later in the game after his death it turns into a series of 3 not so related standalone stories and then it all culminates with the final assassination followed up with an underwhelming stealth gaunlet and a dull soulslike boss. There is a Fight Club style twist in the story and while parts of it is foreshadowed decently, others parts is where I start to raise questions. It's not the worst twist but considering how the story after the death of Al Ghul already lost so much of it's momentum, it was hard to get invested.
Basim at least has a fun personality of being playful and polite but can get annoyed and angered from time to time. This is all me being aware of the fact that this game is also a prequel to a title I have no interest in trying out. Then there is the overarching AC story which at this point just seems to something everyone wonder how it's gone on for this long with no plot progression.
Gameplay is quite interesting. You may hear many on the internet and how this narrative even started of AC once being a stealth series but here is the kicker: this AC is one of two games in the series with decent stealth mechanics and enemy AI. The other being Syndicate. I've come to realize that the series never has and probably never will live up to it's original pitch of "social stealth". At the same time, if you view AC Mirage as a stealth killing murder simulator that just so happens to feature combat and the ability to climb, it's easy to have fun with it in the moment. In a weird way, AC Mirage was Aragami 2 minus the darkness system and extremely repetitive levels.
The climbing is much improved from the base release. There's an attempt to have ejects and parkour up and down. It's impressive that there's even an attempt to have both in the game considering this started off life as Vahalla DLC. With that said, while it's certainly better, it can still feel unrefined and unwieldly. Where the animations in Unity at least felt like they were built in with the movement Mirage's implementation can feel like the devs pushing their limitations. It's hard to tell what's the arc and direction Basim will go next. It's at it's worst when he's hanging on a pole and freerun down and circle will not have him jump down. I also dislike the fact that parkour down and crouch are mapped to the same command but I got used to it.
Where the game shines or could detract for some is the various areas you will go to and importantly how many ways you can mess around with how dumb the guard AI is. The biggest and most important rule is that guards will never see Basim kill a guard when it's in a bush even if the kill in their line of sight. Bushes is their kryptonite. Combine that and you can abuse the whistle ability and the fun comes from the ways you infiltrate and watch Basim stealth kill guards.
Get spotted? It might be game over but it's just fun to run away from guards and see how long the chase can be maintained especially with how much better parkour is better now. Combat is pointless since Basim runs out of stamina on one enemy and they take many hits.
There is also another major issue that due to the mission structure after Al Ghul's death where you can be beat it out of order, it's harder to steadily introudce new ideas or enemies. There are marksmans that can scare aware Enkidu but you just need to kill one and never more than that. Enemies and npcs won't react to what you did in another questline so there is nothing dynamic going on. I can ignore this issue more on this playthrough but it's one of many things the series to this day never managed to at least attempt.
I do love that tagged enemies remain that way after death. The chain assassination is kind of fun to do during emergency or just to mess around with due to the density of them in every stealth area.
The investigations are more involving than AC1 even if they just revolve around activating eagle vision and pressing items of interesting.
The Black Box assassinations in this fixes an issue in the aforementioned game is that the act of assassinating is over quickly. In AC Mirage, it's more puzzle solving and findind clues so you get close and get the kill. It's reminscent of Hitman World of Assassination but nice change of pace from the traditional infiltrations.
The DLC unfortunately has the worst level with the jail breakout but then easily has the best mission in the series with the Black Box kill. The guard density and the work needed to get there makes it rewarding to finish. This was all in a free update.
Overall, I'm kinder on Mirage it has it's problems but it's consistently fun.
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