Assassin’s Creed Mirage

Bought this on sale for $27 last week. It's interesting. They've clearly decided to take a step back towards the older games. The Souls-like elements and special attacks are mostly gone and things are back to being all about parry/counter and stealth. I don't really mind that, even if I did like the combat better from the last 3 titles. I'm still killing people by the hundreds, I just have to parry them first. Normal attacks are basically pointless again. It's a throwback to the first dozen'ish games. What I'm not feeling is the story. Talk about generic. Basim and company make Connor from AC3 feel lively and compelling. Supposedly the story is much shorter, so I'll take that as a blessing. I don't know if I could handle this crew in a longer title.
 
Domingo said:
Bought this on sale for $27 last week. It's interesting. They've clearly decided to take a step back towards the older games. The Souls-like elements and special attacks are mostly gone and things are back to being all about parry/counter and stealth. I don't really mind that, even if I did like the combat better from the last 3 titles. I'm still killing people by the hundreds, I just have to parry them first. Normal attacks are basically pointless again. It's a throwback to the first dozen'ish games. What I'm not feeling is the story. Talk about generic. Basim and company make Connor from AC3 feel lively and compelling. Supposedly the story is much shorter, so I'll take that as a blessing. I don't know if I could handle this crew in a longer title.
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Did you play Valhalla? Mirage is on my backlog, but I imagine the story elements both reference some of the earlier AC titles given the setting etc... though Basim himself, or at least some very important elements of his backstory, motivations etc.. are present as you go through Valhalla. Mirage, as I understand it, takes place before and tells the story of how Basim learned about himself to the point that Eivor meets him in Valhalla. Some have said that Mirage was originally a Valhalla DLC, expanded into its own game and is meant to be shorter, as we get ready for the next "big" titles in the saga including the "Japan Game, codenamed AC Red" which is abound in rumor, AC Jade which is a mobile title but structured like a full game suppoedly though I am wondering if there will be garbage monetizations,and more.
 
RanceJustice said:
Did you play Valhalla? Mirage is on my backlog, but I imagine the story elements both reference some of the earlier AC titles given the setting etc... though Basim himself, or at least some very important elements of his backstory, motivations etc.. are present as you go through Valhalla. Mirage, as I understand it, takes place before and tells the story of how Basim learned about himself to the point that Eivor meets him in Valhalla. Some have said that Mirage was originally a Valhalla DLC, expanded into its own game and is meant to be shorter, as we get ready for the next "big" titles in the saga including the "Japan Game, codenamed AC Red" which is abound in rumor, AC Jade which is a mobile title but structured like a full game suppoedly though I am wondering if there will be garbage monetizations,and more.
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Yup, I played through Valhalla. It was a good one, IMO. Not as good as Odyssey, but still quite good. I've actually played through all of the main games except Syndicate. That's when I got fed up with them cranking out the same game over and over. People said Syndicate was solid, but I'd just had enough of the pointlessness of the attack/counter thing by then. Mirage isn't quite back to that style, but it's heading in that direction. With Basim, it's not necessarily the character's story that's flawed. It's his interactions with everyone. Everyone's acting is flat, nothing feels urgent/important, the mission interactions are phoned in, etc. I think that combined with the parry/instakill over and over have turned me off on it. I think it might actually be more fun if it carried the Valhalla fighting engine over as a DLC. As it stands, I think it's the weakest entry since Unity and it's bottom 3 for the whole series.
 
Domingo said:
Yup, I played through Valhalla. It was a good one, IMO. Not as good as Odyssey, but still quite good. I've actually played through all of the main games except Syndicate. That's when I got fed up with them cranking out the same game over and over. People said Syndicate was solid, but I'd just had enough of the pointlessness of the attack/counter thing by then. Mirage isn't quite back to that style, but it's heading in that direction. With Basim, it's not necessarily the character's story that's flawed. It's his interactions with everyone. Everyone's acting is flat, nothing feels urgent/important, the mission interactions are phoned in, etc. I think that combined with the parry/instakill over and over have turned me off on it. I think it might actually be more fun if it carried the Valhalla fighting engine over as a DLC. As it stands, I think it's the weakest entry since Unity and it's bottom 3 for the whole series.
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Ah, that' too bad, especially considering (if I am correct) they hired a pretty well known Persian-American actress to voice (I think) the Mentor of that bureau, so I expected the performance there to be decent story wise. As far as the counter thing I am guessing that they tried to split the difference between those asking for "old AC" parry counter takedowns and those who enjoyed the more recent Valhalla combat.
 
Domingo said:
It's his interactions with everyone. Everyone's acting is flat, nothing feels urgent/important, the mission interactions are phoned in, etc.
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That is how I would describe the past few Assassin's Creed games (Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla). So not much changed in that respect then.

That is essentially Ubisoft's style at this point though.
 
Flogger23m said:
That is how I would describe the past few Assassin's Creed games (Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla). So not much changed in that respect then.

That is essentially Ubisoft's style at this point though.
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I don’t agree about that for odyssey. That’s an outstanding game and the best of that generation of AC games.
 
I thought Odyssey, Origins, and Valhalla were all pretty good acting-wise. They weren't exactly The Last of Us, but they weren't Resident Evil 1, either. With Mirage, there just seems to be zero energy or urgency to anything. Random minor characters will bust their ass for a few lines, but the core characters speak like they're fighting the urge to take a nap. They also keep doing that thing where they'll be speaking English with as little accent as possible and when an Arabic word pops up they'll accent it like 10X stronger than normal. It's like Aaron Sanchez on Chopped talking about a "TOR-TEE-AHHHH!"
 
If I’m seeing this correctly, the male playable character in the next mainstream Assassin’s Creed game, which takes place in feudal Japan, is not Japanese, but black?

We waited all this time for a an AC samurai game, and we can’t even play as a Japanese samurai?

Isn’t that a little weird?
 
Hershy said:
If I’m seeing this correctly, the male playable character in the next mainstream Assassin’s Creed game, which takes place in feudal Japan, is not Japanese, but black?

We waited all this time for a an AC samurai game, and we can’t even play as a Japanese samurai?

Isn’t that a little weird?
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Wait did you actually complete all 3 of these games? How??? How do you have the time? That's hundreds of hours right?
 
Hershy said:
If I’m seeing this correctly, the male playable character in the next mainstream Assassin’s Creed game, which takes place in feudal Japan, is not Japanese, but black?

We waited all this time for a an AC samurai game, and we can’t even play as a Japanese samurai?

Isn’t that a little weird?
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Yes. It is. However, all the reports of that basically stem from one supposed insider leak, that seems to have been reported over and overagain by others. Its from "insider gaming", originally as I understand it. The report is there are two characters, a samurai and a shinobi (the ninja, shown in the 2022 official trailer holding a ninjato and a wrist blade but not identifiable), supposedly its a female japanese shinobi / kunoichi and then a male samurai who's supposed to be "Yasuke" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke , a black man who was introduced to and became a retainer in the court of Oda Nobunaga.

There are several reasons that I can hope this is not the path that Ubi plans to go. First, unlike just about every other protagonist in AC game history, he's a historical person. AC protags typically are fictional creations who MEET historical people. There was no Ezio Auditore, but ther was of course a Leonardo DaVinci etc. Next, every protag has been generally from the setting of the game's historical locale (a few exceptions - Ezio is Italian and his first 2 games were in italy, his 3rd game went to Constantinople which wasn't unheard of for Italians etc). Next, they'l have to do some...considerable overhauls to Yasuke's story to make it work especialy as a samurai protag. Some may notice there are paralells to the well known William Adams / Miura Anjin the white engllishman who became a samurai.... but he did a lot more verified "stuff" including building Western style ships and cannons for his lord, seaborne combat and seamanship and wasn't a horrible (though by no means the greatest) in hand to hand combat. Fictionalized versions of Anjin are present in not just the currently airing "Shogun" series based on the James Clavell book, but the first "Nioh" game. Yasuke 's fictionalized persona has come into media occasionally (a Netflix anime series) but historically the amount of things he did as a samurai may have varied (he was granted the rigth to wear a short sword and apparently carry some of Nobunaga's gear) but he was present at the Honnoji incident when Nobunaga died . There's a good bit more to it, but I'd expect that he'd be a better character for the protags of AC Red to meet rather than play as - I'm sure versions of his story could be easily fit into the AC mythos of Templar and Assasins, but we'll see.

xDiVolatilX said:
Wait did you actually complete all 3 of these games? How??? How do you have the time? That's hundreds of hours right?
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I have completed all three of them, yes. I am also somewhat of a completionist who does ALL THE MEANINGFUL THINGS when it comes to the story in these games, so the time I take with an open world game is much longer than many others. its entirey possible to stick to the mainline story and be done a lot faster in each - don't get me wrong, its still a LOT of gameplay, and each game varies a bit as to the different elements , but you don't have to 100% each area, collect each widget, get the secret endings and secret expansion endings etc. I generally play an Assassin's Creed or other open world game when I want to kind of zone out and "check off" everything on the map , but you don't have to play it that way. Each game varies a bit but even if you wanted to do the core stories of all the games (even with their expansions and collecting all the lore specific stuff ) it doesn't have to be as long as something like how I usualy play them.
 
I've literally completed every single AC game but one (Syndicate). Not just completed, but like, did almost all the stuff, too.
 
xDiVolatilX said:
Wow, you sank the 100 hours into it?
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I think I got around 150 into odyssey. Amazing game.

Anyone who hasn’t played odyssey and is looking for a good open world game - you’re missing out not playing it.
 
I'm not really enjoying Mirage, the occasional crash doesn't help. I can't see myself buying the next one if this is a sign of things to come, and I've played and finished every release so far (except the side scrollers). It feels like they had the D team work on it (story dull, gameplay dull, artistic direction dull etc etc).
 
Mirage has to be a holdover title while they prep whatever is next. It was originally supposed to be Valhalla DLC and they just stretched that into a new game. I mean, it's only one city. A good chunk of the missions and areas are even taken straight from older titles, only they've been shrunk. All of the RPG elements are only a fraction the scope of prior games, too. Hell, I wouldn't be shocked if 2/3 the game assets were lifted straight from older games. Mostly Origins.

On the plus side, when they've released a not-quite-baked AC game in the past they've usually followed it up with a good one. Sometimes several in a row. I just hope they don't port any of the combat changes they made forward. It's just such a step backward doing the wait and counter thing over and over again.
 
The thing I really dislike was how difficult the enemies were to fight against in Odyssey. It felt like dark souls which was painful and awful to sink hundreds of hours learning all of the different enemies. Maybe I wasn't leveled up enough but it was discouraging because not only was the game so damn long, but learning each enemies counter was annoying. Not sure if it's just like dark souls and enemies are generic to learn how to defeat but I didn't even want to waste time learning. For me a game is supposed to be fun and fun learning for hours and hours is more of a chore. Fun is going on an adventure with very light challenge I felt like lately AC games have grown into a completely different animal. I remember I bought the very first AC game on PC and I loved it and was blown away and still love it. But now? It's a completely different game.
 
xDiVolatilX said:
The thing I really dislike was how difficult the enemies were to fight against in Odyssey. It felt like dark souls which was painful and awful to sink hundreds of hours learning all of the different enemies. Maybe I wasn't leveled up enough but it was discouraging because not only was the game so damn long, but learning each enemies counter was annoying. Not sure if it's just like dark souls and enemies are generic to learn how to defeat but I didn't even want to waste time learning. For me a game is supposed to be fun and fun learning for hours and hours is more of a chore. Fun is going on an adventure with very light challenge I felt like lately AC games have grown into a completely different animal. I remember I bought the very first AC game on PC and I loved it and was blown away and still love it. But now? It's a completely different game.
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I thought that the combat in Odyssey was by far the best of any AC game in the entire series. For me, it was borderline sublime. My character, in the end, felt completely different from what I started out with.
 
The combat in Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla very much depended on your level. You could theoretically kill enemies that were way higher level than you, but it was super challenging and the juice wasn't typically worth the squeeze. You usually had to use environmental trickery and a whole lot of special attacks.
With the older games, combat mostly consisted of counter attacks. You had an attack button, but those attacks were almost always blocked. Even if they landed, they didn't do much. Instead you mostly had to just wait for enemies to attack and then you hit the counter button...which instakills almost anything. It was fine at first, but after like 10 games it got really old. Oddly, in the very first AC game Altair had a way to aggressively attack enemies and then instakill them when they blocked. It had super tight timing, but it was a super-rewarding change-up from just waiting around for counters. They got rid of it with AC2 and it still hasn't come back (n)
 
I'm at the end of the game and I'd say the pacing has been just about right. I was just starting to get tired of things (I did most of the side stuff, too), so that feels appropriate.
IMO, this game is an oddball. It's too big to be DLC, but It's too small for a game series that is notoriously huge. It also wholesale borrows missions from previous games, but kinda dumbs them down in the process. I paid $30 for it, and IMO that's a fair price. No clue if it was ever $50+, but that's way too much. At the same time, it's not a $20 game (when not on deep discount), either.
 
It's not that long (20-30 hours), so that's plenty of time to do everything there is to do. I wish I knew that was coming when I bought it, although I luckily only paid $30 for it.
 
CAD4466HK said:
The game is free to play from 4-16-24 to 4-30-24, progression is kept if you decide to purchase.

https://store.ubisoft.com/us/assassins-creed-mirage/62ea4f8e09372571f2736a71.html?lang=en_US

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/assassins-creed-mirage--free-trial
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Guess I will play this then.

Edit: Looks like first two hours only. So essentially, a timed demo. Which is kind of lame. If they can do a demo why limit it to specific dates?

PLAY FOR FREE! Try the first hours of Assassin’s Creed Mirage for free with the trial. All your progress in the trial version of the game will be saved and carried over after upgrading to the full game.
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They probably know that the game isn't that long. Giving people 2 weeks will allow people on the fence to blow through it pretty easily. 2 hours is enough time to get people onboard to give 'em some $.
 
Flogger23m said:
Edit: Looks like first two hours only. So essentially, a timed demo. Which is kind of lame. If they can do a demo why limit it to specific dates?
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yeah it didn't make sense to make the full game available for free for 2 weeks...this is not a multiplayer game...most people will finish it within that time and Ubisoft won't get anything from it
 
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