"I do not want to lose you to what you may find there. You do not have to look to the past to know who you are. Who you can be. You can choose, Basim."

Playing a new AC game on release again after all these years feels weird.

Anyway, the journey to Mirage's release was an interesting one. AC was finally going back to the classic formula but with a prequel game about Valhalla’s lame main antagonist. I initially felt pretty indifferent to it until I realized exploring Basim's past could actually be a great story.

Ig I'm spoiling Valhalla here for the 2% of the population that would give a damn but the ending of that game reveals that we technically never knew the real Basim, but instead the god of mischief Loki who body snatched Basim way before the events of the game (yes Darby probably read Jujutsu Kaisen and just copied the villain twist from that). So, with that in mind, a game about Basim's youth where you get to know the real guy and follow him through the events that would lead to him losing himself is actually a pretty great Assassin's Creed story on paper. A man destined to lose his own soul and freedom, spending his life as an assassin that fights for the freedom of others even though he ultimately will never have it for himself, it's tragedy that writes itself and a really unique conflict for a MC of the series. That gave me relatively high hopes for this game narratively and a decent amount of it was fulfilled!

On the other side of the coin, this game was heavily marketed as a return to form for the series. Playing as an actual assassin, better parkour, a middle eastern setting, stealth and all that jazz, it was exciting to hear but at the same time we had the notion that this was originally planned to be a DLC for Valhalla that got reworked to be its own game so my expectations were very moderate for how far you could push the engine to feel like the old games.

Well with all that introduction out of the way, I really enjoyed this game!

Let's get to the meat and potatoes of the narrative first since there isn't much to talk about. It's decent. I felt pretty whatever on it for a good portion of the runtime but it has its pretty high moments, especially at the end. All the stuff I expected them to explore with Basim was done almost exactly how I expected it to go down but the story still had some fun twists especially regarding Nehal and Basim's impact on how the Brotherhood views the pieces of eden from that point onward. The problem with the story is that beside suffering from having very few memorable characters, it has that good old problem a lot of AC games feature, lame antagonists. I really wish we could move forward to periods that feature templars again because man the Order of the Ancients is absolutely nothing in this game. Besides maybe a few good exchanges here and there about the Creed’s contradictory view on freedom and the mostly decent memory corridor scenes, the middle chunk of this game is vapid and just boring with its uninteresting characters and general disconnect to the targets you kill. If there’s one thing this game definitely ain’t channeling from AC1 it’s the focus on philosophy. Like I said, most of the characters were really boring but I did enjoy Roshan and Basim a lot, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Lee Majdoub gave great performances. One problem with Basim is that I think going for a non linear “kill whatever target you want first” approach was a bad move because it makes him just have no development during that portion of the story due to the freedom you’re given with what missions to do first. The ending delivers and ultimately the point the story presents is executed well and doesn’t linger for longer than it should with a very solid runtime. Shame about no modern day for some reason, really don’t get why they went that route for the first time in the series with THIS game because Basim’s story literally continues there so I feel like we definitely needed at least a closing cutscene taking place in it.

Gameplay wise I had a blast. Even with Valhalla’s skeleton, the improvements and changes made are genuinely impressive. Basim feels fast and agile, stuff like the dodge and the slide Eivor had in Valhalla which was utterly useless in that game are now super fun new tools to mix up during free running for agility and expression. Basim’s toolset is great, the combat is very solid and the lack of leveling is a god send. The boring sections of the narrative are saved by how strong the gameplay with the glorious return of the blackbox assassination missions. It’s just an overall REALLY fun game and once I got used to the feel of it, I was parkouring around Baghdad like a bolt.

Speaking of which, it’s no surprise that Baghdad is not only beautiful but one of the most well-designed maps in the series. The atmosphere is unrelenting and the amount of stuff to parkour around really made me feel like I was playing an older AC game, it’s a city AC game executed to perfection.

Brendan Angelides scored the FUCK out of this game which is kinda series tradition but still. Apparently it’s his first game score and what a debut because the motif of this game has been stuck in my head ever since I first watched that reveal trailer and it just kept popping off consistently throughout the whole game.

Overall, very good time! I can definitely see myself replaying it in the future which is a thought I dread with the 3 last games (even though I greatly enjoy Origins and Odyssey). Definitely hope they keep this direction for the series in the near future because it managed to not only take me back to the old days while also feeling fresh with its own little spins on the series' gameplay.

All the stuff with Shougo and Carol is REALLY good

The villains are neat when they aren't engaging in gratuitous shock value h scene, Brian especially is very fun

Shockingly shafts almost the entire side cast except like Alisson of all characters. Really wish the true route had at least some character work for the other main witches cus they feel insanely wasted by the end since their characterization from earlier in the game ends up going nowhere

Bogged down to oblivion by the constant need to cut away from the story to show torture porn that adds nothing of substance for the entire run