I finally finished this. Once I got to the open world. I went to every location that were accessible and found collectibles (as those would just distract me in story missions). The shards were the hardest to complete, I got the first 2 by accident but after some time, they just showed up in the map. The Baghdad tales were so short. The gear chests were challenging though it depended on the location. I found all the treasures from enigma maps with the help from YouTube. It was quick to complete the location checklist. In comparison, Valhalla had like 9 times more.
Visually, this looks better than Valhalla. It reminded me of Origins. The big walled city is cramped in some areas, there were times I didn't know where to eXit. You can parkour for several minutes without touching the ground floor. It also reminded me of the Ezio games and Unity. In the wilderness side, you can see flamingos flying and its the most beautiful thing in this game. The map is eXpectedly small but it was still surreal that Ubisoft did that. I remember how densed the map of Unity/Syndicate were and how I wished they would go back to that. Though Mirage has a big area that took 65% of the map, which is mostly empty. The swamps, there was nothing there, no viewpoint and wasn't used in the main story and side stuff. Though that area is really nice for photo mode.
Gameplay wise, I felt they scaled back and didn't upload it with so many features. But like the previous 3 games, there's still a skill tree that is larger than Syndicate and almost as many as Origins. You can customize/upgrade your gear and weapons. Sell things for money. If I didn't play an AC game before, I would have thought Mirage was the in-between game between Syndicate and Origins. The wanted posters, social stealth, the person you can bribe to remove the wanted level, tailing reminded of the early games. The only missing things were Desmond and the present day segments. EXcept for III/Rogue, this feels like a miXture of the previous AC games. I think for 90% of the game, I stealth assassinated because of the wanted system. The wanted system was annoying because I felt like I was forced to do a lot of things stealthy, instead of letting me to just let loose and play whatever style I want.
The story. It took me two weeks before I fully continued the main missions since I was preoccupied on location objectives and contracts. I liked that the story was more "Assassins". I think the last time AC was really focused on the Assassins, was maybe in Brotherhood or Revelations. However the main story isn't engaging. The characters aren't interesting and lacked personality, especially Basim. Some nice ideas but the eXecution felt lacking.
This is just okay. Its not buggy at launch. In my 60+ hours of playing the game, I only eXperienced 1 glitch that forced me to close the game, which is a big improvement from Valhalla's dozens of bugs that were only fiXed months later. I liked that this isn't bloated compare to the last three. But when it comes to smaller AC games, I liked Syndicate and Unity more simply because the side stuff and story of Mirage are quite dull. The story doesn't feel important. Its basically just a background report to the character introduced in Valhalla, that wasn't very interesting. This feels like a throwback to the earlier games and at the same time, feels like the smaller sibling of Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla. But it doesn't feel essential and fun as it could have been. I find this game boring. Its been almost 3 years since Valhalla, and I spent so much playing that game and I thought a smaller AC game would be refreshing, intimate and more fun due to fewer things to absorb - but its not the case. I finished everything aside from few frophies and I'm disappointed. In the credits, it said this is a love letter to the earlier games, but how they handled the story and characters didn't feel very inspired. They should get better writers/directors because this, just felt very flat. The previous AC games aren't that great as well when it comes to the story, but the characters at least grew on me.
For Assassin's Creed Red, I don't want a huge Japan with mostly empty space with hundreds of side activities splattered across the big map, but its unrealistic to eXpect that wouldn't happen. I hope visually/gameplay wise, I can see a major jump. I want to see Red, as the start of a new AC era. Hopefully with much more interesting premise, story and characters.
