My Actual Assassin’s Creed: Mirage First Impressions

This was originally published on Ghost Gamer News October 7, 2023.

As I noted in my previous post, I had some.. Issues getting AC Mirage to run.

It turns out that the game doesn’t seem to want to be played at higher quality levels, despite meeting the recommended specs for such.

I can play comfortably at High & Very High, but Ultra High? No, that’s too high, apparently.. Despite getting 80+ FPS at Very High.

Anyway, once I managed to get the benchmark to run, I started playing the game..

..And immediately started getting a headache and feeling sick.

I exited out, and double-checked graphics settings.. Only to discover that, for whatever reason, AC Mirage set my default refresh rate to 60hz.

I’ve never had to touch my refresh rate in any game ever; if the game provides a method for changing it, it always picks a reasonable option as a default.

As you can tell, my initial experiences with the game haven’t been good, since I haven’t even actually gotten to the gameplay portion yet.

Once I did, though, I started enjoying myself.

The core gameplay is classic AC with some modern accents; simpler parkour controls, a more weighty movement, and functional combat.

I should note in particular the combat: While the game says you’re too squishy to engage in swordfighting, if you are at all comfortable with souls-likes (or even Ghost of Tsushima on Normal difficulty) you’ll be fine doing some light swashbuckling. It’s not as easy as in Valhalla, but it’s doable in a pinch.

Overall, I’ve been having some good fun, but I am severely annoyed at 2 things.

First: I HATE RIDING CAMELS. Why? The sound.

It sounds like the camel is having a ride of it’s own, so to speak, and it’s obnoxious.

Second, and more importantly.. You can’t save when you’re in a restricted area. No manual, no quicksave, no nothing.

This can be a problem, as some missions have a lot of steps while inside a single restricted region, and if you need to take a break to deal with real life? Well, too bad, says Ubisoft. You’ll just have to hope there was an autosave in there somewhere (didn’t notice any while in restricted areas), or start it all over again later.

One mission in particular took me about 45 minutes to complete; This was partially due to the lack of handholding (which is a good thing for fans of older games), but also just because the area I was in was pretty big, filled with lots of winding corridors, guards to deal with, and more.

I almost had a heart attack when I finally exited and completed the mission, and within 10 seconds got spotted and killed because I had a full wanted level. Thankfully the game DID autosave after I left the restricted area, so I didn’t lose that 45 minutes of work.

I’ll definitely keep playing, but, fair warning: This game has bugs, and Ubisoft is more than likely going to be slow to fix many of them if their previous track record is any indication. This includes ones that break actual gameplay; In one instance I was trying to interact with an NPC, and couldn’t. I’d fast travel away and come back, no luck. I ended up saving, exiting, and reloading the game, and was then able to interact with him, but.. That’s not an ideal solution (especially if the bug comes up in a restricted area in the middle of a mission).