Unleashing the Enigma: Assassin's Creed Mirage Outpaces Unity's Momentum

Highlights

Assassin's Creed Mirage embraces the core elements of the franchise - stealth, parkour, and combat - to evoke the classic Assassin's Creed feeling that some fans have missed.

The parkour in Assassin's Creed Mirage is an improvement over the recent RPG entries, featuring a more confined setting that demands players to rely heavily on parkour abilities. It successfully captures the essence of the original games' parkour mechanics while incorporating modern enhancements in visuals and controls. However, when compared to Assassin's Creed Unity, Mirage's parkour falls short. Unity is widely regarded as having the series' finest parkour, thanks to its fluid animations and intuitive control scheme. Mirage's parkour fails to reach the impressive heights set by Unity.

The fundamental elements that define the Assassin's Creed franchise are stealth, parkour, and combat, all presented in a historically accurate manner. These key features have been integral to the franchise since its inception over 15 years ago, and they are fully embraced in Assassin's Creed Mirage.

Positioned as a return to the franchise's origins, Assassin's Creed Mirage focuses heavily on these core pillars of the series, aiming to capture the classic Assassin's Creed experience, which some fans feel has been lacking since the introduction of the Assassin's Creed RPG era in 2017. However, while Assassin's Creed Mirage successfully pays homage to the series' roots, it falls short of achieving the same level of excellence as Assassin's Creed Unity in terms of parkour.

Assassin's Creed Mirage's Parkour Still Pales in Comparison to Unity

Assassin's Creed Mirage's parkour surpasses the previous RPG entries, likely due to the game's more confined setting. In recent years, parkour has taken a backseat in Assassin's Creed, as the vast maps of the RPGs leave ample open space, resulting in less parkouring. However, in Assassin's Creed Mirage, set in a single city filled with structures and obstacles, parkour becomes essential and consequently feels much faster compared to recent installments.

Nonetheless, Assassin's Creed Mirage's parkour remains impressive. While climbing buildings can be somewhat tiresome, the rooftop sprints in Mirage are exhilarating, featuring flashy animations whenever the player vaults over waist-high obstacles, slides beneath cracks in walls, or uses poles to reach adjacent rooftops. The parkour in Assassin's Creed Mirage successfully recreates the original games' feel while incorporating modern enhancements such as visually stunning elements and a more user-friendly control scheme.

However, while the parkour in Assassin's Creed Mirage is definitely an improvement compared to recent RPG entries and the earlier games in the series, it still falls short when compared to Assassin's Creed Unity. Despite receiving heavy criticism upon release due to numerous bugs and a lackluster storyline, Assassin's Creed Unity is now widely regarded as one of the franchise's finest entries, particularly in terms of parkour.

In recent years, fans have revisited Assassin's Creed Unity and have expressed their astonishment at how well its parkour mechanics hold up even today. The game's developers clearly prioritized refining the parkour experience, resulting in incredibly smooth and dynamic animations as the player-character seamlessly transitions between various forms of movement, adapting to different structures and objects. While not flawless, Unity's introduction of the "parkour up and down" control scheme revolutionized the franchise's parkour system, making it the most intuitive one to date. Combined with the stunningly recreated city of 18th century Paris, Assassin's Creed Unity still boasts the best parkour in the series. On the other hand, while Mirage's parkour is not terrible, it doesn't come close to reaching the same level of excellence.

Assassin's Creed Mirage is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.