Revisiting Assassin’s Creed Mirage with The Valley of Memory update

A year and a half ago I’ve enjoyed playing through Assassin’s Creed Mirage. It was a nice attempt by Ubisoft to remember what made the series what it was in the first place and while flawed, the attempt was a success and the game was easily among the best entries in the franchise. Heck, if you remember that the series are supposed to be a story-driven action stealth game in the urban environment, this might’ve been the best implementation of the idea yet, mechanically anyway.

And then, out of the blue, the studio has announced a free story expansion for the title called The Valley of Memory, that eventually released a few months ago. I wasn’t planning on revisiting the game so soon, if I’m honest, but I was in the middle of trying to force myself play through Assassin’s Creed Shadows, so I wanted to remind myself why do I even like these games. So I quickly played a few minutes of almost each title to remind myself of how they were, which culminated with me completing The Valley of Memory. Which renewed my opinion that Mirage is among the best entries. And that Assassin’s Creed really needs to figure out its own identity.

Essentially, what you’re getting now, if you were to play Mirage, is an additional storyline that becomes available closer to the end of the game, though it can be launched prior to it from the menu. It adds a new area of AlULa (or al-Ula) – an ancient oasis city and its surroundings. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of gameplay in the developed/city parts of the area, though that’s mostly because the expansion itself is very short. And what story missions you do get are well told and directed for the most part. The structure of the whole expansion is basically a condensed assassination contract from the main game, so everything up until the end is gathering information, which culminates in an assassination. While the story is quite well told and personal to Bassim, the main character of the game.

Which I want to emphasize, actually, because in my quick revisit of all titles, I was reminded of how few titles in the franchise feel like well told stories. First game was simple, but well told. But then immediately after, the sequel was just a mess and only in its direct sequel Brotherhood did Ezio get any proper character development. Assassin’s Creed III was the last game in a while to mostly nail good writing and interesting characterization, because every following title would start strong and then fall apart by the midpoint. Origins, a proper rebirth of the series, tried to improve on this and mostly did, but Bassim is the first protagonist since AC III, whom you can easily like and find charming. That is, until the other games in the series want him to be not what he is for 95% of the time in Mirage and then he falls apart. The Valley of Memory focuses on the good elements of him as a character, however, so it was nice to experience an actual story in Assassin’s Creed universe, and not just a bunch of disjointed and disconnected plot beats that the series usually devolve into.

The update also added some other nice things. The freerunning has been slightly improved, though it still doesn’t quite fit the urban setting, being based on Origins. Some of the good ideas from Unity have been implemented, however still not perfectly. The usage of the eagle is still somewhat unnecessary and overall I feel that the more simplified approach of Shadows, including its take on Eagle Vision, is better. That said, the bird is part of the story and, just like in Origins, it does help with areas outside of the city a lot. The music also somewhat grew on me and while it’s not a soundtrack I would love to listen to outside of the game, as an in-game wallpaper it is among the most interesting ones in the series. The ability to replay missions is very neat, though it’s utterly bizarre how most challenges that you can get from the mission can only be achieved when replaying the mission, not if you do them on your first try. Oh and the bugs are, sadly, still there, both visual and gameplay.

Ultimately, The Valley of Memory update doesn’t change the fact that Assassin’s Creed Mirage is among the best entries in the franchise. But it does make it a little bit better. And if you liked Assassin’s Creed titles for what they were or wanted to be at the start and got disinterested in them with time, this is a welcome return to form. But if you like generic action adventure action RPG hack and slash open world with towers to climb, this remains not for you.