Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s focus makes it one of the best games in the series

polygon.com:

As I watched the evening take hold of the city of Baghdad, standing atop a domed building, I heard the growing sound of the Muslim call to prayer, the athaan. The chant bathed the city — a sonic reminder to Baghdad’s citizens of their religious duties. Yet, here was my character, an assassin, bathed in blood rather than piety, scouting the movements of his next target. Mashallah, I thought, for the first time in a game.

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Set in 9th-century Baghdad, during the reign of the Abbasid caliphate, Assassin’s Creed Mirage focuses entirely on new protagonist Basim Ibn Ishaq, who was first introduced in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla as Eivor’s mentor. Taking place several years before the events of the Viking epic, Mirage tells a kind of origin story of Basim, one in which he goes from street thief to master assassin in his homeland of Iraq. Mirage plays much like the earlier games in the open-world series, with diverse mission design and unique set-pieces, often framed around investigation and social stealth in hyper-localized locations — but it also retains some of the frustrations that have dogged every game in the long-running, time-hopping tale.

Mirage focuses heavily on Basim’s fight against the Order of the Ancients (the future Templars), a powerful, shadowy group that uses Baghdad and its populace to their own