I was so excited when I heard Mirage was going back to AC roots. I like the RPGs fine (except Valhalla) but I was very much missing that old school AC vibe.

Mirage is pretty much exactly what I wanted. I love the setting, and the smaller more detailed map. Unfortunately, that's where it ends. The combat and traversal are awful. I'm not a game designer, but why can't we get back to Unity's parkour? I know that game was busted as hell when it launched, but after they fixed it, I feel like it had the best traversal in the entire series. Somehow mirage is 3 steps backwards in this regard. It just took the traversal from the RPGs and added in the old school frustration of constantly getting stuck on walls, and jumping where you don't want to.

As for the combat, it just feels lazy. I know, I know. "It's supposed to be bad to make you focus on stealth!" Bullshit. As boiled down and basic as it is, I don't see any reason it couldn't feel way more fluid and polished. And there could certainly be a lot more kill animations. On top of that, what is that garbage focus assassination ability? They were too lazy to make kill animations, so they just have Basim turn blue and teleport stab everyone? It looks terrible, and is one of the most immersion breaking mechanics I've ever seen in a game.

I hope they keep trying for this style of AC, but they really need to figure out the combat and traversal. I know the old combat is trivial, just parry kill everything. But at least it looked good and made you feel like a badass assassin. This combat feels like wish.com dark souls.