By the time Assassin’s Creed 2 came out, I was calling this my favorite series ever. The Ezio games made you feel like an expertly skilled badass with unprecedented success, and the stealthy, agile archetype is my favorite to inhabit. Even the gameplay loop was fresh and borderline revolutionary, and so successful it became the basis for what would soon be tarnished as the Ubisoft blueprint.

Last game I played was Odyssey, and though I spent…a lot of time on it, I’ve never felt more bitter at the end of the game. Seems you only get half the conclusion by completing the story missions, with the other half locked away behind the assassination list. And since any enemies 3 or more levels higher than you are always essentially indestructible, and the assassination targets climb very high in levels, it’s essentially a driver for bottomless grinding. By that point I’d already had far more than my fill.

I was casually interested in Mirage, but I learned from Skillup’s video that it’s essentially an upscaled Valhalla DLC, which is a red flag. With other reviewers pointing out that it, well, feels like upscaled DLC, I’ve no interest personally.