Unknown 9: Awakening Review: A Sci-Fi adventure That Misses the Mark
Unknown 9: Awakening – Big Ambitions, Poor Execution!
Unknown 9: Awakening promises a huge transmedia experience— a sprawling sci-fi/fantasy world told across games, podcasts, comics— the whole shebang! A risky new IP in a sea of remakes— that's awesome! Unfortunately, this Reflector Entertainment and Bandai Namco game is a real mixed bag. There are moments where things are done incredibly well. But many other places really demonstrate an absolute lack of planning. It's a collection of half-baked ideas which fail to combine, which might surprise people because this is developed from an extremely well-known development studio! The clunky mechanics and boring combat really weigh this down. Great voice acting and that interesting possession mechanic exist – yet these points really aren't explored further in more creative ways.
Reflector (now owned by Bandai Namco) shows too much ambition in that effort to build out this Unknown 9 Universe; where super powerful immortals secretly control history, and there are plenty of secrets revealed concerning its history! That's a cool concept! But sadly, these ambitions remain completely undone because of several mechanical limitations and failures to adequately convey the setting.
Haroona's Journey: A Quaester's Quest for Answers
Meet Haroona (voiced by Anya Chalotra, from The Witcher!), our warrior hero (a Quaester); those are those specially trained individuals able to manipulate The Fold, this kind of parallel ghost world. Those initial moments in this intro levels introduce how this ability and magic-related elements function; with fast, flashy melee combat that uses The Fold; showcasing early that its magic manipulation extends to using this mystical ability in some unexpected places. Even better, it creates a truly cinematic experience!
Her Umbric powers are this game’s hook– temporary invisibility, wall-hacks (“peering”), and other minor additions. She can also control multiple enemies simultaneously; and these enemies could attack one another or trigger environment effects. That sounds incredibly impressive and certainly innovative! And Chalotra's voice acting? Awesome!
After her mentor Reika disappears, Haroona starts a global adventure to find her, working with Luthor and the Leap Year Society crew; which takes place on The Morning Star, the game’s airship-base. Her journey starts to reveal those big secrets involving The Fold, the mysterious Unknown 9, and Haroona's fate. This was intended to create those narrative elements needed for other additional content planned further down the pipeline; yet the gameplay never generates that level of investment to justify why someone might follow that wider lore.
Gameplay Frustrations: Combat, Stealth, and Movement
Despite that promising concept and its cool mechanics, Unknown 9: Awakening feels incredibly limiting. You're constantly switching between boring, predictable level navigation; and equally repetitive battles. It's been done before. That attempt toward stealth, despite providing very obvious and easily recognized stealth aspects is utterly hindered by boring and predictable gameplay choices which greatly affects the general enjoyment and immersion within that particular game element. The most important element here – combat.
Haroona relies on basic melee and those Umbric powers, however they remain incredibly limited because the power tokens constantly regenerate only when she performs attacks on the enemies themselves. That basically limits Haroona’s options to quick stealth attacks, then full-on combat. It quickly creates this utterly repetitive and simple series of movements which constantly cycles without ever expanding beyond that base set of gameplay elements. That becomes a huge problem given that Haroona's ability to use other techniques beyond those standard controls becomes incredibly weak. There is a lack of meaningful ways to enhance skills, and using them as-is doesn’t even require strategy or careful planning. It can completely overwhelm all opponents easily and renders those same stealth elements as completely useless. It lacks evolution and constantly stays on a predictable single note; the complete lack of strategy and even creativity to combat leaves those enemies feeling repetitive.
The Morning Star: A Wasted Opportunity for Exploration and Atmosphere
With its huge airship ( The Morning Star), that really amazing sense of grandeur never makes its impact; all the possible exciting globe-trotting adventure remains absent, never truly feeling like it generated those expectations and created that compelling feel of an open world, a diverse cast, even those compelling environments are almost never fully conveyed except during its climactic reveal later in the game.
Traveling just ends up using those predictable CGI cutscenes – those bland transitional animations are instantly recognizable from PS1; showing just how lazy that design aspect became, failing to fully showcase the beauty and scale which should have greatly contributed to generating more hype. This extremely ornate environment– that huge zeppelin, one of the most interesting and well-designed in the whole game–is seriously underused; this is something I will fully expect other players might agree with; and this ultimately demonstrates those failings in that wider game’s design choices, those limited creative choices hurt the actual overall aesthetic potential. The ship only becomes a useless hub; featuring those NPC's who’re all meant to be incredibly important and provide some deep lore elements to help with developing the overall experience but remain very one-note. Those characters also repeat a few dull lines and those dull responses which create utterly disappointing levels of voice performance.
Conclusion: A Game with Potential That Never Quite Takes Off
Unknown 9: Awakening is tempting to simply dismiss as a “dated” third-person adventure. However, despite its supposed themes involving the supposed throwback vibe, it fails at creating nostalgia. This is because there is too many well-known and rather boring gameplay clichés involved: the “meaningless sacrifice”, predictable betrayals and “chosen one” narratives— all used poorly. The very last levels? Just filler! It seems like it was rushing toward that much anticipated ending! There’s plenty of ambition here, those wider, connected stories, but the delivery’s extremely weak.
This first foray creates an interesting concept and storyline involving characters that all could've been enhanced through other methods. Without those planned additions, this game alone lacks depth and feels fundamentally underwhelming; those additional content planned for other platforms never gets incorporated making this hard to suggest for now! This game might work perfectly as a pure, retro-styled adventure, but even on its own merits and unique design choices it suffers due to technical and mechanical weaknesses, lacking that level of overall enjoyment for players.
