Unknown 9 Awakening Review

Do you dare step into the Fold?

Watch the review or…

Read it here!

Title: Unknown 9: Awakening

Release: October 17, 2024

Platform: PS5/4 PC Xbox 1/X|S

Developer: Reflector Entertainment Ltd.

Publisher: BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment

Genre: Action Adventure

ESRB: T

Reviewed on: PC

Time Played: 9.5 Hours

Intro:

Where it starts

Taking place in the early 1900s, you will be playing Haroona, a Quaestor. Born with the mysterious ability to manipulate Shade and travel in the Fold, a mysterious dimension holding secrets that could end humanity. A group of people known as the Ascendants start poking around the Fold and it’s up to Haroona to put her powers to good use and end their nefarious actions.

Can the kids watch

If the kiddos wanted to watch you play, I wouldn’t worry about much. Some foul language scattered throughout the game and a lot of combat. Nobody gets torn apart and you won’t find a lot of gore, just a lot of gunfire and fisticuffs.

Meet Haroona

Haroona has been trained to handle her own in combat, using her Shade abilities she can block attacks and empower her punches. She could push enemies away or pull them closer with her powers, very reminiscent of other magical powers from a well known world. If she can manage to throw enough Shade at the enemy they will become stunned, allowing her to cause a lot of damage directly into the enemy’s Shade. Her strongest ability would be stepping into another person and controlling them. Every step would cost a stepping charge that would build up as she damaged enemies. While in control Haroona could guide her enemies and make them attack their friends, hop into a nearby enemy, and bring their attack into the fray. When the stepping is done Haroona returns to her own body and all the attacks launch, taking out a nice group of enemies before they become a problem. However, not every encounter needs to be a brawl, sometimes it’s much easier to sneak through the danger zone. She can make herself invisible for a moment and run from cover to cover. When you get close enough to an unaware enemy you can rip their shade from their body, instantly taking them out of the fight permanently. If the pathing of guards didn’t allow for safe travel, Haroona could throw a small ball of Shade to bring their attention somewhere else. But the mechanics of the Shade ball allowed it to get caught on blades of grass or some other nonsense, I didn’t use it a lot.

The Ascendants

The Ascendants will be in front of you every step of the way. Wielding all manner of weapons from shock sticks to fully automatic rifles. In the beginning, Haroona would run into small groups of easy enemies only using melee weapons, but as the story progressed, so did the difficulty in enemies. Some attacked from a distance with their rifles, doing a lot of damage if you didn’t dodge or stay out of the way. Along with common enemies, you would find elites, strong enemies with a lot of health requiring a lot of work to take down, with some using Shade-enhanced equipment to turn invisible and attack where you would least suspect. If you moved just right, the Ascendants didn’t notice a lot of what was going on around them, giving you plenty of space and time to go around and assassinate a lot of them before they ever notice you.

Skill Tree

To enhance Haroona’s Shade skills, you would need to fill out her skill tree, but not with points achieved through experience gained in combat. Scattered throughout the game were anomalies rewarding you with a Gnosis Point. Those points could be placed in the skill tree gaining access to new moves or improving current skills. The tree was broken up into three sections, Combat, Umbric Abilities, and Stealth. Combat boosts your hand-to-hand capabilities, Umbric helping with Shade abilities like stepping into enemies, and stealth, to help with stealth, naturally.

Hidden Collectibles

If fighting groups of enemies and making your way through the game wasn’t enough, hidden throughout were a lot of various objects to destroy or letters to pick up and read. Filling out the story and giving you completionists out there a lot to hunt for.

Outro:

Have you had a chance to play the game or check out some gameplay? If you have any questions or thoughts about this review or the game, I would love to hear from you in the comments below. And while you do that, let’s move on to my final thoughts and ratings.

Unknown 9 looks and plays like it would have been a great game fifteen years ago. The environments looked great and new, but the characters were visually lacking. Very few facial movements during conversations, and a lot of dead eyes looking forward in cut scenes.

I was surprised to find Unknown 9 goes deep with the stealth gameplay and it played quite well. There were a few instances where the controls didn’t work properly with character placement, causing me to run around and miss some vital shots, but worked for the most part. It wasn’t all stealth though, there were times when I had to fight my way through enemies, on the normal difficulty settings most fights were manageable, with a few putting my skills to the test with large groups of tough enemies at once. Filling out the skill tree was vital to survival.

Unknown 9 felt like a mix between Assassin’s Creed and Star Wars, with the sneaky around taking enemies out, and the magical uses of Shade pushing enemies away. The mechanics mixed well together and were very responsive when needed. Combat involved using physical combat to charge Am to heal or throw Shade at the enemies. It was nice not having to worry about having so many heals on me at one time, being able to heal whenever I wanted if I had enough Am available. Am would fill up as I attacked enemies and did damage so it was like a never-ending supply of heals.

The whole idea of the Fold and Shade was a fun and interesting concept. Secret societies in the know doing all sorts of stuff behind the scenes, protecting people or potentially causing the end of the world.

The visuals of the environments and the world were great, but the characters didn’t fit, rough around the edges and unresponsive to situations, it’s getting a 3

The story was great, I loved the concept and there wasn’t anything on the side distracting from the main story, I’m handing out a 4

The stealth mechanics worked great and combat was easy to figure out, the only thing I’d dock it on was Haroona acting on her own when near climbable spots or not targeting enemies I’m right next to for a quick assassination, that’s another 4

As much as I enjoyed the game it doesn’t offer much for replayability, great story and gameplay, but not good enough to revisit, that’s a 1.

I had a blast playing this game, it’s very satisfying when stealth works nicely and I can take out enemy after enemy with a single hit, giving it another 4.

Earning an average score of 3.2 out of 5 for Unknown 9. Placing it on the top shelf. Although the game scored high and I enjoyed my time with it, I don’t feel it’s worth the new release asking price. Perhaps if the characters looked better or the controls worked to perfection, but as it is I would wait for a sale before checking it out.