Published , by Timo Reinecke
Published , by Timo Reinecke
By the time I rolled the credits on Unknown 9: Awakening I had more questions than answers. Sure, the action adventure's conclusion was meant to hook me for an eventual sequel but I was just left wondering how we ended up here in the first place. The story was functional at best, exploration left much to be desired, and only towards the end, combat started to live up to its potential. But at that point, I just felt bad for everyone involved in this game. It felt like the rough first draft of a much better experience.
Unknown 9: Awakening casts you as the young Quaestor Haroona, who is a sort of adventurer/secret keeper in training with mythical abilities on a globetrotting quest to avenge her master. She’s played by the ever-charming Anya Chalotra who tries her best to make the script work despite the deck being stacked against her. I’m not sure if I didn’t pay enough attention, but I felt as if I was experiencing at least three different versions of Haroona during the first few hours. Not that it mattered much, the entire story felt like one drawn-out opening act that gleefully dumps cryptic exposition only to slam the door into your face once it gets interesting. The supporting cast doesn't fare much better, all of whom have a huge “more to come later” billboard above their heads, probably hidden away in all the other stories set in the Unknown 9 universe. Not that everything needs to be revealed in one go, but if most of your plot is just cliff notes of a greater story, especially the two big emotional climaxes, it just ends up feeling hollow.
Sadly, it doesn’t fare much better on the gameplay front, either. You’ll either rush through beautiful but sauceless levels or fight pockets of enemies with a mixture of stealth and action. Haroona can manipulate the Fold, which is a sort of spiritual dimension, that allows her to turn invisible, temporarily possess enemies, or push and pull them towards her. Most scenarios will have you either pick off enemy groups one by one or at least thin out the herd before all hell breaks loose. Combat is functional, and is good fun once the game introduces more interesting enemy types and scenarios, but by the time it gets good, the credits are about to roll. You can blame the progression system for that, which has you spec ability points into three trees worth of abilities that affect your stealth, possessing, and hand-to-combat. All three offer instrumental additions to your basic kit, but it's only towards the last stretch when Haroona starts feeling like a fully rounded character which hurts some of the earlier sections. These ability points are mainly found by exploring off-the-beaten-path. A fun way to reward more attentive players in theory but since you want those points, exploring devolves quickly into toggling your Quaestor Sense, ignoring the beautiful scenery to find them all.
These levels are gorgeous, but not fun to explore. You run along already beaten paths in between pockets of enemies by climbing walls and squeezing through holes. Instead of conjuring a sense of wonder and discovery, Unknown 9: Awakening rarely presents any downtime for you to stop and smell the roses with all the exposition dumps and cheeky dialog whenever you’re not fighting. All of this is topped off by performance issues on the PlayStation 5 which sometimes struggled to maintain a stable framerate.
Playing through Unknown 9: Awakening left me with a cocktail of emotions when I finally rolled credits after 13 hours. I usually pride myself in my ability to see eye to eye with a game’s vision and try to find even footing even if I didn’t have a good time with it, but this is different. The experience of playing Reflector Entertainment's debut title is akin to watching a bunch of trailers for those Phase 1 Marvel movies alongside the opening act of the first Avengers flick. It felt like proof of concept for a multimedia franchise that doesn’t want to give away too much but hasn’t figured yet out what it’s even about. All of this is skinned onto the early 2010s cinematic video game experience which aside from a few fun, if janky combat encounters doesn’t know how to set itself apart. It's heartbreaking because there is a much better experience in between the in-between that didn’t work.
Unknown 9: Awakening will be available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on October 18, 2024. An early PlayStation 5 version was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.