When I first heard about Unknown 9: Awakening, I’ll admit that I had no idea about the franchise. The Awakening is part of the “Unknown 9 Universe,” which features a trilogy of books, a scripted podcast, a comic book, and two upcoming web series, all of which I haven’t consumed. That was enough to make me want a copy of the title. And well, it was an experience.
Unknown 9: Awakening features in-depth lore and background to create a storytelling masterpiece, yet it fails miserably in the implementation. After playing and finishing the game for over twelve hours, I was left baffled by the loose ends, having absolutely no context to multiple important story events, leaving me with more questions than answers.
However, the game does have a unique combat system that I enjoyed quite a bit when I wasn’t forced to reload checkpoints due to constant game-breaking bugs. Unknown 9: Awakening has more downs than ups, packed in a very small package but it does do certain things really well. Ready for my full rant? Here is my full review of Unknown 9: Awakening.
A Fantastical Story with a Failed Implementation
The Unknown 9: Awakening starts the story with our protagonist Haroona, her mentor Reika, and the big baddie Vincent Lichter. Reika and Haroona are Quaestors, people who can see the “Fold” and channel it to do various tricks including controlling other people. At the game’s start, Reika and Haroona are trying to stop Vincent, the leader of the Ascendents, who is planning something nefarious. She fails to stop him and is killed in front of Haroona, which starts the latter’s tale of revenge.
Later, Haroona meets with Luther Goodwin, Buchra, and the other members of the remaining Leap Year Society and the crew of the Morning Star, which is an Airship. To put it in a nutshell, the crew looks for Vincent together and tries to stop his deeds. But there’s more.
Morning Star Crew and Its Wasted Potential for Side Characters
Unknown 9: Awakening has a small set of characters with the story mainly revolving around Haroona, Luther, Buchra, Reika, and Vincent. One of the biggest misses in the game is the failure to improve character relationships through the main story.
For example, the crew of the Morning Star is filled with a vibrant set of characters, but the game never makes the other crew members a part of the main storyline. After boarding the ship, I got a chance to speak with all the crew members and learn about their backgrounds.
Herein lies the problem. It doesn’t matter as most of them never play a big role in the story, not even a small one to be exact. However, each of their personal stories definitely packed a lot of lore and emotion as they were all linked to Vincent.
Sadly, all my time yapping with them mattered very little as I realized only Buchra and Luther played any actual part with others being just fillers. This was quite disappointing because some of my favorite early characters were Amina and Astrid, who I later realized had absolutely no role to play.
Having such a small set of character depth in the story made it feel lackluster. Especially when they introduced so many characters with good potential among the Morning Star crew, only to never use them in the story.
Failure to Build Proper Character Relationships
The story did build a lasting relationship between Haroona, Luther, Buchra, and Reika but failed in execution. As the exact information of why it failed has spoilers, I will try to approach it cautiously.
Toward the story’s end, one of the important side characters is mortally injured. Normally, you would expect a thirst for revenge or anger from people who have known that person for years, but instead, the entire interaction surrounding it felt insensitive. It was as if that character was not a big part of their life at all and they could simply move on like nothing happened.
The same thing happened with another major twist in the story, which changed the dynamic of the story and the relationship between Reika and Haroona. However, what emotions propelled this twist or when it was perpetuated was left unexplored, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.
Another major miss was Haroona’s past. Details like Haroona’s secret to her power, why she didn’t have parents in her village, and the dynamic behind her relationship with her old village were completely left unexplored.
All we get is a brief interaction between Haroona and Azad, her childhood friend, as they talk about Reika’s first appearance and how she took Haroona under her wing.
Disastrous Ending and Multiple Plot Holes
The story of Unknown 9: Awakening started slow, picked up pace in the middle, and threw itself out of the race at the end. The villain’s motivations, whether it be Vincent or Mila Savic (Vincent’s right hand) never made much sense from the start.
Unknown 9’s story began with the premise of the immortal Unknown 9, who were trying to break the ever-long cycle of the world that kept ending in the destruction of civilizations. At the start of the story, it seemed like Vincent was trying to break the cycle with “unconventional means”, but by the end, it made no sense why he was doing what he was.
As mentioned earlier, the later part of the story has a major twist that shakes the foundation of everything. Now, that would be a fine way to shake things up, but the broken foundation wasn’t addressed at all. The game continued with the premise of the twist, without giving any background context on what propelled it in the first place.
I couldn’t even learn the time period when a certain shift in mentality happened with the characters to lead to it. The few reasons they did give for the actions made absolutely no sense in the entire scheme of things.
Little to No Exploration
Unknown 9: Awakening is a very linear experience with very few exploration options. The game basically takes Haroona from one level to another as she fights through enemies. The maps for each level are quite small with little to no detours. However, there are detours and small hidden spots in the game that hold either a collectible, a Skill Point upgrade, or a Health and Mana (Am) upgrade.
One unique part about this game is that there is no leveling system. Instead, Haroona has to collect Umbric points from around the map to invest them in her Skill tree. Most of the Umbric points are placed in the main path, making it easier for Haroona to increase her strength as she continues the story.
Other than the points, players can similarly find Mana and Health upgrades, with one major difference. These upgrades don’t appear to the naked eye and you must use the Peek into Fold ability to locate them. This makes Peeking an important tool to use in almost every area to not only find collectibles but also such upgrades.
Now, that’s just about it for the exploration and the rest of the gameplay is simply linear. One annoying part about the exploration is that the game stops you from going backward on multiple levels, even when you are in the same area. So, if you miss out on the upgrades in one location, call it goodbye more or less for that playthrough.
The Good: Combat and Umbric Abilities
Unknown 9: Awakening’s combat is definitely the game’s highlight, but it has its rough edges too. The combat’s main weapon is Haroona herself as it’s mostly melee focused. Haroona punches her way out of trouble.
The game also has a dodge mechanic, parry system, mystical abilities, and even shields. Other than Haroona’s boxing skills, she can also use her Umbric powers to do a wide range of things that can turn the tide.
Stepping: A Unique and Fun System
The most prominent Umbric ability of Haroona is Stepping, which allows her to enter another body and control it. This way, you can use enemies to attack other enemies or damage themselves by having them blow out a fire canister. You can also use enemies to break machines and traps, making your path a lot easier.
Stepping uses a separate resource from your Mana bar, called Stepping tokens, which replenishes as you defeat enemies. When you Step into an enemy, it stops the time and allows you to take action without having repercussions.
Different enemies use different attacks, so you can Step into them and create a chain attack that hits each other. And I’ll be honest, these attacks do feel satisfying.
Shroud and Takedowns: Stealth Made Easy
Other than Stepping, there is an ability called Shroud which makes Haroona invisible until she depletes her Mana or takes an action. While Shrouded, Haroona can stealth-takenown enemies at any moment. With the Elite Takedown ability from the Skill tree, this ability becomes even stronger as you can simply Shroud Haroona and takedown strong enemies from behind, making combat a lot easier.
Do note the game introduces new mechanics to prevent you from using spamming Shroud as you progress. But you can continue using it and dominating the combat if you are smart about it. The game also has normal Stealth, where you can get behind unaware enemies while crouching to deal a Takedown. There is also a Ripple ability which makes a sound to draw in enemies, allowing you to easily get behind them.
Push, Pull, and Crush: Perfect for Ragdolling Enemies
One of my favorite parts of the combat system was the Push, Pull, and Crush mechanic. The Push and Pull mechanic allows you to push or pull enemies and combo with it. You can push enemies from cliffs, into other enemies or even surrounding traps, like explosive canisters.
Pulling on the other end allows you to pull the enemy to you in melee range and combo them with the normal attacks. The Pull attack also has a Skill tree node that allows you to deal with Heavy attack after pulling enemies, making it quite satisfying to use.
The Crush ability is useful to trigger traps or break machines from a distance, allowing you to stay hidden. I used it more often to break the traps, more focusing on the Push and Pull abilities during combat.
The (More) Bad: Enemy, Bosses, and Scuffed Gameplay
Although combat is the most fun element, it also has its fair share of issues. First, the lack of good enemy types is a major upset. The enemies the game does have only repeat the same one or two moves, and this includes the Elite enemies. Due to this, most of the combat scenarios end up feeling repetitive and can get boring quickly.
The next major problem is the lack of good bosses. The game basically has only two main bosses, Mila Savic and Vincent Lichter. You fight the same two people twice and that’s just about it. The game also tries to use Gear Heads as mini-bosses later, but it becomes quite annoying after you have fought it for the fifth time.
Other than that, the dodging and basic movements of the combat also feel scuffed. Many of the attacks of ranged enemies seem to not use projectiles as they always hit as long as you miss the dodge timing, irrespective of the gun’s direction. Overall, the combat experience could have been polished a lot more as that is the most redeeming factor of the game.
Bugs, Bugs and More Bugs
While playing Unknown 9: Awakening, the most annoying aspect of the game was the innumerable bugs I faced. Although this review is based on a preview copy and the game may have the bugs fixed on release, I highly doubt that.
The Simple Annoying Ones
Let’s start with the simplest and most annoying bug, being unable to pick up collectibles. This issue has plagued me throughout the game as I often had to spend an annoying amount of time trying to get the Collect prompt on items on the ground or table. This bug makes the prompt disappear when you are near it, forcing you to run circles around it until you get lucky.
The Game-Breaking Ones
Now, let’s talk about the multiple game-breaking bugs I faced, which forced me to reload checkpoints. First, pulling or pushing enemies from off the cliffs can make enemies get stuck in the air. As you can tell, this prevents you from reaching them and locks the combat. This bug happened within the tutorial itself which is insane.
Next, there are puzzles in the game, which I haven’t mentioned yet because they require the most minimal thought process possible. However, there were multiple times when I was stuck in a puzzle, not because of its difficulty, but due to the puzzle not showing any prompts.
This left me baffled as I had no clue how to solve it, only to later find out that it was bugged after reloading the last checkpoint.
Another game-breaking bug happens while Stepping, which makes you stuck inside an enemy without being able to end the Stepping or do any damage. My overall experience when it comes to game fluidity was disappointing and I sure hope these are ironed out.
Graphics and Performance
Unknown 9: Awakening is a decent-looking game, but it doesn’t have a definite identity to its surroundings. It only took me a look to realize that the game was created in Unreal Engine 5, and that’s not a good thing. Some areas looked really good, but for the majority, it felt lacking in style.
Other than that, the character expressions in the game are horrendous, with barely any emotional reflection. I could have accepted this from a massively sized game or a game released in the 2010s, but a small-sized linear story-driven game shouldn’t be exempted.
My Setup:
CPU: Intel i5 11th Gen
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4060
RAM: 8×2 DDR4 RAM @ 3200MHz
SSD: WD SN570 500GB
Monitor: 1080p@ 144hz
When it comes to the performance, the game had constant frame drops during mid-combat or while entering a comparatively good-looking area, and this is not even the max graphics settings with RTX off. Most parts of the game did give me around 70-80 FPS, but the frame dropping down to 30 or even 15 definitely soured my mood. The most annoying part is that my RTX 40 series card can run more powerful games at higher settings with ease.
As such, running the game on PC was a decent experience that could have been better.
Verdict: Is Unknown 9: Awakening Worth Your Time and Money?
As much as I liked the combat, I would personally not recommend this game, especially at the current $50 price point on Steam. If you ignore the quality of the story, which is still subjective to a degree, the quantity of the game also doesn’t live up to the massive price point.
Pair that with the multiple game-breaking bugs, poorly written storyline, and a lack of engaging characters and boss design, you will find hundreds of better games at this price point in the market. I really wanted to enjoy this game, mainly because the unique combat system of stepping is actually fun to play, but everything else about the game is not impressive enough for me to take the leap.
So, that’s about it when it comes to our Unknown 9: Awakening review. That being said, what do you think about the game? Let us know in the comments below!
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