REVIEW: ‘Unknown 9: Awakening’ Is Ambition Held Back By Performance (PC)

Published by Bandai Namco and developed by Reflector Entertainment, Unknown 9: Awakening stars a familiar face, Anya Chalotra (of Yennifer fame). In Reflector Entertainment’s debut game, Chalotra provides the character likeness, motion capture, and voice for Haroona, a Quaestor born with the ability to venture into a mysterious dimension that overlaps our own, known only as the Fold. Seeking revenge for the murder of her mentor, Haroona must learn to master her Umbric abilities and unlock hidden knowledge along the way, building her connection to the fold and increasing her power.

The central conflict in the game’s narrative adventure comes from the Ascendants, who are dedicated to harnessing the Fold to change human history in their favor. When Haroona faces these enemies, she must choose to see beyond revenge and save humanity instead as she travels the world to do so. Haroona learns more about her place in the wider conflict between the two sides, but her rage drives her, at least in the beginning. As she uncovers the truth and learns more about the Fold, the space outside our world but tethered to it, she also learns more about herself and the mentor she loved so much.

Unknown 9: Awakening’s protagonist, Haroona, is a draw. She’s complicated and angry, but she also has to deal with her past in a way that shakes the foundation that she’s led in the most recent years of her life. What do you do when your reason for revenge shifts? How do you adapt to new information? How do you look at what your powers have given you but also what led you to push away? Haroona is interesting, and while her relationships may only reach a surface level, she gets fantastic development, made better by the game’s globetrotting elements.

Much like my preview time with the game, I chose to play Haroona with a mix of stealth and diving right into fights. The latter of which is sometimes unavoidable because of where you spawn after a cut scene. Since Haroona is ultimately a close-quarters fighter, she is easily overwhelmed by mobs of as little as four, especially when guns are involved. However, the longer I played, the bolder I got. It wasn’t always the right move, but the confidence I got from stepping into enemies was unmatched.

The combat is fun, to say the least. The balance between Umbric power and physical combat has been balanced against each other. You need to use physical punches to build up a power gauge, which allows you to use your Umbric abilities. The two necessitate each other and push the player into exploring all three branches on the ability skill tree: physical, umbric, and stealth. That is the strongest part of Unknown 9: Awakening. 

With abilities like Shroud (which allows you to disappear for a short period of time so long as you’re not using your abilities,) push and pulls (that bring the enemies in and push them back,) and then sneaking up to enemies that don’t see you and performing a takedown (that projects their soul and obliterates into the Fold.) But It’s Stepping where the game hits its stride.

Stepping is the core combat mechanic that makes it all inherently interesting. When Haroona steps into a person, she controls them for a small amount of time. You can move them to different locations, and you can execute their moves either on other enemies or on environmental objects. In the beginning, you can do it once, and then you can do it twice, and finally, when interacting with blue canisters that fill up the meter, you need for your umbric abilities and, you gain a third. The steady increase of the number of enemies you can step into allows the combat to involve, and the introduction of more enemies has a much opportunity as a challenge.

That said, most success comes from expertly planning when to stealth, when to charge in, and ultimately, what the world can offer you regarding weapons and settings you can interact with. All of this creates not only a fun experience but an immensely satisfying one. Every encounter took more than running in and punching or sneaking around. Truthfully, learning how to use Haroona’s powers also allows you to define your playstyle, particularly when balancing how and when you use your abilities to fight or push the enemies away and run.

While I noted in my preview that the graphic fidelity and performance on the PS5 were fantastic, playing Unknown 9 on PC felt like I was playing a completely different game. Regardless of what resolution setting I had it on, if I was in combat or a cinematic, everything felt off. The character models, especially for older characters, were uncanny. For characters like Luther and George, their wrinkles are wide caverns in their face, making them look more like caricatures of old people than grizzled and battle-tested adventurers.

Then, there is Haroona. At times, her character model works exceptionally well, her dupatta moving with her as she executes combat. But when her Umbric powers are used, everything is lost. Whether it was the floating heads after defeating enemies or Haroona looking almost unrecognizable, it was all beyond disappointing.

Unknown 9: Awakening is half period piece, half fantasy, and everything works narratively. From Haroona’s prominent dupatta to the layers she wears and the layered environments, there are a high number of details that you can’t help but appreciate. All of which are made even more intricate in the cinematic sequences.

Outside of graphics, the gameplay itself is also marred by technical issues. While I understand that the use of companions from a narrative perspective, like the rest of the on the rails world, they feel hollow. In fact, I was more annoyed by the inclusion of any companion than excited to learn more about them. The writing for the companions is good and they work as expository elements for a story that are more mysterious and thus confusing at points.

However, the constant following locks you into a pace. Assumingly done to help with no load screens as you walk into new areas, it feels like having a rug pulled from under you while you’re running. The start and stop of progression through the world is jarring at best and frustrating at its worst. And it doesn’t matter who you’re partnered with. When you add in the fact that when the following situation switches and the NPC follows you, they often block paths after you try to find hidden anomalies to level up your skills. It happens constantly.

On top of that, even the combat that I truly love so much doesn’t always perform well. The constant input lag makes performing two separate actions after each almost entirely ineffective. When performing combos by pressing the same button repeatedly, the combat feels fantastic. Even when fighting against one to three enemies, the combat still works. But once you fight three or more, well it feels almost impossible to survive. Parrying is almost impossible and healing is something that is also inconsistent. The delay from input to action is noticeable, and during certain objectives that require you to survive through waves, it makes everything feel almost impossible.

Combat can be extremely fun and dynamic, but at the same time, it’s marred by heaps of performance hiccups. Unknown 9: Awakening had and still has potential. The world that Reflector has worked to bring to life is ambitious, and it’s genuinely a fantasy story worth seeing more of. In the most complimentary way, it reminds me of those early to mi-aughts SyFy Channel series that took on history and fantasy and the way science converged with both and ran with it.

The enviroments are extremely rich, so much so that the extremely on the rails paths keep you from becoming entirely immersed. They’re excellently crafted, only held back by how little you can actually interact with them even when it comes to clearing obstacles.

A period piece with a defined technological and supernatural twist, the game captures the aesthetic of old adventure films or, more importantly, the more recent films that have made audiences fall in love with the adventurer era of the world from the late 1890s to early 1900s (like The Mummy and Indiana Jones). This feels like the game’s promise to the player, with the Fold added for the right amount of magic and weirdness. The expansive world, though at times confusing, can be something great. That said, it does buckle under the weight of starting as something expansive, instead of starting with a core and expanding over time. Ambition is clear, but it also may have gotten in the way of execution.

That said, I want to read the Unknown 9 comics, I want to listen to the audio drama, and I do genuinely want to know more about the Leap Year Society and the fights between Questars and Ascendants. But here, even when you’re trying to stay engaged with the story, a performance issue pops up to remind you of the game’s stumbles.

Unknown 9: Awakening boasts great combat and an ambitious story, but performance issues are too many to look past.  I want to love Unknown 9: Awakening. On paper, it has everything that works and catches a globetrotting itch. But its promising world aside, there are too many performance issues, and the character models are too inconsistent to fall in love with. I can say wholeheartedly that there is something brilliant under the surface of the fame. Still, there are too many issues in the PC release to really make this game stick.

Unknown 9: Awakening releases October 17, 2024 on PC via Steam, PlayStation 4|5, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One.