Unknown 9 Awakening review: an engaging story with a fun gameplay loop
With big blockbuster games becoming more complex and more expensive to make, I felt the AA genre was slowly dying due to player expectations from games and more importantly developers wanting to make larger-than-life adventures that take hundreds of hours to complete. While I admire these big AAA and even AAAA games, there was something magical about the AA games having an engaging core gameplay loop, short length and visuals that do justice to the platforms these games release on. Fortunately, over the past few years, I have enjoyed quite a few AA games including Robocop, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, System Shock Remake, A Plague Tale Innocence, Banisher: Garden of New Eden and a few more. These are really fun games that offer a very engaging core gameplay loop. I am happy to say that Unknown 9 Awakening is another great addition to the list. Please do note that there is nothing wrong with being a good AA game. I’d rather have a fun AA experience than a lacklustre AAA one.
Table of Contents
Story
The story of Unknown 9 Awakening is a very interesting one. You don the role of Haroona, a young girl with some mystic abilities. She is a “Quaestor born with the ability to venture into the Fold: a mysterious dimension that overlaps our own”. At the beginning of the game, you are accompanied by your mentor, Reikha to stop Vincent. Vincent is one of Reikha’s old “students” who has gone rogue and is looking to unleash the power of the Fold for his own benefit. Just like we’ve seen a hundred times before, Vincent gets the better of you, kills Reikha and you are now on a quest for revenge.
Along your journey, you will come across the Leap Year Society (LYS) that has been working to stop Vincent and while you don’t trust them initially, you end up working with them towards a common goal.
The twist to the tale is the Fold, which I don’t want to get too deep into as that’s spoiler territory, and it was fun exploring that part of the story for me. While you will encounter the standard plot twists in the game, I found the delivery of the story to be quite fresh and engaging. I am a sucker for sci-fi and fantasy stories so I enjoyed the story progression, even the cheeky bits.
Gameplay
The core gameplay loop of Unknown 9 Awakening is a lot of fun. Think of it as Uncharted with some supernatural abilities. The core gameplay loop is as follows – you come across a large area populated by enemies of different calibre. You can sneak around and take them out stealthily or use environmental objects to take them out. Once spotted, you can beat them to a pulp. Sounds familiar, right? But here is where things get interesting. You can literally “possess” upto 3 of the enemies and control them for a short duration. While you possess each enemy, time around you stops and you can reposition a gunman to shoot another foe, possess an enemy with a baton to hit the gunman and use a third foe to blow up an explosive canister to cause an area-of-effect damage. Once done, you can sit back and watch this get executed in real-time. It is a lot of fun to plan your strikes and attacks from the shadows and use this ability to take out your enemies. You, of course, need to recharge this ability by taking out foes the old-fashioned way. It is the way these scenarios and opportunities are presented that make the gameplay so much fun.
Speaking of the old-fashioned way, you have the standard light and heavy attacks, the ability to push and pull enemies like Star Wars: Jedi and also use “sound” to attract enemies to a particular point, similar to how Aloy throws rocks to attract enemies in Horizon.
There are also some simple puzzles thrown into the mix which are akin to “pull this lever here to activate something there”.
The areas you explore a fairly large and the advantage is that you can find health, AM (the “stamina” bar for your abilities) and ability upgrades scattered throughout. The upgrade tree is also quite robust adding powerful finishing moves to your blocks and parries and also expanding on your detective vision.
Yup, you have a Witcher sense/Batman detective vision here as well that helps you spot enemies and points of interest. But unlike the other games, here it is more like a “window” and not covering the entire screen which ensures you don’t rely on this peaking ability all of the time – a nice touch.
Overall, like I said, the core gameplay loop is something I find very engaging which is what kept me going from point A to B in this linear adventure.
Graphics and Sound
When it comes to the graphics, the game is a mixed bag. There are times, especially during some cutscenes, when exploring the Fold and one very interesting section involving an airship, that the game looks absolutely stunning. But at other times, it looks a lot like a PS4 game. It not that PS4 games look bad, it’s just that Horizon Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarok and Uncharted Lost Legacy all have much more vibrant and detailed visuals when compared to Unknown 9 Awakening.
You will traverse old mansions, abandoned villages and the bustling streets of a city in Bengal which look great. Even the sections in the Fold look nice. But overall, the game looks fine especially when you consider what Uncharted or even A Plague Tale Innocence offers with its visuals.
The facial animations of the characters also look a little stiff and their eyes a little lifeless which takes you out of the immersion a bit.
This could be a glitch, but the hair of the main protagonist looks like it’s stuck to her head with glue at times.
Speaking of the protagonist, she is voiced and motion captured by Anya Chalotra AKA Yennefer from the Witcher Netflix Series. While she looks Indian, I can’t help but feel that to give the game a more authentic Indian feel, the developers could have roped in local talent. I personally feel that the protagonist could have been portrayed quite well by the likes of Radhika Apte for example.
The rest of the supporting cast is good and convincing with their voice work and you do have diverse accents from the antagonist to the supporting cast helping the protagonist in her journey. You can hear the NPC talk in Bengali in some of the market areas in the game which is a nice touch. However, some Hindi slang from the protagonist would have added some much-needed “desi” flavour to the game.
The background score is also deep and engaging, with nothing to complain about. Even the “spiritual” punches you throw in the game have a satisfying “thud” to them. The ticking of the clock as you stop time to possess your enemies also evokes a sense of urgency in you subconsciously – a nice touch.
Verdict
Unknown 9 Awakening is a very good game with an interesting story, good visuals and above all an engaging gameplay loop. If you like fantasy stories about the supernatural, you will enjoy the game. The overall universe of Unknown 9 is spread across novels comics and a podcast which expands upon the lore. I have only heard the podcast in addition to playing the game and I can tell you that Episode 4: The Dead Girl is my favourite episode and also ties into the story of the game in a big way. Where the game lacks is that the visuals can sometimes feel dated, the character models aren’t the best and there are times when the voice acting is cheeky. But you can overlook these flaws as the package on offer is very good.
Editor’s score: 8/10
Pros
- Good Story
- Engaging Gameplay loop
- Priced at 3K in India, which is a lot cheaper than the 5-7K new games are priced at
Cons
- Facial animations and graphics can sometimes feel dated
More Info:
Developer: Reflector Entertainment
Publishers: Reflector Entertainment, BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment, Namco Bandai Games America Inc.
Platforms: PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC
Reviewed on: PS5
We played a review copy of Unknown 9 Awakening provided by Bandai Namco
