Unknown 9: Awakening
Top Critic Average
CriticScore
Critic Reviews for Unknown 9: Awakening
Despite a few interesting ideas, Unknown 9: Awakening is a bland and janky adventure with a generic story and dull combat.
Unknown 9: Awakening is more than decent, offering some fun combat and exploration with a cast of mostly likeable good guys and entertaining pantomime villains.
An adventure with a strong emphasis on narrative, plagued by a far from optimal technical side but more engaging than you might believe.
Review in Italian | Read full review
I really wanted to write about the positives of featuring more cultures in this genre, and about how cool it is to have a famous actor play the protagonist, but sadly the gameplay gets in the way of anything interesting. Unknown 9: Awakening is just a bunch of gaming tropes loosely tied together with boring and uninspired NPCs lazily lurching from set piece to set piece, as the poorly designed game creaks and groans under the weight of expectation.
Mixed feelings for an adventure that has flashes of brilliance, but that fails to live up to the technical and some facets of the gameplay. If you are a big fan of the genre, you can give it a chance and maybe some facets surprise you.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Unknown 9: Awakening is an ambitious single-player action game that takes some bold swings with regards to its stealth combat, character arcs, and universe building. And though it’s sad that the lack of budget and inability to get out of its own way with lore often means it doesn’t always deliver on them, there’s still enough ambition and creative choices made here that players craving a linear cinematic story in the vein of Uncharted should at least check it out. Stepping into enemies to kill off others is repeatedly fun, the globe-trotting venture is big in scope, and Haroona herself has many attractive qualities. As the first piece of a wider universe, Unknown 9: Awakening has its merits; I just hope that its many rough edges are sanded off in time for a potential sequel.
Unknown 9: Awakening is a good debut from a first-time development team. This narrative-driven action-adventure has some rough edges but the beautiful locations, intriguing narrative, and well-written characters make it hard to put down. The gameplay doesn't evolve much but the entertaining stealth mechanics add a lot of variety to the skirmishes you find yourself in. Overall, this is a compelling new IP with lots of potential for future adventures.
Unknown 9: Awakening is full of originality, but suffers from some frustrating gameplay decisions despite the interesting mystery of its narrative.
