Unknown 9: Awakening first came to my attention when I saw the trailer at Summer Games Fest while waiting for the New World: Aeternum announcement. It looked interesting, but I would come to find the buzz around the game was very negative.

Because we live in the worst timeline, the overwhelming majority of this was people having meltdowns over the fact the protagonist is an Indian woman. But in amongst all the weirdos wetting their pants in terror over being reminded that brown people exist, there were some legitimate concerns about what seemed to be some fairly janky gameplay.

Overall, it seemed like the sort of ambitious yet messy double-A title that usually proves a commercial failure but which I often end up enjoying, and in the end, that’s more or less what it was.

Unknown 9: Awakening is a highly linear action game set in the early 20th century. You play as Haroona. Haroona is a quaestor, a kind of supernatural investigator who can access an alternate dimension known as the Fold. This grants her a variety of psychic and telekinetic powers that are crucial to both the story and the gameplay. Haroona finds herself caught up in a civil war between different factions of a secret society, and looming over it all is the legacy of the Unknown 9, a group of immortal once-humans who seek to halt the cycles of destruction that have dogged the human race since long before the history that we know.

Definitely there are problems with this game. My biggest disappointment with U9A was the story, despite a promising start. The voice acting is pretty solid, and I think the underlying backstory around the Unknown 9 and the cycles of history is very compelling. Fans of The Secret World will find much familiar here, though the horror and Lovecraftian elements aren’t as prominent.

However, the meat and potatoes of U9A’s plot are very tropey and predictable, and I found the ending quite eye-roll worthy. There seems to be a real trend in our media these days of trying to force big character moments without doing anything to justify them. Whatever happened to “show, don’t tell”?

There’s some other, small issues with the game as well. For one thing, I regularly encountered a bug where Haroona half-fell through the floor in cutscenes, leaving close-ups to only show the top of her head. This definitely has that janky AA feel I know and have learned to live with.

However, despite how it looked in the previews I did find the core gameplay quite a strength, and that carries the game despite its other flaws.

I was concerned going that the game was going to be very stealth-heavy, and it is, but I found it didn’t bother me. The stealth mechanics are quite forgiving, and you have a lot of fun tools to let you stay one step ahead of your foes, from on-demand invisibility to the ability to see through walls by “peeking” into the Fold.

What really makes this game special, though, is the stepping mechanic. Haroona has the ability to “step into” enemies, briefly possessing them. When you step into someone, the game’s action temporarily freezes, allowing you a moment to think through your next action. You can only make one attack before stepping out of an enemy, but with careful planning, that can still be devastating.

Early on, I found myself pinned down by two ranged enemies on a ledge. One was standing next to an explosive canister, but the other was a safe distance away from it. I stepped into the farther one, made him stand next to the canister, and had him fire his gun at it. When my step ended, the resulting explosion took both enemies out in an instant.

It was incredibly satisfying, and that barely scratches the surface of what you can do by stepping into enemies, especially later in the game when you can possess multiple enemies in a single stepping sequence.

It adds a very interesting new dynamic to the game because every new enemy type you encounter is not just a new challenge to overcome, but also potentially a new weapon in your arsenal. There’s nothing quite like walking into a room full of elite late game enemies and thinking, “All right, showtime!”

There’s lots of other cool things you can do, too, like telekinetically shoving enemies off ledges to their deaths, but in the majority of cases stepping is the best choice, in terms of both power level and fun factor.

My only major criticism on the gameplay front is that the boss fights are a total letdown. They’re simple 1v1 encounters where the stealth and stepping mechanics aren’t available, so you’re playing without most of your toolkit, and there’s nothing to do but very slowly chew your way through their massive health bars between spamming the dodge and heal buttons.

The good news is that there’s very few of these encounters in the game, but it is quite the unforced error. Why not simply include some respawning waves of mooks for you to step into? Why remove all the mechanics that make your game fun and unique during its most climactic moments?

I will also note that it is a fairly short game. It took me about thirteen hours to finish it, and I’m usually slower than most people. This didn’t bother me; I rather appreciate when games don’t overstay their welcome. But I know for some people it might make them think twice about buying.

Taken together, Unknown 9: Awakening is a game I would recommend, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for waiting until the next Steam sale to grab a copy. It’s got some very original and enjoyable game mechanics, but it also has some very significant stumbles.

Overall rating: 7/10 Worth the price of admission for the stepping mechanic alone.

I won’t factor it into my review, but one other thing I want to mention before I go is that the creators saw this game as helping to launch a vast multimedia franchise. Given its poor reception, that plan seems unlikely to continue, but there’s already a lot of tie-in material out there, including novels, comic books, an audio drama, and a web series.

I’m on the fence as to whether I want to check this stuff out. The premise of the setting is very good, so the potential is there, but the plot of the game itself was pretty weak, which doesn’t inspire optimism. The prospect of some actually good stories in this universe remains tempting, though.