Cronos: The New Dawn offers a different approach than any other horror game. However, the combat isn’t good.
Cronos: The New Dawn has been on the radar for a little while now, and after it had shown some gameplay and intrigued me a few weeks ago, this was a must-buy. It’s been a while since playing a survival horror title, and this one definitely grabbed one’s attention. You’d be surprised to know that the developer and publisher of this game, Bloober Team, also developed last year’s incredible remake of Silent Hill 2, and it became their highest-ranked game thus far.
So, you’d expect this game to be a banger – but is it? In development since 2021, Cronos: The New Dawn becomes one of the many highly anticipated releases of September 2025. Literally the day before, we’d gotten the release of the DLC of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, The Order of Giants. Which I loved by the way. But now I get to enjoy another title the next day.
I’m definitely feasting. But there is something that I’d noticed that had gotten me worried immediately after. It was the fact that this game was developed with the ever-popular Unreal Engine 5. Last month, two games were notable for using Unreal Engine 5. Those being Mafia: The Old Country and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. Although both games are great, they got a lot of attention for their performance, especially on consoles.
And the crazy part is that both games are just the tip of the iceberg. A lot of games that used Unreal Engine 5 were also reported to have issues in terms of performance. And because of this, one would wonder if Cronos: The New Dawn is another victim of this software. We can go over that later.
Cronos: The New Dawn’s story of a traveler who is an agent for the Collective. Which is an enigmatic organisation. The traveler is sent on a mission to explore the underworld of a horrific, futuristic wasteland, and he must time-travel to 1980s Poland. He must recover a key, a handful of those who didn’t survive the Change.
The Change refers to a devastating cataclysmic event that transformed humans into a breed of bloodthirsty creatures, who are also known as the ‘Orphans’. You, as the traveler, have to fight and survive the hellacious, grotesque world and stop the Orphans from becoming unstoppable forces. If you need more reason to go back in time, it is for you to unravel the dark secret behind the destruction of humanity.
You’re guaranteed a spooky, unsettling, but at the same time, exciting experience because you’re set in a gritty world where you have to protect the future by destroying the past as you proceed between both periods of time. On top of that, you’re the harvester of souls. As mentioned earlier, you’re to travel to the past to collect the people who died as a result of the event.
However, to do that, you need to use your powerful Harvester device, which allows you to obtain their souls and guide you to the future. But you must keep in mind that using this device poorly can have drastic consequences on your experience. For example, the more souls you have, the more frightening your experience will be. Bringing you much closer to the worst nightmare possible.
You’d be surprised to know that this game requires only around 30GB of storage, which is pretty impressive for a base version. However, the size will be bigger with more patches coming through. But this is impressive for a game that was made with Unreal Engine 5. By the way, if you’re still wondering if you’ll encounter performance issues, the answer is not to the degree of needing to be very concerned.
Anyway, let’s move on to the gameplay. Firstly, let me start by saying that when you look at its presentation, it’ll instantly remind you of 2022’s Callisto Protocol and 2023’s Dead Space Remake, mainly due to their similar third-person perspective, gun play, and more.
The traveler (you) can use firearms and melee abilities to take down enemies. With Cronos: The New Dawn, along with aiming and shooting, you can also do charging shots. When you hold the aim button, the weapon will automatically fire when the charging is completed. So, you don’t really have to let go of the fire button to execute this.
As for melee, you can punch and stomp on enemies and also destroy certain objects. More on the stomping, you can also do this to finish off an enemy for good. One thing I like is that the enemies that haven’t been defeated become stronger every time you die and restart from the checkpoint. And remember when I mentioned something about needing to stop the Orphans from gathering from dead people?
Well, that’s pretty much what you’ll need to focus on a lot in the story as these Orphans become harder to defeat after collecting souls from the dead. Which is why it’s imperative to destroy the dead enemies to make things a lot easier on yourself. And one way of doing that is by using the AOE (Area of Effect), which is a built-in flamethrower that again destroys dead enemies, but can also inflict damage on live Orphans.
For the best experience, it’s best to play using headphones, as the second-to-none sound effects, audio, and music add more to the fright, proving once again that horror games are much scarier than their movie counterparts. Whilst I haven’t experienced anything that was outright scary, using headphones made me feel on edge, be much more alert, and be more prepared for any kind of danger that may occur.
On top of that, the traveler has a very small number of companions, and I was my only ally for most parts, which makes this game a very dreadful and a little uneasy horror game I’ve played. Cronos: The New Dawn’s setting, atmosphere, and the overall loneliness I’ve felt in the story made the experience very uncomfortable.
The only times I breathed a sigh of relief were in the little moments of hope that would break the tension away, such as being outside. And yes, there will be jumpscares. From start to finish, it was nothing but sheer misery. But that’s mainly why I love playing this game.
It’s fair to say that Cronos: The New Dawn has done a stellar job with their work. However, that’s not to say that Cronos: The New Dawn doesn’t come with issues, because despite having a powerful rig, I’ve noticed a few frame drops here and there, but it’s not much to worry about.
But more importantly, the combat (gun and melee) is horrible in general. It’s slow, lethargic, and frustrating at times. Moreover, you can’t block, parry, or even dodge attacks. The only way to avoid enemies is by running.
Cronos: The New Dawn is a very impressive survival horror experience that comes with an intriguing and very well-written story, but those aspects are clearly carrying this game. The combat is a massive disappointment. It’s not immersive, and rather than enjoying the combat, I was more inclined to finish them just to progress and see what happens next in the story.
