Dragon Age Origins: Awakening

 

 

Create your own review

I recently completed yet another run in the Dragon Age universe and I realized that I had never reviewed the expansion by itself. And it certainly deserves its own review, even if for the wrong reasons.

ONLY THE DARKSPAWN HOLD THE STORY TOGETHER
You can either start with a fresh character or import your hero from DAO (for issues with this, please read on). The problem is that of all the characters from the the original game only...Oghren is available as a companion, you are roaming a completely different map and the story feels like an afterthought. The expansion takes place in a completely different map and the red thread that holds the story together, quite ironically, are the ...darkspawn.
The original game had a solid story with twists and turns and interesting characters. Don't get me wrong, I was eager to experience more Dragon Age too, however, neither the story nor the companions meet the high standards of the original game. I mean, you get an apostate mage, the rogue son of your father's murderer, a warrior spirit incarnated into the wrong body, a murderous elf who is constantly angry (I am guessing extra chromosomes), a dwarf with a death-wish - and Oghren.

CONTINUITY ISSUES.
As mentioned above, you can import your character from the original Dragon Age. Disappointingly, this does not include any DLC items(?!). So, say goodbye to your Starfang and beautiful Warden Commander Armor set among other things. You will get even more powerful equipment in the expansion (although I still think the Sentinel armor set makes my hero look like Darth Vader!).
My advice: do a few test-runs to see what is or not imported and then sell everything you cannot bring into the expansion. You will need the money. Trust me.

BUGS. BUGS. AND MORE BUGS.
Armor sets that do not complete because crates do not spawn or spawn empty. Equipment that is downgraded if left in your personal storage trunk. And you better enter the Silverite Mines...naked because most often than not all of your Hero's equipment will disappear - forever. And, no, neither the Ultimate edition nor the latest patch fixed most of these bugs. Save often (new saves, not quick ones) to avoid the grief of having to start over.

GRANDMASTER RUNE OF ANNOYANCE
Runes gain two extra levels, Masterpiece and Paragon and, besides weapons, they can now be slotted into armor as well. There is also a new skill, Runecrafting, to go with this. However, either the required ingredients are too rare or you have to decide to strip your weapons in order to augment your armor. I ended up slotting only the runes I looted and kept everything I brought from the original game.
Come to think of it, by importing a level-25 warrior (with a well-stocked...potion-cellar) I rarely had to craft any potions either.

NEW SKILLS & TALENTS
Almost every talent group gets a new tier of talents. So do Specializations and Skills. The talents are the most important as they offer new spells or warrior and rogue attacks and defenses. There seem to be more Tactics slots as well, a good idea, to accommodate the increased number of talents.
Most of the talents are well thought, useful in battle and beautifully realized on screen.

The original DAO was a masterpiece of a game so if you played and enjoyed it I know you just have to play the expansion as well. However, if you don't, you are not missing much.
Keep your expectations low in order to enjoy the extra leg of the ride and to avoid being disappointed.

It is only an expansion, not a full-blown sequel, but here's a rush of reasons why Awakening is under par, followed by optional waffling:

Half-finished. Half-written. Small-scale treatment of epic matters. Buggy. Crashes to desktop during combat. Loses items. Wait for a patch if you need immersion. Lacks coherence. Lacks fire. Disconnected with DA:O. Too easy. Limited conversations. No romance. NPCs and party members not as interesting. No camp. Limited effect of choices, but more epilogues, which is nice. Lacking depth. Lack of atmosphere - even with the decent level design. No tension. Short, should be cheaper. Enjoyable. Bizarre bring-back character choice justified overall. Still slightly addictive, qualified Dragon Age fun.

-Mild spoiler for Dragon Age: Origins (but not for Awakening, except at the end*)-

If you accepted its limitations Dragon Age Origins was a blast, a Hollywood blockbuster version of role playing games. Although falling short of Baldur's Gate, it was its illegitimate nephew, rising to take the RPG crown.

With Awakening we have been promised more of the same things we loved about Dragon Age. Apart from the combat that's a promise which has been broken. That's because what got everybody really involved with Dragon Age, and generated the headlines, wasn't the loot, but the personal relationships, running the gamut from sleazy to meaningful. Despite itself we loved the plot too. All of this is limited and half-hearted with Awakening, and tension, either with characters or in the plot, is almost non-existent.

Dragon Age was a multiple personality of a game written by too many people. One minute incredibly and sincerely lame, the next bouncing back with a killer one-liner. One minute awkwardly contriving a plot device, the next springing a twist that would put any soap opera to shame. The laughs are still in Awakening but conversation is blander and there's no camp (in the tent sense and Shale and Zevran sense as well). Instead you have to hold down the tab key all of the time looking for trees and statues to talk about. The languages of the Elves, Qunari and Dwarves still all sound like Klingon - but fortunately the dull, instructional, Star Trek Voyager-like feeling in some world areas is mostly gone. Another good thing is that the voice talent is talented, with plenty of British accents to water down the American.

The claustrophobia of a vast world packed into small locations is much worse in this add-on - given the story, the abilities of PCs and consoles now and the amount of people on the credits, the anti-epicness of the delivery is astounding, from the supposed city to the supposed large-scale battles.

As an add-on it doesn't gel very well, you can't visit Soldier's Peak or any part of the old map. The set up is as forced and unnatural as DA:O except moreso. For some reason your character walks alone to Amaranthine. Yes, even if you're effectively the King as well as the Grey Warden leader, your only escort will be some girl sent to fetch you for the last 5 miles. As well as some of my best gear I had also `forgotten' all of my shields, so my skillset was useless for some time - it seemed to be a bug, apparently there is a mod out there that fixes this.

In the brief moments of continuation from the previous game my DA:O decisions seemed to carry through, so thankfully Alistair stayed dead, although I was given another whiney miserablist voiced by a similar sounding actor. Bioware please, after Carth and Alistair I've had my fill of damaged needy men (don't shout that too loudly down the pub if you're a bloke).

This is combined with one of the worst patches ever, 1.03. The majority of people play a game soon after release so it is criminal to subject them to simple and obvious bugs. Now we have extra crashes to desktop, and an easy game made technically even easier. This will not stretch anyone who EA/Bioware ought to have remembered must have played and got used to the first game. Even a well-signposted chance to repeat one of the best and hardest battles of the first game is thrown away.

It's not as much game as I expect for the RRP, even with Amazon's discount - after the rip-off of Soldier's Peak I should have expected that.

If the fighting was all you cared about, it is still good fun even if it is too easy and similar. The same simple types of groupings appear over and over again. Loot is overly plentiful, although I still kept my old armour throughout. The new rune system tiresome. Some of the new combat abilities are fun and improve a system that was too simple to begin with, but make you even more overpowered for the competition. Awakening was still a game I had to complete, but I can imagine some abandoning it.

My advice to Bioware? Replay Baldur's Gate to relearn atmosphere. For graphics swallow your pride and take on board what The Witcher did with your own engine, and take advantage of the power of today's machines.

*Ughh, emo darkspawn.

Dragon Age Awakening is a spin off from Dragon Age Origins that takes your character from the early level 20s to the early level 30s. It is perhaps a quarter of the size of Origins, takes 10 to 20 hours to complete and requires an Origins installation. You get two new specialisations and a few extra lines of abilities per character type. You find weapons ranging from tier 6 to 9. You find two new companions of each type. You can now craft runes, drink stamina potions, your camp contains a storage chest and sells respec books. The last three should have existed in Origins.

The game design is in some ways on par with Origins. The story, areas, characters, music and voice overs are of equal quality. At times any of those design aspects can be a little over familiar and feel like a cut and paste job. For the most part there is enough new invention to keep your interest right until the end credits.

It does have negatives.

Firstly its release has clearly been rushed. This will likely be fixed in time in future patches, but the game and latest patch to accommodate the game introduces bugs that didn't exist before (some of which mess with origins). The install likely works with a cleanly installed DAO but not always with an older install. Sometimes your character struggles with height changes on the floor. Some of your paid for DAO add on content will not transfer.

On entering the level 20s at the end of DAO the list of abilities on the quick bar had started to get overly large and the difficulty balance during the game started to tend towards the easy. Sadly this trend has continued into DAA. Your abilities bar becomes huge. To give you an idea of difficulty my mage had skills that in order of activation:
Sustained. Damage all nearby enemies over time.
Activated. Freeze and damaged all nearby enemies.
Activated. Stun all nearby enemies.
Activated. Heal party.
Activated. Smash a stunned or freezed enemy.
Activated. Reset all cool downs.
Add in a couple of thieves in tow who automatically backstab immobile enemies and you are looking at a tanking mage who finishes off groups of 1 to 10 in a few seconds usually without having to aim once and without worrying about slow to cast friendly fire spells. That worked for 99% of enemies on hard without using potions or occurring deaths. If it failed I had a skill bar full to the brim with other options. It wasn't an exploit tactic either; all 3 character types contain skills and a handful of options that tip the balance into a mass mash-up rather than a tactically balanced battle. The forums show people on insanity difficulty being disappointed with the level of challenge as well. The start of Dragon Age Origins felt allot more balanced even though it favoured mages. For those who find the challenge important, it needs fixing and it isn't just a little off. The difficulty does not help the size problem making the game an even shorter experience.

The size is just appalling for party banter or world creation. Despite finding the individual aspects of equal quality, it has not got chance to bewitch you. To give you an idea of how bad the size design problem gets. I picked up one character at the end of one area. Picked up another character at the start of the next. After I completed that area it went into end game mode.....OK the two characters seem interesting enough but when do I get to know them? I found out more about Oghren when I picked him up last at the end of DAO than those two combined.

The integration with DAO is slight. If this spin off was added to DAO as another of the 3 mid game main quests such as saving the arl then it would have made DAO even more huge and world like. As a separate entity with minor integration it feels like DA has become cramped.

Still despite its shouldn't have been released like this state, I still found myself warming to the world. Maybe it is because the "spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate" tag had worn off. Despite its long list of faults more Dragon Age is still fun. How many stars should you rate a more fun than most modern RPGs but also a missed opportunity? I'll go for four but you may well disagree.

2115|R258YE9N6MOTYV;2115|R39JWK6NTI5PY5;2115|RI90433UUE96E;

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 42 customer reviews...

 

4.0 out of 5 stars No longer buggy
Patch 1.04 seems to have fixed the problems experienced by recent reviewers. I've been playing this game, on Windows 7, for some time and haven't experienced any running problems... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Ivor E Tower

4.0 out of 5 stars Dragon Age Origins:Awakening
A Nice Addition to the Game for more skills like Rune Crafting for your weapon's & Gear.For more information go to the Dragon Age Wiki site.

Published 3 months ago by themarycornish

2.0 out of 5 stars A poor encore
I loved the Original even with its bugs..

This lacks the care they spent on creating characters and depth of plot. Read more

Published 6 months ago by Col Mustard

4.0 out of 5 stars Awakening? More of a stop-gap.
An excellent expansion, but it honestly felt more like a separate game using the DA:O engine, since it didn't really add anything to the original game itself, beyond adding a... Read more

Published 6 months ago by Aslyn

4.0 out of 5 stars Not an "origins", but a worthy add-on
Bringing thirtysomething hours if you like to explore and play thoroughly this is a worthy add-on and must buy, if you liked origins.

Published 7 months ago by The Dude

2.0 out of 5 stars You will learn what "bug" means!
Origins was piece of art without saying. And Bioware chose to stain its beauty by this "broken" expansion pack. Read more

Published 10 months ago by music&cinema

4.0 out of 5 stars dragon age
a bit like nwn2 same format prob better but you may have to buy stuff (i.e with your credit card etc which is a bit of a turn off could buy stuff with gold monies you get in game... Read more

Published 12 months ago by themonk

3.0 out of 5 stars If you liked Origins, you won't miss much by not playing this
The game is very disappointing compared to the epic Dragon Age Origins. The characters are much less likeable and the banter is mundane at best, in comparison with the excellent... Read more

Published 13 months ago by Anonymous

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
I really enjoyed Dragon Age Origins. And I just came across this game. It is more of the same really... which is excellent if you liked the first game! Read more

Published 13 months ago by The Goat

3.0 out of 5 stars Buy it as a minor expansion & a few more hours of combat and you'll get what you expect.
I played through the original DA:O almost every evening, after putting my kids to bed, from the moment I took the shrink-wrap off, to the moment I first completed it. Read more

Published 14 months ago by M Harris

Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

› See all 42 customer reviews...

Search Listmania!