Buy it here Dragon Age: Origins Awakening for $32.99
Product Description
“From the Makers of the Best RPG of 2009, Dragon Age: Origins, comes the first official expansion pack. For centuries, the Grey Wardens—the ancient order of guardians, sworn to unite and defend the lands—have been battling the darkspawn forces. Legend spoke that slaying the Archdemon would have put an end to the darkspawn threat for centuries to come, but somehow they remain. You are the Grey Warden Commander and have been entrusted with the duty of rebu. . . More >>
- Experience additional spells, abilities, specializations, and items to further personalize and customize your hero and party ? Import your character from Dragon Age: Origins or start anew as a Grey Warden from Oralais.
- Embark on an epic story that is completely defined and reactive to your play style ? Shape your entire experience based on the choices you make and how your handle complex situations.
- Encounter five all-new party members and an old favorite from Dragon Age: Origins.
- BioWare?s deepest universe to date just got bigger with an all new area of the world to explore, Amaranthine ? Unlock the secrets of the Darkspawn and their true motivations ? Rebuild the Grey Warden order.
- Battle against a new range of horrific and terrifying creatures ? Put your skills to the test against an evolved, intelligent breed of Darkspawn and other menacing creatures including the Inferno Golem, Spectral Dragon and others.
This product can be bought at Amazon for $32.99 -> here is the link: Dragon Age: Origins Awakening
I love that Bioware is still pushing content for this game. Given, the DLC’s to date have been hit and miss, but I still liked how they added more enjoyment to the game. Awakening plays more like a DLC than what I would expect from a full on expansion.
The story is well written (though this is usually a given for Bioware games) and the playthrough is fun enough. But due to the linear playstyle and lack of any character development, there is really little reason to play more than once. All previous downloaded content is incompatible with this expansion. Rather sad to try and play my previous character and find that I started out completely naked.
I had hoped that loading a previous campaign would fill out the story and world I made through my previous actions and encounters, but it actually changes little. You see a familiar face, but not one anyone really cared about.
The new skills are nice to have. Each class has a new row of advanced skills which have level requirements rather than any stat pre-requisites.
I didn’t try out the mage campaign, so I can’t comment on how well the new spells work but I can’t see how this should make or break this game.
In the end, I would have given this a higher score, but the price tag is nuts for an expansion. After buying the game, all of the DLC’s and now this expansion we are looking at $80 to $100 just to get everything. Not being able to use your download content items is rather sad as well. Expansions should “expand” a game, not add a disconnected tangent to a story.
Chutzpuh
March 30th, 2010
I was looking forward to this game and preordered it. Maybe I was expecting too much. My biggest problem is how short the game is. Easily beaten, including all side quests within 15 hours. Way too short. What was made out to be a sprawling epic felt more like a weekend in the life of a Grey Warden. When the other reviews say it felt like DLC, they are right. Companions were generic with little redeeming qualities. I pretty much could have cared less about any of them. The character Nathaniel turned out to be the best of the bunch as far as back story goes. The rest of the companions seemed to be thrown in so you’d have a complete group. Companions in Awakening = easily disposable. Side quests were easy to the point of being unnecessary in some cases. The City of Arimathine is the most drab city you’ll run into, more like a very small town. Anybody who has played Origins will feel underwhelmed by Awakening. The graphics are as good as the first. The storage container at the Vigil is a welcome addition. All in all, too little game to warrant the price tag. Wait for the price to drop if your thinking about purchasing this.
Adam
March 30th, 2010
First, let me state that I LOVED dragon age origins, I would give that game a near perfect score. So with a great disappointment that I have to give such a low score to awakening. For whatever mind boggling reason, They took out the very things that made origins special, for example, they took out the interacting with your party members at camp and instead, have this non intuitive way of party members where they will say something only if you are at the right place, at the right time, with the right item. Its very confusing and I know I have missed out on much conversational dilog simply because you have no idea on what to do. On top of that, even when you do get to interact with characters, its pretty shallow and doesn’t feel so much as you are interacting with them, than simply hearing what quest they want. There is no deep emotional stories, history, banter, romance, philosophy,etc that was present in the first game, its just the bare bone facts and then they shut up like clams until whatever random activation mechanism gets them to talk again. In origins I truly cared for my comrades and would go to the ends of the earth to help them out with their quests. In awakening, I felt nothing, I did a couple of companions quests, but gave up after a while because you do not care about them and when a couple died at the end pf the game, I said “meh”.
Then there is the liner generic rpg quests that seemed mostly just time killer, search all over map for dragon bones, search all over map for rare seeds, search all over map for particular tree. . . etc, much of it was pretty boring leg work. There isn’t any unique quests besides the main ones, also, there are very few places to go, I know this is an expansion, but you only have ONE city you can go to and its very small.
Then there are the bugs, not ingame bugs, but software bugs, You will run into them fairly often, freezing screen, quests not updating correctly, missing items. So a fair warning about that.
Finally, the game just feels unfinished, *spoiler warning, do not read past this*
*you were warned*
After the big boss battle at the end, expect a huge disappointment that there is no epilogue, literally, right after the fight it jumps to a quick text telling about what happened to all the areas and your companions. The game does not even save your character after the end of the boss battle, so you will always be right before the boss battle if you continue.
Then the price is outrageous, I preordered based on the fantastic experience I had with dragon age, now I have buyers remorse. I highly suggest waiting for this game to come down in price, you will feel ripped off if you get it now.
B. Bonds
March 30th, 2010
The previous review is most excellent so I’ll keep it brief. Dragon age awakening is very linear. The new skills only apply to a very specific character build. Cunning rouges will not get any new cunning talents and the same goes for non combat mages, only blood mages and arcane warriors will benfit from the new mage specilization and dexterity based warriors won’t get as many new talents as their strength based counterparts. On top of all of this all the new skills are level based. This means that it doesn’t matter if you have high constituion or have never put a point in it you can still take maximum points in the vitality skill which doesn’t make a lot of sense. If you liked the blood powers from the Warden’s keep DLC forget it their gone (which is troubling if you built your character around it)Also make sure your not using any DLC armor or you’ll stroll up to the keep in your underwear.
The story is okay but the character interactions are a little lacking and I’m annoyed that the characters wait around politly for you to give them permission to speak before giving their two cents on a subject. The story is engrossing enough which is good because with the previously mentioned limted choice advancment there’s not a lot of character customization. All in all the game is just what the other reviews say a tacked on addition to a truly excellent game.
Jacob G. Blair
March 30th, 2010
I installed this expansion couple of days ago. There are some problems that I noticed:
1. Blood Magic and Berserk mode can be deactived automatically when I open my item bag or map or even save the game.
2. Characters’ damage point shown in the “character” panel will not be reduced when I disarm their weapon.
3. Nathaniel’s damage point is impossibly high. It shows the greatest damage that he dealt is 750+
4. You cannnot have conversation with your companion when you explore the world unless you encounter some special item or site. (I believe that this problme was designed by Bioware on purpose, which really disappointed me. )
I am a PC user. I don’t know if it is only me who have these problems. I do suggest not to buy this expansion unless the new patch is released. All in all, this expansion pack sucks! Don’t waste your money on it!
Yue Feng
March 30th, 2010