Dragon Age Awakening Expansion review
The Short Version: Dragon Age Awakening is more of the same fun in the original game. Which is also the problem, its unchanged, unimproved and has to rely solely on its strength of characters and premise. Whats more the Expansion clocks in at only 13 hours in a regular paced play through. At $40 it doesnt do enough to earn its title or its price for anyone but Hardcore Dragon Age Junkies.
What you’ll Like:
• While not as Epic as the Main game Storyline, the plot keeps you engaged.
• The humor and charm of the first game is still present and welcome.
• Oghren is Back as a playable party member!
• Directing Repairs, Troop security and War Strategies as a Lord & Warden Commander was nail-biting.
What you’ll Hate:
• The $40 Expansion is only 13 hours on a regular paced playthrough.
• The storyline leaves alot of questions unanswered, likely cheaply setting up another full retail expansion.
• Annoyingly Impossible Difficultly spikes pulls you out of the experience and into the options menu for adjusting.
• Choosing New Character over Imported is pointless as the warden doesnt have an origin story as in the first game.
Final Verdict:
5/10
An Average Expansion
Issue your own Final Score Above!
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107 thoughts on “Dragon Age Awakening Expansion review”
with games out that cost $60.00 and last 3-6 hours I think $40.00 for 13 hours is a dang good deal for an exp pack
wtf, the guy in the video was talking about origins not awaking for how long it was haha, 40 hours i got both times. And oghren was always playable haha.
Well, at least DAA was more enjoyable than DA2 -_-
Well i must say that guy was half right on the interview Hours is not a good mesure for RPG because lets face it in Elder Scrolls you dont waste hours, you waste hours of your life just to explore everything!
Well, I usually like and agree with your reviews, as do most, which can be seen from the fact that your score and the community scores are usually very close. But here its 2 points apart, which should give you and indication that people dont agree. In fact, had you given it an 8/10, most would have given it 8 as well.
Especially considering the 8/10 for DA2, i think your scores for this series are VERY off.
My main critique with this review is this:
1. Not being able to port every item is forgivable, as you get better once in game pretty soon anyway. Definitely not worth mentioning in a 10 min review.
2. Taking other characters with you. IF THEY HAD DONE IT, I WOULD HAVE COMPLAINED! (and so would you have), as it would have contradicted the main story. See at the end of origins, their paths are made clear. Alister becomes king… should he really be there with you killing thiefs in the street? Morigan disappears, Zavren goes to his homecountry to take on the crows, Stern too returns with his honor restored. So they should NOT be there. The only exception is maybe Leiana, since she could have followed you a while, but thats harldly a big complaint..
3. 12 hours for an expansion is not short… Most full prised games dont have that much.. And with every sidequest etc. its up to 20. Comparing it with shivering isle is not fair, as oblivion itself was 200+ hours long, not 30+ like DA:O. They are very different games, and can not be compared directly.
4. About the questions beeing left open. I think thats not Awakenings fault, but DA2′s. I think it was meant to be continued in the sequal, but then it was destroyed by EA, with their stupied magics vs. templar fight, that had NOTHING to do with the gray wardens, or darkspawn or anything from the games before. Which I think was a different game with the title dragon age written on top of it to sell the crap.
Joe, really, sorry but a bad review.
I don’t know why people hate DA2 so much. prefer it to the original and Awakening. The Story, Cast and Setting may be rubbish, but the actual gameplay, the most important aspect of a game is great, epecially in comparision to the boring as hell, repetative gameplay of DAO and Awakening. DAO-7, DA2-9 Awakening 6.
I like how you answered your own question.
I would give DAO-10, DA2-6, so Awakening is 7, slightly better than DA2. I know that this is an expansion so I cannot have same expectations as a full game, but I did wish that the characters are more interesting and have more depth. Perhaps we can meet more of our previous companions. I did like the way we can import characters, which was sweet, yet there is just something lacking in Awakening which makes it not as rich.
joe what about the warden that sacrfices himself?to play expansion he or she needs another character
I gotta say even with the length of awakening I had much more fun playing it than DA2, which I found a chore to play all the way through if I’m honest, i wish they just expanded awakening into a proper bioware game and just had that as DA2
I’m with Joe on this completely. I was amazing by Origins and shelled out the $40 on the xpac the day it launched. After beating it in one sitting, I was fucking enraged that it was the length it was. FUCK EA and FUCK BIOWARE TOO
i got it because i knew i could power up my character even further if someone could tell me what the highest level character on record for dragon age is i would be grateful my character is a mage called dante or dameon and he is level 35 with most of his stats over 70 and thanks to this expansion i have made oghren a damage bringer with over 700 damage per hit
the good old corprate response, i love the BS machine. great episode.
by the way Joe for want more for your dollars you definitly are not crazy. . . . but . . . you are crazy !!! part of the reason i like your show
i dont know what you guys have against awekening it had some awesome moments and the missions were good the peice was definetly to much and it was to short but it had a lot of awesome ideas and new enemys and areas to explore so it was ok. The two awesome battles at the end were even better then the one in denerim so no problems there but it suked that you couldnt romane anyone and that only 2 of your party members were interesting, Oghren and Anders. i give it a 7/10 because i had a lot of fun playing it and it was enjoyeble to play as my wardens and not as a pre determind char named Hawk.
It was dissapointing, but I feel Dragon Age 2 is worse. Dragon Age Origins was good.
Joe unfortunately you are incorrect on fixes they completely AND UTTERLY fixed The stats that rogues used seeing as the stats were completely broken and even remain broken in the original game in mid-late 2011
My Class Is Allways Broken We Rogues Are Awsome
yes rouges are awesome but my mage is awesome to and powerful as hell
It’s included with the original game for 30 bucks on Steam now, so it’s a good deal now. Thinking of getting the game + expansion after having watched these videos.
Well I agree that content/value lowers it’s score. But story and characters were awesome and overall it deserved a bit higher score. Sigrun became my new favorite character. Perky little character
I raged a lot when I noticed my starfang sword is gone :@ (btw you can fix missing items and other issues by downloading player made patches from DA nexus … just google it). Witch Hunt DLC is like an ad for DA2. But don’t expect to get many answers (great changes are coming etc.)
Doing most of the side quests, talking to characters and other little tidbits in the game, I managed to get through awakenings in about 20 hours or so. I would argue that this is actually a pretty fair amount of content for a $40 expansion, especially considering that games like Knights of the Old Republic was about a 20-25 hour campaign (when doing all the side quests and such) and it was priced at $60 for a full game. Plus when you consider having multiple playthroughs, you’re multiplying the play time for the game.
My beef was that the ending was a bit too abrupt and that the interactions with characters felt a bit more shallow here than they did in Origins. I wanted more questions answered about the Dark Spawn and what that friggin’ mirror thing was in the Witch Hunt DLC, but I guess it’s a set-up for Dragon Age 2.
Overall, I’d say the game was better than a 5/10, probably a 6, maybe even a 7, especially since if you’re buying it, you’re probably going to be buying it as an accompaniment to Origins or as part of the Ultimate Edition pack.
havent played awakening YET but i will have to do it but i must say that 13 hours actually is more than most Full games that are realesed these days, the most full games is 6-8 hours
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I think this should have been about 23+ hours.
I LOVED OBLIVION STILL PLAYING IT