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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93 thoughts on “Dragon Age Awakening Expansion review”
Oblivion: Shivering Isles was great. Many hours of gameplay, if you do the side quests and everything. And good gameplay too. As for the main game, Oblivion was sooo extended, ive played about 400 hours so far and am still playing. Pretty good value if you ask me.
I got through in about 12 1/2 hours my first time because i paced myself but for me, my first time with Oblivion: shivering isles i did it in about 6 hours because i didn’t find Oblivion very difficult.
That’s only possible if you did just the main quests (oblivion shivering isles)… There’s many more hours and much more fun if you do the side quests as well
Whoa Demon Joe is really a scary dude, almost crapped my pants…
Hey Joe, no big deal but at the end, where Demon Joe comes back, it says “YOUR SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD” when it SHOULD say “YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD”. I’m just a grammar freak :’(
I wish you could pick what party member came to awakening with you, it would be nice to see Shale, or Leliana, hell, even Sten would be awesome!
anyway
thats just what I think…
One things that isnt clear is :- once you have completed the awakening can u take the character bk to origins and once you have completed mother can you carry on playing..my last save is the entrance to mother before you kill her and i’ve tried to go back at it doesnt allow it!! Am i missing something???
i am a RPG fan to the highest level,am i the only one who hates how the main hero can only talk while attacking,or something else,but not interacting with the others? im am getting both mass effect and mass effect 2,at the same time from gamefly,but i have a mage/arcane warrior that killed the hight dragon,where my elf rouge failed,im a grat fan of DAO and DAOA,but i think that even the PSN’s 39.99 without tax,is to hight,make it cost at least 15.00 is best,also,mass effect 3 and fable 3 should be on PS3 for people who dont have the xboxlive,or refuse to go gold,sorry to review on your review joe,but the king has spoken
Fable III is published by Lionhead which is owned by Microsoft, so there’s no chance in hell that it would ever go on the PS3, but it will be available for people who want to play on PCs instead.
I am still looking forward to this expansion, I’ll get it because I loved Dragon Age. Looking at that BS translator, I have to wonder if Joe ever tried to put something Peter Molyneux said through that, it might not survive.
20 euro (Yeah I know where to get stuff cheap) for 13 hours is quite good actually. Most RPG expansions NOWADAYS are barely 5 hours long.
So yeah I liked the expansion quite a bit for that price but anyone who paid more than 30 euro should be pissed.
Difficult? My imported arcane warrior/blood mage might’ve felt a sting or two. Not sure though…
(oh yeah I know the combo is imba and yada yada)
I’d still say Awakening is better than other RPGs, I thought it was pretty good – or perhaps it was psychological and my mind got corrupted by the BioWare label on the box and my previous DAO experience. Nevertheless, it serves a good fix for us hardcore fans, and Im still happy to pay the $40 and support BioWare. Hopefully the next expansion or DragonAge2 will bring back the emotional intensity, fulfilling experiences, and dynamism that characterized the original game, while improving the technical stuff (e.g. difficulty spikes). I also miss the memorable characters and moments (which dominated my thoughts in school or sleep) – something the expansion lacked. While Awakening provided me with only a fleeting satisfaction and short-lived entertainment, it does boast good replay value. I mean, its better than the little wallet-raping DLC teases, which were just downright gay. Still I’m confident that whatever reservations I have for Awakening will be made up for in future titles such as The Old Republic (which Im sure is going to be THE SHIT).
Once again, I will pay almost any price just to kill that Skeletor look-alike.
For that much content though, I think the company would be better off charging 1200 or 1600 points for it ($15 or $20 in American money). Even if some people consider it a short title, others may manage to take their time with it, so it’s best to price it somewhere that seems fair to both.
ok joe if you find this game was to easy IDK if you knew this but you can actually go into the options mid-game and bump up the difficulty so i don’t think people should be complaining about the game being easy at some points when you can just bump up the difficulty to make it challenge.
Joe, if you had any dlc armor and weapons besides return to ostagar, they would not appear in awakening. The reason to play as the person from Orlais is because the story is much different; people treat you different and changes a lot of the dialogue.
Good video as always.
But I have to disagree on some point. In my playthrough, the game was too easy (playing on PC on normal difficulty), I never had to reload because of my whole party dying, and even this way, it took me 22 hours to finish. So I am very pleased with this expansion.
Well, though i’m not that big of a fan of RPG’s, i can still appreciate good games like fallout 3, mass effect, etc. however, i feel that an expansion to such a highly acclaimed game shouldn’t be the length of a standard FPS. granted, expansions are usually shorter than the actual game, but that much of a difference in times is disappointing. i think i’m just going to stick to short campaign FPS’s with great multiplayer.
he joe you gonna review starcraft 2 when it comes out?
To be honest i really enjoyed this game. It had its issusues sure, like the fact that your past decisions didnt really matter here, which bugged me pretty bad but i got over it. Only 1 guy from the first game comes back, Ogrhen (not sure if thats spelt right) but he was my favorite so that was good, then again others may have hated him. Honestly why just bring back one? I say bring all of them back or none at all. The new charecters, though, are okay, certainly not bad. Also it is short, i got 20 hours out of it, but thats not to bad considering the other DLCs only took me roughly 1-2 hours each, but the price is what gets me. IF it were $20 I would not mind, but $40?! To much, though its not as bad as paying full price, like ODST. Also, the DLC gear did not transfer over, it was a bit odd seeing my guy have no clothes on nor any weapons to start the game off. And there were some annoying audio gliches too,though the bosses were never to hard IMO. All of this just kinda makes me feel as if Bioware just kinda rushed this out, didnt take there time with it. BUT… I still had loads of fun playing it. The good things, though, slightly outweighed the bad. The story was good, though some stuff were left unanswered. The charecters were good, though you couldnt really talk to them. There was some nice gear, though some of the DLC gear wouldnt transfer over. The one thing I loved from the game is when you went into the fade you had your party with you. In the first one, having no party with me made it to hard, and just annoying. But overall i gotta agree with his review, though I personally would give it about a 7/10. I just really enjoyed it, sure the bad parts bogged it down, but none of them felt really that big of a deal to me, except for the fact most of your past decisions didnt really matter, thats what dropped it down the most for me. Everything else, though, wasnt to bad. So i gotta say a solid 7 for me.
I have to disagree, for one, for a forty hour expansion, which has on average clocked in at 20 hours (longest I have heard is 25, yours (13) would be the lowest), its not THAT bad. Indeed its short, yeah I wish it was longer, furthermore, I wish it was better integrated into the game itself, to me, having you click to select a seperate campaign in order to start it, is lazy and unprofessional, Dragon age worked because it was a imersive intergrated world (menus and traveling withstanding), pulling you out of the experience only to put you in a seperate campaign is something I would expect out of a mod team, not to belittling mods. Having said that, I honetly expected 20-30 hours (which seems to be the case), as its an expansion, and in these days, 20 hours is quite a bit for an expansion, seeing as how the dlc for games, say fallout 3, are short and unsatisfieng affairs.
Admittedly, I have yet to finish it but thats my opinion thus far, that may or may not change.
speaking of bad expansions u gave halo odst a better score y is that?
Apparently joe rates fps and rpgs a bit differently, although I would have gave ODST a 3 or less, after beating it in BARELY 4 hours, and playing a few firefight matches before the bad AI made it not fun anymore.
ok joe it took me 15hours i think some of you ppl are rushing through this game and not enjoying the side quest i do agree that it should be 20 hours but this is still a humerus and fun expansion to play, also has replay value like you said unlike many other expansions such as shivering isles. therefore i think it should at least get a 6/10 if not more
I never found oblivion or the expansion to have replay value, because of the time it took to get one character there, and that you would have nothing new to expect bringing a new one there later. It added a lot of playtime definitely, but it doesn’t have near the replayability of dragon age.
15 hours to me seems fine for an expansion, although the 40 dollar price tag does seem a tad too much. I was hoping for 30.
im badblood 19 bit*h!!!!
ok joe a RPG add-on shud be 20 hours atleast the warning u just gave is important,my friend was pissed off to hell he finished it in 10 hours u shud of herd im if i made it he would of cut my head off also WTF wheres the battlefield review in europe its bin out for about a month now so wheres the review battlefield bad company 2 won’t review itself i told u what i think what about u?
Hey Joe you said you have some question left after the end of the game. I might have some answer for you. Just ask them to me and will see if i can answer them. The plot of Awakeing is closelly tied to the novel Dragon Age: The Calling, the secound novel on DA universe. It featured among others things The Architect and Utha. Since i have read it might be able to ties some of the loose end you have.
ok joe a RPG add-on shud be 20 hours atleast the warning u just gave is important,my friend was pissed off to hell he finished it in 10 hours u shud of herd im if i made it he would of cut my head off also WTF wheres the battlefield review in europe its bin out for about a month now so wheres the review battlefield bad company 2 won’t review itself i told u what i think what about u?
Oblivion’s expansion the Shivering Isles was only 20 dollars since the day it came out.
It most certainly was not.
Dude you think you’ve gotten ripped off, how about owning a PS3 and being in the UK? The ONLY way to get it is via the PSN which charges £32, that’s the price of a new game (if you shop around) and to rub salt into the wound I only paid £25 for Dragon Age Origins!
I don’t see the point in judging RPGs on playtime as its a poor mechanic. I found Oblivion to be one of the most over-rated games this generation because even though its frikking huge and there’s over a hundred hours of gameplay that gameplay involves wandering around aimlessly, find a cave, kill the monsters/people in it get the loot, rinse and repeat. There were the occasional fetch quests but even those pretty much involved going to a generic house/cave/ruin/etc. Admittedly the thief quests were interesting but that was only a small handful.
Games like Dragon Age, KOTOR, Mass Effect and Baldurs Gate 2 take out the pointless padding which many games add just for the sake of adding gamelength but which adds nothing to the overall game experience and can even be detrimental as you have to grind through the repetitive areas for quests or experience.
I only play Oblivion for a while so can’t argue there. But RPG games always have a long story so you can buildup your character. The sidequest’s sometimes are interesting sometimes plane boring thats why you rate this games. A like Fallout 3 great story and great sidequest’s. On RPG game thats short with not enough content or improvements and thats almost full retail you expect a great story and alot of gameplay hours.
@MattEvansC3 [YOU DARE utter just NONsense about OBLIVION!]
You dont have any idea what the hell your talking about, Oblivion is one of the BEST RPG’s on the xbox & pc.
Dragon age has plenty of go into dark cave and kill 30-40 orcs until you reach a boss. Except here you arent feel too look just behind that rock or path because you are “gated” in to preset pathways being lead by the hand but doing the very same thing.
If you want the same experience in Oblivion Just stick to the main quest = dragon age without party members.
If elder scrolls ever added party members, holy shit balls.
Completely agree there. If the Elder Scrolls series introduced party members, or even better an MMO based around the Elder Scrolls world would be freaking amazing! However at the same time, I do have to say the point of the Elder Scrolls games has always been the power and destiny that one person has, them almost alone against the hordes of enemies that infest the land, and eventually becoming powerful enough to take on all of them.
But I digress. Oblivion really was one of the best all time RPGs for the 360 and PC. Though I personally believe Morrowind to be better for a few reasons. But I don’t want to get too long winded in this.
Just saying that a lot of the extra hours worth of gameplay in Oblivion just felt like padding and it was a bit samey. I’m not saying it wasn’t an excellent game but you could easily remove half of Oblivion and not notice the difference and things like the wheel based mini-game for conversations were just to mechanical which for me made the game feel to methodical and more like a Stat Playing Game than a Role Playing Game.
From a technical standpoint its fantastic and the visuals still beat a lot of other games, especially Dragons Age hands-down but as far as immersion was concerned I just didn’t feel it, the game seemed to lack, for want of a better word, a soul. Its an opinion difference but I much preferred the time I put into Mass Effect, KOTOR, Dragon Age, Baldur’s Gate 2 than I did with Oblivion.
I do agree that I felt oblivion to be a bit overrated for that aspect to. I did highly enjoy the game, and easily put 100 hours into it, but that was over a long span of time, because of how long it takes to do simple things, long distance traveling, little sense of purpose, and poor dungeon design. The single player was incredibly short lived, and far too easy if done quickly at the start. I personally wouldn’t call it the best rpg of all time, because to me the graphics felt like a gimmick for something far simpler. But this is coming from someone who can spend dozens of hours playing a game by spiderwebsoftware and be just as satisfied.
Really what made me dislike oblivion was because of the PC version of Dark Messiah (not Elements), a game that had a really indepth and exciting combat system, that only lacked the openworld of oblivion to make it perfect. Where as a warrior my only objective wasn’t to parry+counter, and where my enemies didn’t scale in level with me. Where as a rogue I could do brutal silent kills and where enemies reacted more realistically to my hiding in the shadows. Where my wizard could toss corpses at other enemies, freeze then and break them to bits, shrink them and stomp them down, and send my enemies into the dark abyss. If you’re a hardcore RPG fan you owe it to yourself to try it.
Yeah, I thought Oblivion owned too. I understand why people prefer an “abridged” approach, but personally, I think the roaming and exploring that you’re allowed to do in one of the most beautiful game worlds opens up an endless pool of satisfaction. To choose between DAO and TES4 is near-impossible for me, as I feel the lack of exploration/freedom in DAO is more than counterbalanced by its engaging story-driven campaign and of course, unforgettable party members. If Bioware were to work in tandem with Bethesda to create the ulitmate RPG – that is DAO’s story and companions with Oblivion’s freedom and exploration, I’d be prepared to shell out a C-note or two anytime.
Oblivion is absolutely gorgeous but I preferred wandering around Azeroth in WOW. In the graphics department Oblivion wins hands down (that game is just to fucking gorgeous) but in art and world design I’d have to give it WoW. Now I know Oblivion is set in a region as opposed to a World but you take the human area, you start off in the lush greenlands of the starting area, head east to the gnoll areas and watch as the terrain and enemies change from lush green to a menacing red hued rock, or you could’ve headed west and watched as the green flourishing fields give way to the muted browns and yellows of cropfields with its own type of enemies and then there are dark, haunting forests to the south. Even Fable and Fable 2 managed quite a lot of diversity in their small play areas.
Oblivion just doesn’t have that level of diversity and apart from a few specific creatures you could encounter almost every enemy type anywhere on the world map which just gave me the impression that I wasn’t actually travelling anywhere which is one of the things I personally treat as a negative. Art direction and diversity is more important to me than graphic quality and scope and why I think Oblivion is bordering on brilliance but not achieving it.
Every one has there own opinions and my opinion is that Oblivion is one of the worst games i ever played.
Here my 10 reasons, but i have more than 10.
(1)Repetitive combat and spell casting (Spell casting is all most the same as using a bow). Attacking with melee requires a simple pattern of attack, block, attack, block until there dead. You can only get 1 hit off in stealth, once you do every thing automatically get’s alarmed even if there in a different room adjacent from where you shot or attacked. You cannot fight to many enemies at once or they “recoil” you to death, which is cheap considering that i had 100 Block Skill.
(2)Very little variety in weapons and armor and not many unique weapons and armor.
(3)Poor magical effects when using spells and weapon enchantment effects.
(4)Can’t pull your self up from a 5 foot ledge. Get stuck on steep hills and have to go around to get up the hill. Useless 3rd person camera.
(5)Story line wasn’t all that great, because there was no main boss, how come we don’t get to fight Dagon in a creative way? Prince of Persia fought a giant fat man,God of War fights a Giant Statue and in Dragon Age you can fight epic big dragons, why is there no good boss fights in Oblivion or for that matter why are there no epic moments?
(6)Oblivion runs like crap on computers that don’t use vista. I use a Core 2 Quad and a GPU that has 1GB of DDR2 and 64 Streaming Processors but it ends up playing like Risen and lags every time i get into a fight with 1 enemy.
(7)Low variety in enemies, roaming around is very very boring and pointless, yet oblivion is suppose to be a open world game but fails as it seems so very lifeless.
(8)A lot of quests are completely pointless.
(9)If there is a skill that is called “Acrobatics” how come i can’t do any pull ups on a ledge or do actual acrobatics? Instead i can roll an do back flips which don’t improve combat. Did you know that you can’t climb ladders and that there are tons of loading screens and that ladder climbing is an old game mechanic?
(10). The game levels up with you, boring combat, boring spells, boring ranged combat, boring enemies, no boss fights, no interesting characters, okay graphics, boring equipment, boring side quests and slow arrows that make you think there made out of paper.
My standard for game quality is $1 per hour of entertainment (not just play time), and replays count towards that number. DA:O was well above that, since I played through the lengthy campaign twice and ran through all the origins. By that system this would be a $25-$30 title going by what I’m hearing. I have not played it myself yet, and plan to wait.
Admittedly this makes the average shooter worth less than $20 to me and I refuse to pay more than that for them (thank FSM for Steam sales), so take this for what it’s worth.
What standards does everyone else here use for this kind of thing?
Your system might work only for RPG’s as FPS’s rely more on multiplayer experiences these days – you could potentially get hundreds of hours out of that.
I’ve only just gotten started on the original game, loving what I’ve experienced so far, but I’m kinda dissapointed at what I’m hearing about the expansion… Guess I’ll just get the most I can out of origins and pass on awakening. I mean something that only lasts about 13 hours shouldn’t be sold for more than $20 in my opinion. Thats just a rip off.
First off, I got my copy for £15. This is a common price throughout online UK stores. Isn’t that equal to around $25 American dollars now? Well anyway, I figured it was because you had the 360 version and they charge extra so Microsoft can get a slice. But I just checked Amazon.com for the PC version – 40 bucks. Da fuck? Amazon.co.uk sells it for 15 pounds. It looks like you guys are getting completely ripped off.
As for the boots and gauntlets, unfortunately for some reason you can’t import any items from downloadable content.
Now, the game… frankly at the start I was pretty pissed that I had all these men and yet I’M the one expected to go galloping around the countryside (cue King Arthur on his phantom steed). It seems logical that I should be able to send men on certain side missions rather than waste 2 weeks travel. Can’t even sent taxmen, instead you’re expected to fork out hundreds of gold to supply the keep. Makes no sense!
I’m fairly happy with it now though. Gone through 12 hours and have two main story missions to go. Unless a forth one pops up like in Origins & Knights of the Old Republic. The characters are a hoot, the story is interesting, etc.
Are you serious? Why the hell are they over charging US customers. Thats even more Bullshit.
actually that would the 15pounds price (on amazon at least, and do not know the button combination for the UK dollar), is a sale on amazon, normal price is 35.
Gameplay UK – £15, Play.com UK – £15, Game UK – £15, Gamestation – £15, HMV – £15.
I think you are being a little harsh on the game over its length, especially comparing it to the Shivering Isles. . For me the Shivering Isles was a once playthrough game only as the few major decisions there were only affected loot and a second playthrough was quite pointless but as you mentioned in your review you are going through a second playthrough of DA:A just to try out new options, say it takes you half or two thirds as long as your first go you’ve now made the game 20-24 hours in length. That should be a positive in your review because few games outside of multiplayer offer any replay value, especially RPGs like FFXIII which offer no real choice and no real replay value.
An ideal expansion of an RPG as far as time goes should definitely be about at least 20 hours or so. I mean, like what you mentioned on one of your comments, 13 hours is only best suited for other genres like First Person Shooters. Even though they did intend on making the expansion that short, it should not be priced 40 bucks for it. I think a maximum of 20 bucks may be a tad fair.
I bet they are going to make a new expansion that would require DA:Awakening.
I would have given it a 7/10. In your other video about the length I said that how many hours it was wouldn’t matter to me since I would play through it many times. It took me about 16 hours to go through it, but I did spend an hour or so crafting, I would have liked it to be longer, but I’m not going to complain too much because i’m going to beat it another 10 times before the next game comes out. I do agree that this game is only for hardcore fans of the series, because if you weren’t completely sucked into the original, and couldn’t get enough, this one will only piss you off.
I completely agree that the lack of origin for the orlesian warden was really disappointing. Even if it was just “here he is at level 1, see how we got the attention of the wardens and his joining” then skip to leveling him up to 18 and starting with the story. Something is better than nothing. They really screwed up with that.
The DLC import issues I never really knew why they would let you carry over the stuff from RtO, but not Warden’s keep or anything else. I wish we could get some official word on why they decided to do this. I missed not having my starfang for my warrior to start the game with.
The only things I’m wondering about on your points is the unanswered questions and difficulty. I know you most likely won’t say due to spoilers, but if you could give me a certain area to run back thru, or something to let me know what kind of questions you still have and where I could go back and look at them, I would appreciate it. Yes, they needed to elaborate more on somethings, and I think some things are explained more in the books(Architect and Utha backgrounds and motivations), but for those of us that haven’t read the books, we need to know more about these characters to know whether or not to hate them and how they really relate to us.
And I was playing on normal the whole game and besides a handful of times, it didn’t seem to have too many spikes. I used me as a 2h tank warrior, Anders for healing and other magic, Nathaniel for ranged damage, and Sigrun for more melee damage. Baroness, 2 dragons, and the cove actually gave me some trouble, but other than that it was pretty easy for me. The Queen of Blackmarsh went down incredibly easily, which really disappointed me. The other dragon was random and pretty easy. The final boss initially gave me issues, but after the first wave of helpers went down, I ran over and realized Sigrun had her down to 1/3rd health. Next time I play I am going to up the difficulty and see how it goes.
I really hope they don’t rush another expansion like this one, but if they do I’ll buy it the day it comes out just like I did this one. I can’t resist Bioware and anything it touches. I would like to see some other parts of the world, and really want to see what is in store for Dragon Age 2. I’m hoping the Qunari invade Fereldon, since Sten alluded to it in Origins. I would love to see how your choices in Awakenings affect and and how possible allies come into play against them. Also wouldn’t mind if they skipped us a few hundred years into the future to the next blight, since the only 2 old gods left(the dragons of mystery and night) would make awesome enemies, seeing how cool the dragon of beauty treated us in this blight, mystery and night would be much more intimidating. Wow, I typed alot…
Seriously Joe, where did you get that sword. Looks awesome!
Heh, when I saw that interview before I wondered why he seemed so nervous when he said the part about “average length for a full game these days.” I wonder if that was breaking script to sneak a warning out?
I kind of wonder who to blame here, like if EA made them do it. They haven’t done an expansion since BG2, and that wrapped up the story nicely.
I still want to get this. While 13 hours is rather short for an RPG (Dunno about expansions, the only other I have is Oblivion GOTY, and I couldn’t even force myself through the main campaign), the humor, story, and immersive combat are what I really want to go in there for.
I will play it on casual, as this game is just too goddamn hard (Which is a bit ironic, because Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 are both rediculously easy, except that ME2 gets sorta tough on the hardest difficulty).
While only 15 hours is a disappointment, i felt it should have gotten a higher score. Does DA:O:A really deserve a lower score then ODST?
Ahh, the dangers of comparing a FPS final Verdict with an RPG Final Verdict.
Well this sucks. Not the review as per usual it answered all my questions, but the fact that the 40 dollar expansion will only run me for about 13-15 hours. Double that if I choose both paths. That really sucks. More so with the import a character.
In the original game, I have one of my original characters in the end, stay with Leliana in Denerim. Learning I can only import him kinda kills the ending. I mean don’t get me wrong, Oghren is awesome, but I wish that the other characters, save for Morrigan at least get a nod. Hell in ME 2, if you choose to import your character, all your actions from the previous game affect ME2, so why not this?
The game also only being 13-15 hours is a joke. That may work if it’s an FPS with multiplayer because that is what is expected from a $40 game. But for a 15 hour RPG, no thanks. I’ll wait for the price drop.
Hello again Angry Joe army from your good friend rpgfan121!
Well I personally was looking forward to this review for a while really, and I’m glad I waited. I couldn’t tell you how pissed I’d have been if I had paid full price for this game for it to stop abruptly like that. RPGs now a days are supposed to be long. It was one thing back in the day when the gaming market was still establishing itself, and short games were the norm.
Now a days however, those like me who are hardcore RPG fanatics demand a lengthy, enjoyable, story driven, inovative experience from our games. Bioware delivers in spades usually. I mean the Mass Effect series is threatening to take the title of ‘My favorite RPG series’ away from Suikoden. However 10 – 15 hours of gameplay is not going to cut it, no matter how good the storyline is, at least not for over $40.
Once the price goes down, then I think I’ll still get the expansion. After all, I do love Dragon Age: Origins, and the new features involved with ruling over your own land does sound fun. Just have to wait for the price to drop. Thanks again Joe, I always have faith in your judgments on video games.
Joe, do you think it would be possible to post the videos for the reviews over where you post the score? Each time a new review shows up, your opinion gets spoiled by the score posting. This really undermines a lot of the humor and misdirection that you use set up in the actual reviews.
Thanks for your time and keep up the good work.
Yea, good point. I dont think though that theres anything around this. I mean i’ve got to display it somewhere on the page, whether you scroll down a tiny bit or its right at the top.
Hey Joe, I have a few questions about your review. I’m currently playing through Awakenings and I’m about 15 hours in (not including the hour or so I’ve spent Runecrafting, which I’m amazed you didn’t mention, but I’ll get into that later), and so far I really don’t have that many problems with it.
Anyways, I wanted to know where these difficulty spikes are. I mean, I can see what you mean, but honestly I haven’t had any problems with the difficulty going from easy to insane. Honestly, I haven’t had any real problems with difficulty (except it feels like everything is way to easy). Maybe I’m missing something, but it doesn’t seem like there were these spikes.
And my second question is, isn’t the point of an expansion to import your original character? I mean, I’m sure there are some people that do want to have a new character, but to me that has almost always seemed pointless. I just don’t see how that’s a huge negative. But I can understand it, a little.
Oh and the odd thing with not having any boots or gauntlets seems to be a major bug. I know you can’t import certain items from Origins over (like the starmetal sword, which I was pissed about). It kind of ruins the point of importing doesn’t it?
I do also like the new classes and abilities that were included, and that you can move and change your attribute points, skills, and talents around. I know I messed up my character by adding some archery and two-handed talents in Origins and it was nice to get rid of them and add them to some class talents.
Like I mentioned above, Runecrafting annoyed me. I hated it. It was way to time consuming and expensive to even do this. Yet you kind of had to in order to get some of the better weapons. I’m amazed you didn’t mention it…
The other things I can understand, the hours of play is a little weird, but it doesn’t bother me all that much. Then again, I really enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins and the expansion, in my eyes, was worth it… Just for the humor. Oh Anders, how you remind me of Minsc and Boo. But I really don’t think it’s worth $40, maybe more like $20 to $30. But hey, at least is wasn’t $60 right? Right? Right…
I didnt see the point in runecrafting myself. I could just have that girl do it for me. I miss that lil dwarf though, “ENCHANTMENT!?”.
1. Thats exactly the problem, everything was far too easy and then the bosses were INSANELY impossible with my party and character set up. Balancing was needed.
2. For Dragon Age: Origins not having an “Origin” for the New warden is just plain lazy. It deserves to be mentioned. Whether you choose to import your character or not.
3. I had a import oddity and I showed it off, are you asking why I showed it? It should be clear why. But i did mention, how to fix it and the really great feature to import from any savepoint.
So it seems like even though you disagree that you agree. LOL. You said its not worth 40$ but it was still fun. Thats what im saying and why I gave it a 5/10 instead of a 2, 3, or 4. Only Hardcore DA fan will find it well valued.
1. Ah I got you now. That makes more sense.
2. I just don’t think it’s a huge negative to the game, just more of an oversight and lazy. But maybe the fact is that there isn’t a backstory other than the reason the other Wardens were there to rebuild the Wardens. Does that make sense?
3. Oh I wasn’t disagreeing with you on that. I totally think it’s a huge problem. I had the exact same problem with my character and I had to reload from a different save point. It’s annoying and stupid that it would do something like that. If you think about it, why is that a problem, didn’t the test the importing feature before releasing it? Yeah, I know that some things don’t transfer (from my research, it’s mostly DLC content), but why would something that was in the original game (my beloved starmetal sword) not transfer? But yes, I’m glad you showed that problem! That really wasn’t a question though, just an observation…
Oh and I don’t think the hardcore Dragon Age fan would be the only one that should pick it up… Really if you liked Origins, even if you aren’t hardcore about the game, I think it’s worth picking up at some point (maybe a used copy) and only hardcore Dragon Age fans should buy it new… Well, wait… That didn’t sound right. Okay, change of wording: Don’t buy it new. Buy it used. Yeah, that’s better.
… actually the starmetal sword was a DLC item… My bad…
You can import DLC items with the proper mods. However, you might not want to do that. Here is a little secret: The stats from affected DLC items (all except those in Return to Ostagar) transfer to your character upon import. You’ll lose the item but keep the stats and use the item slot for something else on top of that.
Damn, and I was really happy to see this coming out. Oh well. As a hardcore DA:O fan I will be getting this, but I expect better in the future. Come on, Bioware! You are better than this!
Let me know how you feel after it ends, you might have a different opinion. But this thing just ends with alot of loose ends. But I’d like to know how others see it.
Why do i have to be a hardcore RPG fan? *Sigh* Brilliant review btw told me everything i needed to know – that i shouldn’t buy it but still … arhhhhhhhhh! You know what your right 13 hours is totally unacceptable as a full price expansion. Especially since it’s from Bioware. Dragon Age: Origins was a brilliant game but they aren’t getting their hands on my money, Final Fantasy 13 is a much saner purchase
Really goddamn good review of the bullshit the game dev’s shove down our throats…..
Great as always Joe.
I am not convinced of this expansion if it is and average should cost like 20-25 dlls.
I am fan of the RPG games and the Dragon AO but still.
I just finish Heavy Rain and BFBC2 great games. Waiting to play FF XIII y God of WAR III.
Then thats likely where your money should go before this expansion.
well many games nowadays are beetween 5-15 hours
And i plaid the original on normal and i didnt have any difficulties
Oh there was the brood mother but everything else was easy. And when 1 of your party members die it doesent make it any harder the condition things dont affect almost in anyways.
And you find health kits or whatever everywhere so they cant be dead forever.
But still i loved that game.
A 5 Hour game is automatically fail. That’s unacceptable, I only know of Terminator Salvation at full retail that was that short.
I’m sorry but an FPS at 15 hours is about right, NOT an RPG. From RPG’s im looking for a bit more, maybe 30-40 Hours. And the Expansions around 20-25, is that unreasonable?
Joe there is a game called Rogue for the 360 where ya can run through in maybe 2 hours…
Sorry it was called rogue warrior from bethesda…..
See, I was excited about this expansion, but the more I hear about it the more I want to wait till its cheaper. I am NOT going to pay $40 for 13 hours. I am just not gonna.
I mean, I paid full price for ME2 and that game I have played through twice, getting about 65 hours of enjoyment thus far (and I am considering a 3rd playthrough haha)
I only have played DA Origins once thus far, and I do want to do it again as I own all the DC for it. But…I just cannot justify 13 hours = $40. For $40 I would expect at LEAST 25 hours of content. PERIOD.
So yea, I think my personal vote here is to wait till it comes down in price.
are you crazy?!?! FPS’s now a days take 8hours max
lol? try with 5 hours?
Meh, I agree. It was a great fun ride, but we should’ve gotten more!
I have to say I have not yet finished the first Dragon Ages yet and bought the Expansion on its release to extend the gameplay of it and I have to agree, the price and hours you are quoting is ridicilous for the amount of hours you get, compared to buying FFXIII for about the same and has about 60 hours of gameplay~~
I agree with most of what was said although if we look at today’s prices for games $40 really isn’t too much for 13-15hrs of average game time since Games which cost $60 like Gears of War and recent release of God of War 3 has similar game length. As for Final Fantasy XIII seeing as the American version is butchered compared to the Original Japanese Version and the 360 port has continuous drops in resolution during cut-scenes I really don’t feel it is any where near a fair comparison to Dragon Age. That being said I would much rather of had a longer length of game play in this expansion but I don’t regret spending the $40 for it, though I would have preferred only spending $30. Also there were a couple minor fixes not mentioned the most important being the added tome for re-specing your character not previously available on consoles, as well as the added monetary gain from quests and mob kills.