DA: Awakening - Reviews @ GameBanshee, 2404

I was going to do a full Awakening roundup but these two were sent in, so let's run with them for now. GameBanshee has posted a fairly critical review of Awakening:

Overall, I was underwhelmed by Awakening. The expansion pack is competently made, and it might provide you with 15-20 hours of entertainment, but as I played it I kept feeling like I was getting Origins leftovers. Now, I enjoy leftovers from time to time, but I'm not really a fan of paying $40 for them, especially when they could have used a few more minutes in the microwave. So buyer beware. If more of the same sounds good to you, then you’ll probably like Awakening. But if you were hoping for something new and unique, then not so much.

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...and a more positive one at 2404.org, with a score of 8.1/10:

Still, when distilled down to its core, I did enjoy Awakening a little bit more than I did Origins. I found the focus in the story to be very strong, and I always felt like what I was doing was important or building towards some goal. Perhaps Origins would have benefitted from a bit more focus and less needless map screen marching, which still makes an appearance here but is far less annoying. I would love to describe and discuss the ending and my observations about the importance of the decisions you make within the game, but that would add far too many spoilers to a simple review (expect an upcoming blog discussion). Overall Awakening is an expensive but fun extension to a quality game and easily recommended to fans of the series.

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More information.

@Gamebanshee
I can agree with the bugs and the lack of the new content (classes) being available for the original game. Also, while it's indeed the typical Bioware format "go solve the problems of 3 area's", I have to add that I thought that those 3 areas were a lot more intresting than those in Origins.

I also thought the new partymembers were a lot better written. The same thing could actually be said about the entire story too. It might be less hours than origins, but those 15 hours felt more "filled" and a little better written. So calling it "underwhelming" is a bit too harsh if you ask me (concidering it's an expansion pack afterall).

But then again, there are plenty of others that said the same thing. Quite a few of them were also the ones who paid 40€ for it (Which I agree is too high for any expansion, blame the console tax!).

That'll teach you console players (since it's only 25-30€ for pc)!

I think that level design of those three recruiting/story areas was a step up in comparison with basic game. Other than that, it´s way too much of the same. New skills/talents are quite interesting, but unbalancingly easy encounters render them more or less redundant.

Heaps of resource reusage is too obvious.

The expansion certainly shows some promise into future, but as an extension of the original game feels unnecessary, because it largely ignores it.

Without Ascension and SCS, Throne of Bhaal was also a bit underwhelming expansion, but it suceeded as a direct continuation of BG story nevertheless and became pretty much essential addition to it.
Awakening just doesn´t cut it like that, and well, feels superfluous in the end.

The level of polish left something to be desired as well - my imported thief was unable to detect traps and, probably thanks to mandatory 1.03 patch, pickpocketing didn´t work as well.

All in all, solid expansion, but definitely not worth the initial price.

Davion said:

@Gamebanshee
I can agree with the bugs and the lack of the new content (classes) being available for the original game. Also, while it's indeed the typical Bioware format "go solve the problems of 3 area's", I have to add that I thought that those 3 areas were a lot more intresting than those in Origins.

I also thought the new partymembers were a lot better written. The same thing could actually be said about the entire story too. It might be less hours than origins, but those 15 hours felt more "filled" and a little better written. So calling it "underwhelming" is a bit too harsh if you ask me (concidering it's an expansion pack afterall).

But then again, there are plenty of others that said the same thing. Quite a few of them were also the ones who paid 40€ for it (Which I agree is too high for any expansion, blame the console tax!).

That'll teach you console players (since it's only 25-30€ for pc)!

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So i am not the only one who actually enjoyed it more than Origins.

I think that in complete Awakening is more tight. Darkspawn finally gain some intelligence which was more than needed fix for a completely broken concept ( creatures with mind of beast insects wearing highly advanced armors (full plates) and using bows and swordfighting )

Also new class skills are welcome fixes to brokenish rpg ruleset of DAO