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[Loerwyn]

"Eh" would sum it up well.
I'll try break it down to make it easier to read/review. This is for
the PC version

Friendly Characters:
Anders -
Awesome.
Sigrun - Awesome.
Nathaniel - Good
Justice - Got
him too late to form a real opinion
Velanna - Got her before
Justice but didn't give her much time.
Oghren - Didn't use him
much.
But really, BioWare? Please stop using actors in Mass
Effect and Dragon Age, it's really ruining immersion for me, or at
least get them to do different voices. Even if they're great, I can't
shake the fact that Varel = Zaeed Massani. And even though the
VA is different, Alistair and Anders sound a little too
similar, especially in combat.

Enemy Characters:
Utha
- Eh, nothing was explained about her to those who haven't read
"The Calling"; myself included. There should really
have been a better explanation.
The Architect - Now, this one had
me wondering, especially at the end. Was he good? Was he bad? Is
he trying to trick me? I wasn't sure so I decided that the safest
thing to do was, well, to kill him.
The Mother - Yawn. Yawn. Yawn.
Creation goes wrong. Been there, done that, got the various
novels/games. From her first appearance, it was quite clear that she
was going to be a fight in the game, and I guessed (correctly) that
she is a final fight option.

The Pre-Ending Story:
This
is probably the weakest part of the game for me. Two factions of
Darkspawn (effectively Father vs Daughter, in that the Mother = a
creation of the Architect) are fighting each other and running riot
in and under Amaranthine and just, basically, making a mess of
things. So you're given a Keep to upgrade (Neverwinter Nights 2,
maybe?) and troops to upgrade the gear of (Neverwinter Nights 2
again) whilst solving the issues of your people (Neverwinter Nights 2
again!). You find materials to upgrade their gear or your keep whilst
solving these issues (I've got to say it again, Neverwinter Nights
2), and have to do a non-essential loyalty mission for your
companions. Of course, there's different outcomes and “incomes”
(as in things carried from Origins), so I can't say I've seen every
single combination, but it just is a bit poorly done.
I'm supposed to be busy fighting
Darkspawn and saving Ferelden yet again, so why am I the one
running around finding resources? Why am I the one convincing
traders to come? And why am I the one who has to go save some
daughter of a poncy bloke? Well, I guess I have to thank the
Darkspawn for their patience in these matters.
It's very similar structure to Origins,
in my opinion. You start, get a few companions in the first place
(Ostagar/Lothering is Vigil's Keep, where you get Oghren, Mhairi,
Anders & Nathaniel, just as you got Alistair, Morrigan, Dog, Sten
& Leliana from Ostagar/Lothering), you do three “companion”
zones to gain them (Justice, Velanna and Sigrun) and you can visit
Amaranthine whenever you want to do some side quests, just as you
would visit Denerim to do the same.
It works, I guess, but felt a bit dry.




Gameplay:
Same as Origins, really. But I have to
commend BioWare on giving you your healer very near the start
(Anders), because that was a bit of a problem, for me, with Origins.
If you wanted Wynne, then you had to do the Circle Tower
first, admittedly my least favourite bit of the game.

Sadly, the gameplay is bugged. A lot.
Approvals depend more on timing than on conversations! With Velanna
and Justice, at least, I got +100 approval for basically nothing.
Velanna gave it once I recruited her, and Justice once I'd given him
an item. I also found myself unable to get 100 approval with some
companions due to the sheer lack of gifts and points from dialogue.
BioWare should either have increased the gain from gifts, made the
+100 bonus either non-existent or unconditional, and added extra
gifts to allow you to keep it at 100 if you have no gifts left.
Sadly, there's a Fade section but it's
much better than the Circle one, although it gives stat bonuses and I
couldn't really work out why. They really weren't necessary. It
flowed pretty well though, and was over shortly, although I couldn't
say I found it too enjoyable.
As for stats/gear/drops? Ugh. My
character felt ridiculously powerful by the end (especially with
massacre), I had too many talent points, and constitution is still
relatively useless. I came very close to dying once. My character's
profile is reading that I have 99 strength, including bonuses! The
gear is still strongly aimed towards melee, and warriors in
particular. I got some nice staves and some nice robes, but overall I
think it's still best for warriors. The character I imported was
about level 9, so she got boosted to 18. I finished on 30 and I
hadn't done every side/companion quest. Levelling is too quick in
Awakening!
And gems. Gems... Yeah, was I meant to
save them or not? I was swimming in gold and my chest was filled with
gems and low-level runes. I was really puzzled by Shale drops (i.e.
crystals) from time to time, sub-tier 8 gear and novice/journeyman
runes. If you don't take runecraftingything then you're really stuck
for runes, not that I found them necessary with the power of
weapons/armor. At least Origins was very forgiving in terms of
crafting, and I wish Awakening carried this on.
The addition of Stamina potions is
amazing, though, and I'm really thankful BioWare added them. They're
useful especially if you're a 2H warrior without a set bonus.




Performance & Bugs:
Generally it performed alright, but
Blackmarsh/Dragonbone Wastes upto the Mother gave me some issues. It
started to really, really stutter and jerk around and sometimes go
smooth, but then back to stuttering. I've no idea what brought it on,
but it annoyed me quite a bit. There were times when the map lagged
and some really long loading going on, which I thought 1.03 was
supposed to address.



Some quests don't trigger at all, and
it's a pain. There's also a lot of ambiguity in the quest text and it
can get a bit frustrating. BioWare really should have tested this
better, because it's a shame that I couldn't do some personal quests.
Sigrun and Velanna's quests didn't trigger for me, and Oghren's quest
was very vague and I couldn't continue with it, and I assume it's
because of my approval. I'd given him all his gifts, yet wasn't
really past ~60 so I couldn't continue.




Ending:
Boring. Most disappointing end ever.
Kill the Mother (that was my ending, anyways), walk off, epilogue.
The epilogue was alright but not overly interesting. Not to mention
the completely non-obvious hint at a sequel/DLC/another expansion. To
me, however, the ending didn't seem too correct for my character. She
wouldn't “disappear” at all!



Conclusion:
Good but not amazing. Close but no
cigar. Playable not overly replayable. There's not a great enough
number of choices to really get more than a few runs out of it before
every choice has been done. If the quest bugs were fixed, I think I
would enjoy this a lot more and get a lot more out of it. I love
seeing my little dwarf run around in Sentinel armor and stab stuff
with her sword (The Mother's Chosen), but I honestly think BioWare
could have done much better with this. Awakening, in my opinion,
should have been put back until May at least and they should have put
the time into bug fixing and tweaking the game.

I'll recommend the expansion easily,
but I would suggest to wait for a patch to fix the near-game breaking
bugs I experienced, and the game-breaking ones others have.

Modifié par OnlyShallow89, 20 mars 2010 - 05:40 .

[Venatio]

Well, that echoes the majority of forum opinions. Namely lots of bugs, not enough replay value and it should have been held back.

[Loerwyn]

Indeed. Apologies if the formatting made it hard to read, it's the fault of the silly forum software.



I don't want BioWare to think I disliked Awakening, because I didn't. I liked it BUT the expansion suffered too heavily from its bugs. I suppose I was lucky in that I didn't get any game breaking ones, but the ones I did experience detracted from the game for me.

[Atrea]

I share your opinion but I have to add that even on Nightmare the game was really easy. I felt a lot of things were rushed. For example I found the event where that Howe girl pulls a coup really interesting. But it was over before I knew it. I liked the court sessions too but they didn't seem to have much effect on anything too. I liked the idea of rebuilding and managing an army but it just falls short.



I found it disappointing you could not save Amaranthine and the keep. I thought if I fortified the Keep enough then they would survive. Or give us 2 teams like in Origins.

There was barely any depth in your companions except Nathaniel and Oghren because of Origins. You should have been able to talk to your companions like in Origins. Maybe not everyone forcing their past on you but at least something.

[Venatio]

Atrea wrote...

I share your opinion but I have to add that even on Nightmare the game was really easy. I felt a lot of things were rushed. For example I found the event where that Howe girl pulls a coup really interesting. But it was over before I knew it. I liked the court sessions too but they didn't seem to have much effect on anything too. I liked the idea of rebuilding and managing an army but it just falls short.

Esmeralle? She wasnt a Howe, she was just the baroness of Amaranthine City. Had little to no connection to the Howe family or else Nathaniel would have commented.

Modifié par Venatio, 20 mars 2010 - 06:21 .

[mousestalker]

I agree very much with your review. The expansion is a bit too buggy for a release, too hurried and I paid too much for what was delivered. I'd recommend waiting for a patch before buying.



I don't dislike it, either.

[Loerwyn]

Well, thanks for the agreements. I was expecting people to say my review was tripe

Awakening could have been an amazing expansion, but to me it felt like a mixture of Neverwinter Nights 2, the colour Brown and Dragon Age: Origins.

Y'know, add two pinches of Origins, a dollop of Brown and a few NWN2 herbs, bake until half cooked and then serve.

[SSH83]

nice review. valid points. i echo your opinion on NWN2 reference. I was half expecting building up a keep, recruiting non-companion wardens to go on fetching missions, patrol missions, training, etc. I wonder why that didn't happen... Though I think that may be more Obsidian's style than Bioware's.

As for the ending, I thought it was weak too, but I have a feeling that it's because of the RP choices that I made (send soldiers to guard farmland, causing Amaranthine to be lost, but i chose to stay at Amaranthine to secure it anyways because I though Vigil could hold long enough for me to go back there.) I ended up with a pretty nice Amaranthine fight (makes total sense that they would use smuggler tunnel!! i totally didn't think of that), but no Vigil keep defense fight! booo. I also noticed that I never needed to get on the battlement areas in Amaranthine even though there are so many of them. Do you only go there when you put soldiers at Amarathine at the beginning of the game?  Or are they really wasted potential?  Actually, I'm going to load my save (good thing I made one right before I started the end game!) and see what happens if i leave Amaranthine to burn.

Modifié par SSH83, 20 mars 2010 - 09:17 .

[Loerwyn]

The battlements, in my playthrough, didn't play much of a part. I used them once or twice for a sidequest but that was about it.

[Bitterfoam]

OnlyShallow89 wrote...

Well, thanks for the agreements. I was expecting people to say my review was tripe
Awakening could have been an amazing expansion, but to me it felt like a mixture of Neverwinter Nights 2, the colour Brown and Dragon Age: Origins.
Y'know, add two pinches of Origins, a dollop of Brown and a few NWN2 herbs, bake until half cooked and then serve.

I wouldn't call it a tripe review. I would call it a subjective review. And, as such, I'd call it your opinion more than a review.

[ejoslin]

Ummmm, a review is nothing BUT someone's opinion. It's not like you can be OBJECTIVE about a videogame! Unless discussing the code or something.