Awakening was entertaining, but somewhat overpriced

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I finally purchased Awakening a couple of weeks ago, and just finished it yesterday. All in all, it was a fun expansion. It didn’t exactly compare to the grandeur of Origins, but the story was interesting, the battles were a blast, and the high quality voice acting and level designs really gave it an impressive immersion factor. It felt more like a $30.00 expansion rather than a $40.00 expansion, but as I really needed the escape (my RL job has me working constantly these days… constantly), I’m not going to gripe about this too much.

I encountered a few bugs, like losing some equipment in the Silverite Ruins… though I didn’t mind replaying that section to work around the bug. There were also quest bugs here and there, where an NPC had the quest icon over their head, but no quest dialogues were offered. Fortunately, those only occurred on a couple of very minor quests… and as far as I can tell the game had technically given me credit for having completed them (Bombs Away was one quest where this happened).

I had fun with the runecrafting skill, but a BIG warning to folks who wish to use this. Make SURE that you give runecrafting to your main character, and not one of your companions. The reason for this is that the NPC that sells runes and enchants items is in your “camp” (i.e. the main hall of Vigil’s Keep), but only your main character can access his/her crafting skills while in camp. So I was CONSTANTLY buying runes in the camp, exiting to the courtyard of Vigil’s Keep, and having Anders craft runes. But often I would realize I had forgotten something, or I run out of crafting components. So THEN I would have to go back into the main hall, purchase, and leave again. It’s also annoying that when you are in your camp, you can’t open the runecrafting interface to see what recipes you do and do not have. A great way to work around all of this headache is to simply make your main character your runecrafter. It was bad enough that my son, who would occasionally pop into my office to watch me play, thought I was nuts for going back and forth so often.

Also annoying about runecrafting is that there is no logical sorting of rune recipes. The recipes appear to show up in the order they are added. Once you have a few dozen of them, it becomes a real pain in the neck to determine which recipes you have. If I wanted to craft, say, a masterpiece frost rune I would be forced to look through my entire list to see if I had all the necessary recipes.

“Um, okay, there’s the journeyman version. Alright, uh, where the hell is the expert… oh, there it is. Uh… uh… okay, I have master. Hmm, uh oh, crap, I don’t appear to have grandmaster! Back to the main hall, to see if it's available there, I guess....”

The rune recipes should be grouped by type, so that a player can easily identify any missing recipes in a particular progression. Patch please!

Another gripe is that once your characters are uber high level (I think I ended around level 35), you simply don’t have enough slots on your quick bar to include everything. So you are forced to start pulling stuff off the bar, which for me, ensures that I will never use those abilities again. I would have preferred something akin to NWN2, where your quickbar has multiple “pages.” Again, patch please!

All in all it was an entertaining expansion. It didn’t diverge from what made Origins a great game, which was a safe and smart way for Bioware to play it. I greatly enjoyed learning the new character specializations, abilities and spells. And damn did my characters become powerful in this game. A mage with >900 mana pool is something to be feared. Combat was definitely on the easy side for most battles, but there were a handful of tougher fights, which were always a welcome change of pace.

If I were to give it a rating, I’d give it a solid 7.5. With a more appropriate price tag, I might go as high as an 8 or 8.5. It’s definitely worth picking up if you’re into Dragon Age!

 

I have to admit - this part gave me the major giggles. I'm not one for really giggling but that did it Now I know what to do if I ever decide to pick up Runecrafting the next time I play Awakening. My problem is the fact that I really really utilized the storage chest in Vigil's Keep so there were quite a few times I'd get somewhere and then start cursing at myself because I left something I wanted or needed in the chest and had to run back to get it. Then again, I do that often enough outside of the game that it shouldn't surprise me - I don't know how many times I'd leave my house and get halfway to where I'm going before realizing that something I needed to have with me, or wanted to have with me, was sitting on the dining room table. (It's worse when it ends up being textbooks you need for a class and your main mode of transportation is the public bus.)

As far as the bugs you came across - when it comes to the Silverite Mines, some people think that it's certain equipment that causes it, but I don't quite believe that - some say the Key to the City ring you can get in Orzammar is the culprit, others say it's modded items that cause it, yet there are those of us who have had both equipped and have had no issues either way. One way to tell if you are bugged when you get there is if your PC wakes up in their skivvies (or nude if you have the body mods) instead of in commoner clothing. If that's the case, it's been suggested that you unequip everything you have then load a save that you hopefully did right before you went into the mines, and then just pick all your stuff up in the chest right before you get to the last area. Personally I haven't had any issues, but I'm also knocking on wood that it stays that way.

One last thing - just my 2 cents worth - I really enjoyed your write up on Awakening so why not also post it in the Playground section of the forum and list it up as a review? Tal has a sticky in there on how to go about doing that. I think others would enjoy it too!

 

@Celtic

I'm glad you enjoyed my write up. I hadn't intended to create a "review" when I started typing. I was just wanting to share some quick impressions of the expansion. But I guess I got lucky and actually managed to write something that was halfway cohesive.

Sure, I'll post it in the Playground. I appreciate the feedback.

 

No problem! Perhaps it's because I'm the editor-in-chief of my college's newspaper, but sometimes, without thinking about it, I read things from the mindset of an editor and not a reader. When I read your post about Awakening, my thought was "wow, others would really get a good sense of the game from this" as well as thinking of how fun it was to read.

 

How much time in game play is in Awakening?

 

A fair estimate would be around 20 hours (considering 60 hours for the original game).

It's definitely worth it if you liked DAO but bear in mind that any class (and I mean any class) will be overpowered with all the new abilities (HLAs in BG2 were a joke in comparison).

 

Indeed, by the end of the game Justice was critting with his longsword for over 700 damage. OMG... still!

 

You should see the wicked damage you can do as an archer with the Rain of Arrows ability. Darkspawn were dropping like flies... not to mention, there's a rogue talent perfect for dual wielders that has you spinning from opponent to opponent in a defined area and you can get them down to at least half health making it easier for the rest of your party to pick them off one by one... gawd I love my rogues!