Awakening

Remove all ads!

Who plans to buy this game tomorrow?

I know I will be at Best Buy after doing some chores around the house and swapping out the winter tires for the summer ones.

 

Short answer: no.

Long answer: It will be released on the 19th here in the old world. But I will buy it sometime later, probably in April.

 

I just got home from Best Buy. Since I finished DAO 3 or is it now 4 times I decided to give this game a go, well in about 10 minutes.

 

A friend pre-ordered it, and then suddenly had to prepare for a pre-spring break exam so I'm currently playing the game for his sake.
About 30 mins in, game's great so far. Still trying to piece together what happened after Origins.

 

After playing DA Awakening for over 5 hours I'm not impressed as much as I was with DAO. The game throws you right away into a fight without too much back story even if your start the game a new.

A few things if you import a character.

All DLC content from DAO expect Ostagar will not be imported over. You do not have to complete the game to play DA Awakening with an imported character, if you do this the character will be leveled up to level 18.

The new class specific talents (2 weapon, 2 handed weapon, sword & shield, rogue, mage) and specializations cannot be taken until level 20.

A final note from my two different games. If you import a character or if you start a new character the game provides you with warden specific equipment for the character based on the PC class.

The only PC returning is our favorite dwarf and there is one NPC that you pick up that if you played the human origin you may want him killed on the spot.

I do recommend playing it but it is by no way better than DAO.

Game bugs I nocited. Most of the people who I said make a GW do not have a cup in hand when drinking.

 

Haven't been able to play much, but working on it.
BTW, the Helm of Honnleath does transfer into Awakening. The Warden Commander set doesn't though.

 

I bought it yesterday evening and installed it but I didn't get a chance to play yet.

As far as I can see most mods will work with Awakening. At least mods that only change gameplay. That's a good thing.

 

Munchkin you may be experiencing a bug. A cup shows up in my game, although sometimes (usually when an NPC somehow enters the cutscene while in combat stance) the cup doesn't show up.

I've heard of only a few mod problems so far, and mostly from obscure ones. Maybe Bioware made an effort to preserve mod functionality as much as possible.

The number of possible tactic/spell/skill/spec/item combinations so far is overwhelming.

 

I didn't get to test out the high level abilities. How are they?

 

Well the new archer abilities are allowing the party archer to do 100+ damage consistently. Archery is now a lot more powerful single target DPS-wise.
The new Two-hander talents have turned warriors into AoE beasts. The new Sword and Shield skills give your tanker Force Field-like invincibility for a few seconds along with better crowd control skills (a better Taunt, knockdown skills, etc.)
Spec-wise I've only tested the mage ones. Keeper and Battlemage are both mana intensive but very powerful. Keeper seems to favor a caster mage who likes his enemies to stay at a distance/disabled (Spirit Healer, Bloodmage, that type of play style), while Battlemage favors up-close-and-personal mages (nuker Shapeshifters, warrior AW's).

The new Arcane lines are very powerful, one line seems to favor a nuker (+elemental damage, Arcane Shield and misc improvement) while the other favors a crowd-control mage (repulsion aura).

There are too many new skills (and my skill bar can only hold around half of them atm) and I'm still struggling with learning how to use all of them properly. In fact I've decided to let the AI walk me through the game for now, just so I know how the new skills/spells were meant to be used.

 

Been playing it myself today. So far its been disapointing. Not too far in it yet, but it kind of reminds me of Neverwinter 2. From the point where you get the keep. The companions seems kind of boring too. Compared to the original ones anyway. I hope my first impression will change though. Going to finish Awakening this weekends, i suspect.

 

What do you think of the game? Do you like it as much as DAO or do you think the money spent on it was a waste.

 

Hmm. I didn`t really like DAO that much. It was ok. Kind of mediocre, really. I felt it kind of depends on the companions abit too much. The darkspawn invasion seemed to just be in the background, really. On a scale of 1 to 10....DAO is a 6 or 7. Awakening is a 5. Very standard. But its an expansion pack though. Not a full game. Mine cost 24 pounds, and I guessits not bad. Money was spent well enough.

As for Awakening as a game...Somehting is lacking. And it was maybe abit more hack and slash than the original game, I guess. NPC`s were poorer than in the first one as well. Awakening kind of gave me some throne of bhaal vibes. Not storywise, but gamewise. Still, it was ok fun. Am i will probably play through it a second time as well.

 

My dual wielder is a killer. Gotta love those new talents.

Apart from that I like the references to my character's origin (currently playing with a Dwarf Commoner). The NPCs are cool and there are some very funny moments but the game is less story driven and companions don't have much to say to the main character.

Being the chief Grey Warden in Ferelden is cool indeed.

 

Awakening is pretty decent for the most part. I haven't finished it yet but there are some interesting twists and turns.

I have to admit I miss the ability to really chat and get to know your party members like you did in Origins because, to me, it really seemed to flesh out the game play - if you're roaming the area with a group of people you're bound to talk to them while you're out and about. The fact that you have to wait til you're back at Vigil's Keep and hope they have a quest symbol over their head to have any conversation is a bit annoying. I also liked the ability to romance in the first game, because again, you spend enough time with someone something usually ends up happening, but alas they took it out of this game too. Mind you, I love the hack & slash and the ways the game makes you have to think to finish up the quests, but I guess you could say I miss the whole camaraderie feeling you got with the original game. They did a great job with the NPC interaction though when you're listening to the conversations the party has with each other while you're roaming around.

I miss Starfang! I wantses my sword!

And wow, love the new dual-wield and archer talents... I'm stuck on playing rogues (tried warriors and mages, always came back to rogues), and talk about damage dealers!

OK, I'm gonna shut up now lol

 

I wasn't planning on getting Awakening. But I have to admit, all the cool new talents are piquing my interest again. That said - there's no way I'm paying $40 for it. It's a damn expansion. That's an insult. Once the price drops (by the fall, I'm guessing) I'll be more interested, but is it still worth getting? I loved playing through the first time (though I'm finding replays less compelling). Thoughts?

 

DR, I'm in pretty much the same situation as you. I'll most probably get it eventually but I'm not in a hurry and I can wait as long as it takes for the price to drop.

A question for those who had more than one end game save from DAO: did you notice a lot of the decisions you made have an effect on the game? I'm thinking specifically of some of the really major ones such as who's sitting on the throne, whether you got the secret companion, and so on. I know that the "sad" ending is disregarded by Awakening and the expansion just assumes you got the "good" one instead but I'm wondering about some of the other things, especially since major characters could die.

 

I still haven't played all the way through yet, but what I can tell you, without revealing too much (I hope) is that whoever you chose for the throne and what the relationship was (or wasn't) between you and the king/queen is noted pretty much near the beginning. You do also get cameo appearances by some, not all, of your old party members in the game (that's not a spoiler, that's something even Bioware stated). If you got the secret companion, it's also stated that this person will be one of those to make an appearance somewhere in the game.

As far as the expansion assuming you chose the "happy" ending and you're still alive, even if you didn't, that's only if you choose to import that character. You could always choose to create an Orlesian warden who has been promoted to Warden Commander instead. Minor downside to that is you start off at level 18 instead of 20-21ish if you played the majority of DAO and the side-quests, but the mobs in the beginning are around level 13 (according to my character's Master Survival skill) so the level difference isn't too bad. I think I read on the Bioware site that you do get a different reaction from people (and perhaps party members too) if you create an Orlesian character since you're not playing the 'Hero of Ferelden', and of course people still do not look too kindly on the Orlesian people after they had controlled Ferelden for so long. I haven't tried that route yet but I think the next play-through I do I will just so I can see what differences there are, even if they are minor.

 

I found out the day it was released that there was an expansion, went out and bought it, played it, hit a 'game ending' bug the first day (not really game ending unless you love gear). The game was fun without a doubt even after a bug took away all my gear. Annoyed at the EA badness bringing down what would've been a good bioware game, but all-in-all, there's a pretty decent plot, a lot of fun fighting probably 8 of 14 hours playing this game was spent in combat, the other 6 running back and forth working skills and quests, not that I'm complaining .

For the record, if you enter a place called "the silverite mines" or better yet, before you enter it make a save outside the enterence...

Spoiler

You're going to get knocked asleep and wake up in a jail cell after a cutscene.
1. if you're naked/have gear in your inventory/have any pieces of gear you're wearing - reload and take off those specific pieces you're wearing (bug seems to revolve around key to the city ring from Orzamar
2. if you're in plain clothes and all your gear is gone be happy, your game didn't bug out!