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Seller Cosmic-King
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| |  | DieCast | Home » » Dragon Age: Origins Awakening | | | | | | | Description: | | "From the Makers of the Best RPG of 2009, Dragon Age: Origins, comes the first official expansion pack. For centuries, the Grey Wardens—the ancient order of guardians, sworn to unite and defend the lands—have been battling the darkspawn forces. Legend spoke that slaying the Archdemon would have put an end to the darkspawn threat for centuries to come, but somehow they remain. You are the Grey Warden Commander and have been entrusted with the duty of rebuilding the order of Grey Wardens and uncovering the secrets of the darkspawn and how they managed to remain. How you choose to rebuild your order, how you resolve the conflict with “The Architect”, and how you determine the fate of the darkspawn will be but some of the many complex choices that await and shape your journey as you venture to the new land of Amaranthine. " | | | Features: | |
• Experience additional spells, abilities, specializations, and items to further personalize and customize your hero and party ? Import your character from Dragon Age: Origins or start anew as a Grey Warden from Oralais.
• Embark on an epic story that is completely defined and reactive to your play style ? Shape your entire experience based on the choices you make and how your handle complex situations.
• Encounter five all-new party members and an old favorite from Dragon Age: Origins.
• BioWare?s deepest universe to date just got bigger with an all new area of the world to explore, Amaranthine ? Unlock the secrets of the Darkspawn and their true motivations ? Rebuild the Grey Warden order.
• Battle against a new range of horrific and terrifying creatures ? Put your skills to the test against an evolved, intelligent breed of Darkspawn and other menacing creatures including the Inferno Golem, Spectral Dragon and others.
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Weight:
| 0.2 pounds | | Package Length:
| 7.6 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.3 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.6 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.25 pounds | | Release Date:
| March 16, 2010 | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 37 reviews |
| | | Game Information: | | | Platform:
| Xbox 360 | | Media:
| CD | | Item Quantity:
| 1 |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
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 Great GameJul 16, 2010
This is a great game. You really do have to play the main game first though. The in game NPC players have a great sense of humor and will keep you laughing. Word of warning though is that you really do need to be over 18 to play this game.
Great expansionJun 26, 2010
This expansion to Dragon Age Orgins, pales in size to the original game, but it nevertheless a good size expansion. The cost may be a little much at first release, but I did really enjoy playing the expansion. You start at a high level and get to fully utilize plenty of high level abilities, weapons and armor throughout the expansion. The stories, quests and characters are overall pretty good, as are the voice acting and graphics. There are a decent amount of choices for an expansion game and some detailed endings. I thought it was pretty well done and certainly worth playing for anyone who liked DA Orgins.
 Impressive Add-On.Jun 23, 2010
After the last game, you and your fellow Grey Wardens dealt with the Archdemon and brought peace to Ferelden. Note, the term eternal peace isn't written here. That's because the peace is far too short-lived. You hold fort at the Vigil's Keep as you seek to deal with a Darkspawn outbreak in the area of Amaranthine. You must recruit a group to assist you in battling your enemy (only one of which is a returning member of the original party you had). You have a raised level cap (I got as high as level 34 before I ended, so I don't know if the cap is 35 or non-existent) and a wealth of new, quite awesome talents and abilities.
The plot is a bit hard to delve into without giving a lot of it away (though, to be honest, it is rather baffling to try and grasp unless one read the books...which I did not). Your party is quite well fleshed out, with Justice ending up as being one of the most memorable characters Bioware has yet to produce. The quest takes place over a lot less area than the original title does, but there is no lack of content and the add-on pack if one grinds through missions alone, will probably hit about 10 hours. But, there are side missions aplenty and many other distractions to drag things out longer.
One of the big things the game introduces is that you have to try and keep the peace. Which means, you have to pick sides in domestic conflicts, which can lead to some rather difficult choices (feed the peasants, or allow them to ransack the granary and possibly starve everybody?). That they do give your character ample reputation in the realm is a nice touch. The game doesn't tend to draw itself too closely to the original title (you will run into some of your old allies here and there and everybody knows what you did earlier...but the game still feels really distinct from its original).
You are also given the much-desired ability to re-spec yourself. Hate the build your character has? Pay 6 gold to a merchant, buy a Tome of Focus (or something like that) and you can reallocate everything. This helps a lot because you can easily pursue a path of development that doesn't work very well for you and, in the original, you couldn't do much about it. You have a lot of different abilities and some new classes as well. Unlike the original, you unlock all of the special classes by buying them at merchants and not via missions or the like.
There are some issues. Bringing over loot from the original is really random as some stuff will be in your inventory and lots won't be and there is no explanation why some things are missing. Some of the major villains aren't explained at all in the story, which definitely hurts things. The big new ability, runecrafting, just seems like a tedious waste of time. Then again, I also thought poison-making and herbalism were bores in the original, so perhaps the issue is on this end.
The biggest thing the game provides is the power to make one feel like a righteous bad dude. In this game, make no bones about it, you are brutally powerful if you want to be. You have talents and abilities to make yourself overwhelmingly strong against all but the mightiest enemies and it is rather enjoyable to be able to just slaughter several foes at a single time. Giving a warrior attacks that work over a large area definitely makes them quite valuable. Mages are still comically powerful, but such is life.
DAO: A is well worth the $40 and a truly phenomenal expansion pack in a world where nobody seems to do them. It's not a sequel, but it's a nice addition with some really good changes to the original to make it well worth the investment of time and money.
 Unfortunate DisappointmentJun 11, 2010
No Spoiler Review
I will begin this review like so many before me by saying that I am a long time fan of Bioware products. I have simply loved every RPG they've made since the original Baldur's Gate. Even after the extraordinary let down of this expansion I still hold out that Bioware is one of the top tier game developers out there. Now, that said lets get to why this expansion isn't worth your time or money.
Character Development:
This has to be one of the most prevalent issues with this game. Dragon Age: Origins was rich with story and character background, not only yours, but that of your companions. It actually took time throughout your playthrough of the game to get to know your comrades in arms, and it was actually quite easy for me as the players to get so immersed that I found myself actively liking and disliking them. This however is not the case for Awakening.
A lot of people have commented on how lame the Orlesian Grey Warden is, due to his lack of "Origin". Well I will counter, not really different from your imported character. After recently finishing DA:O Awakening I feel I can say this with a fresh memory of what I've just experienced and honestly, nothing you do in DA:O transfers over to Awakening with the exception of who you put on the throne, and even that might be altered drastically depending on the romances you set up in DA:O. So honestly, my opinion onthe Orlesian... Great idea. Allows those who just picked up Awakening by accident not realizing DA:O was the original to play through without having to start at level 1 and miss what new content was added for this expansion.
As for your new party members. I just didn't care for any of them, with the exception of one familiar face. Each on of them felt like they were trying to rush themselves into my character (and my own) affections. In most cases my character knows these people less than a day and they're already best friends. Felt hackneyed. Hated it.
Added Content:
This was another major disappointment for me. This expansion pack actually felt like it was taking more away from the original than adding. You're confined to Ameranthine. There is no going outside of Ameranthine. You just have... Ameranthine... And while they do a decent enough job of trying to fool you into believing this is a large new land to explore... It simply isn't. In fact, not only is is small, its also boring! Its every generic landscape thats been in every B-rated RPG for the past ten years! I wasn't wowed once by any of the locales.
I would've loved to been able to explore the rest of Fereldan, see how my actions affected it, check out the gradual rebuild of Denerim and Redcliffe, alas, I'm stuck in dusty old Ameranthine.
The new specializations aren't all that great either. With the exception of the two new rogue specializations I didn't find the other four to be all that useful. The new skills really didn't affect the outsome of any of my battles either with the exception of increased hardiness.
Now this brings up a MAJOR beef of mine. The new Runecrafting, and, well, other crafting abilities. For some reason, the people of Ameranthine, they can't make anything on their own! Holy crap! I LOATHE crafting, in any game, HATE IT! While its a horrendous affair in most games, Awakening has given me a all new hatred for this game mechanic. Not only do you have to craft all your own ruins, and the majority of the more effective potions, BUT you have to do so under the confines of your extremely limited inventory space which naturally I didn't waste my character's talent points on runecrafting so I had to suffer through loading screens every time I wanted to make new runes but would run out of materials (due to not having enough inventory space) and have to return to the shop to get more blank runestones to go out and suffer another loading screen to make my runestones again.
Now you might ask, why even go through all that trouble? They make it kinda mandatory. In order to get the weapon weapon in the game, well, you gotta make runestones. CURSE YOU BIOWARE! Ahem... Sorry.
As for weapons and armor, while they did recieve a texturing update to most of the new sets that made them look quite attractive, there are no new models to speak of so you're still looking at the same armor types as you did throughout your whole DA:O experience. Not a big deal really, but for the price I expected more.
Story:
Its a decent enough plot. Rushed, short, but decent. I imagine though everything that happened in this expansion will merely be a footnote in the next expansion. Can't really say a lot here without any spoilers so I'll leave it at that.
Overall Experience:
Not not worth the $40 pricetag. At best this is a $20 expansion, and even then I feel like thats stretching it. My recommendation if you absolutely must play this game is to either rent (easily beaten in the usual rental timeframe), or wait until you can find a used copy for $20 or less. Not a bad idea really considering I predict before the year is out they'll be releasing another expansion to tie up the whole Darkspawn/Grey Warden storyline. Not really part of my review, but my money is on Dragon Age 2 being set in Tevinter and no I don't think they'll be importing characters from DA:O (which isn't really a bad thing considering my Grey Warden started his adventure in his thong with this import).
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Great, but needs the original to enjoy to the fullest!Jun 05, 2010
So i definitely loved the game, but the issue was that in order to enjoy it even more, you need to play the Original. I only purchased this expansion, and was limited to just one new storyline, instead of the many options in the original.
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