Dragon Age: Origins Awakening is more of the same Dragon Age contained within the original game. Assuming that you liked the first game, Dragon Age, there isn't much to complain about here. More campaigns, more items, more monsters. There is very little innovation compared to the first title, but again, why mess with a good thing? One criticism is that the expansion should have contained all of the DLC that we shelled out 10 bucks a piece for - we old-school gamers recall that in the days of dial-up, expansions rightly should have been at least 50% of the size of the original game. Ultimately, this expansion comes highly recommended!

A very good RPG developed by BioWare with very interesting character background choices. Plays a bit like Neverwinter Nights in a new setting. The graphics are good, the skill trees are well developed and the combat is often thought provoking if you play on higher difficulties and in turn based mode.

More of the same from Dragon Age and not really in the good way. The only interesting thing is the Assassin's Creed 2 style home base management. Other than that just a darkspawn slaying grind.

The sequel is more of the same. It is a nice way to continue the story, but it suffers from the same problems than the original. Horrific click fest, balance is a dream (it is incredibly easy most of the time, until it hits you with scripted sequences in which you are overwhelmed by masses of enemies thrown at you, pathetic…). Again, did I have a good time with it? Yes, I did. Would I pay full price for a game like this? Certainly not.

More Dragon Age is always good, but this expansion will likely leave you a bit disappointed. Why they chose Oghren as the sole character to stay in your party I have no idea. Other characters spend a few brief moments onscreen, are mentioned in text only, or aren't mentioned at all.

The combat remains as gratifying as ever, but the story doesn't feel quite as satisfying as the original, though I appreciate Bioware not trying to undermine the epic conclusion of the original.

Perhaps if the replacement characters were more engaging and more characters returned it would be easy to recommend. While it is nice to have more game to play you'll be left wanting something more.

Awakening is by no means a bad game, and it's certainly nice to have a full-length expansion pack instead of simply even more DLC.

The game still feels like Dragon Age and I was happy to get another 20 hours of play out of Awakening. The new areas were nice to explore and there's a good number of new quests to complete.

On the downside, I felt much less attached to my new companions as they seemed to have a lot less to say than the ones in Origins and even Oghren seemed to become a mere caricature of himself and felt less fleshed out than he had in the first game. And it's a real shame too, because there are some very fascinating companions...they're just not really fleshed out enough.

But perhaps the most disappointing aspect of Awakening is that it completely refuses to recognize one of the possible endings of Origins, and even playing as the Grey Warden leaves you feeling a little underwhelmed as there is little reference to the events of Origins...even Oghren has little to say about the previous adventures we'd shared.

From a company that prides themselves on offering choice it seems a poor choice to ignore major decisions from players...and this severely hurts the game, fun though it might still be.

I'm one of the few who actually find Awakening better than Origins. The Companions are less "cliché", the story unfold better and the villains are actually villains and not just misguided people. But it was a bit short.

I was also lucky to only encounter one bug.

This was a great sequel to the original. But for the price it was too short and it does not allow you finish quests after the final scene. For me this was not worth my money.