I was fairly unimpressed with Awakening. I admit, I haven't finished Awakening yet, even after getting it on release day, but really, that's symptomatic of the problems.
The first fifteen minutes of the game were fine (about of Dragon Age standard), but the next fifteen were nigh unbearable for me. It involved throwing a lot of new names at me, characters I didn't care about and can't imagine ever caring about, as well as cutscene after cutscene of endless, dull exposition about... well, not much, really. I threw a swanky "party" for some folks that apparently didn't matter, then got tossed into the world with no sense of what to do next.
And this was what irked me most about this game. There was suddenly too much to do, no reason for me personally to be doing any of it (don't I have people for this?), and absolutely no sense of direction or, most importantly, urgency. The first fifteen minutes gave me a villain that interested me, then I killed him. I felt like nothing I had to do was important. Everything felt like side-questing. I understand that it improves later, but why should I be forced to sit through mediocrity to get to what I would typically consider the standard for this franchise?
Also, I miss being around the old map. The whole expansion simply feels too detached. It's more like its own game than anything.
Everything I've said would be forgiveable from any other RPG on the planet, but I expected so much better. I guess the biggest thing this expansion suffers from is paling compared to the original. Aren't expansions meant to be more of the same, instead of more of something slightly worse?
