I played slowly enough, listened to conversations, enjoyed side quests and took my sweet runecrafting time, so my playthrough took 19 hours.I think I enjoyed it. I wish there was more dialogue: just like with Origins, Awakening first teases you with lots and lots of interaction, and then it abruptly falls to "almost none", which is a pity.
But setting was good, areas were pretty, some of the side quests were funny, and main quests were not boring. It was a good expansion, though nothing of the Throne of Bhaal magnitude. Three "big" quests, some small ones(many of them are only one conversation long, but there _are_ a lot of them!), and all of them are "of Dragon Age value" - they are as good as vanilla Dragon Age quests.
I might replay it, though not right away. I think I played the first time "right", but there were consequences of my choices that still upset me somewhat.
Major spoilers below.
I noticed no major bugs, except for some companions seem to start with 100 approval, which is strange. And one last Joining Ritual could not be completed(by the point you've gathered _all_ Awakening companions, it is time for final battle sequence. It's not just one battle, it takes a good hour to play, but nevertheless, Sigrun never became a Warden in my game).
Also, as I mentioned in another thread, there are some flirty replies with Anders, and after his quest's completion, his companion meter points to "Love". Which was very sweet, but there're no mentions of that in the epilogue, though he stays with the Wardens and so does the PC.
I was disappointed by the fact that the epilogue said that my character mysteriously disappeared several years after the events of the expansion(though it was said she'd be heard from again - meaning another expansion? I wonder...). It annoyed me somewhat, because I played as a dedicated Warden, and I wanted to stay and work in Amaranthine. Ah well. Maybe there will be another good expansion, who knows?
So, there are two major choices in the game.
1) First, there are two villains: Architect and Mother. Architect is a "well-spoken villain", and (Brood)Mother is a "nasty, ugly, kill-kill-kill villain". The game offers you a choice not to kill Architect, because he wants to stop the Blights: make the darkspawn intelligent, and then they would no longer listen to archdemons. "Intelligent darkspawn? Nonono", thought I, and one minute later, Architect was dead.
(by the way, in the game Architect's darkspawn seem to be responsible for most everyting. To start with, Architect created the Mother).
2) Second choice: at the end of the game you choose whether to defend the city of Amaranthine or the Vigil's Keep. Throughout the game, you acquire upgrades for the Vigil's Keep, so the clear choice seems to be: defend Amaranthine and let the Vigil's Keep defend on its own. People reported that it is possible to save both.
I must say that at the beginning of the game you have to assign your troops, and if you assigned them all to protect the arling(trade routes, mines, farms, city and granite deposits), Vigil's Keep WILL fall at the end of the game. It did fall in my game, alas. But the epilogue seemed to state I did everything right: people of Amaranthine were grateful that I protected the arling, Keep was soon rebuilt, trade flowed and farmers were grateful.
I did felt terrible that Oghren, Velanna and Sigrun were killed in the battle, but it turned out that only Sigrun(Legion of the Dead deserter) was killed; Oghren survived and Velanna disappeared. Which was a relief. No romantic epilogue with Anders, though. Sniff, sniff.
So, this was Awakening, brought to you by Kulyok! I hope you enjoyed it as much(or, better, more!) than I did. It's been good.
Did anyone else like the Blight Orphans? I giggled for an hour.
