Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Almost, but not quite"

I like how Bioware added more enjoyment to the game. Awakening plays more like a DLC than what I would expect from a full on expansion, companions were generic with little redeeming qualities. For whatever reason Bioware took out the very things that made origins special, for example, they took out the interacting with your party members at camp and instead, have this non intuitive way of party members where they will say something only if you are at the right place, at the right time, with the right item. Even when you do get to interact with characters, its pretty shallow and doesn't feel so much as you are interacting with them, than simply hearing what quest they want. There is no deep emotional stories, history, banter, romance, philosophy,etc that was present in the first game, its just the bare bone facts and then they shut up like clams until whatever random activation mechanism gets them to talk again.
Though the story is well written, and the playthrough is fun enough, But due to the linear playstyle and lack of any character development, there is really little reason to play more than once. There is this liner generic rpg quests that seemed mostly just time killer, search all over map for dragon bones, search all over map for rare seeds, search all over map for particular tree...etc, much of it was pretty boring leg work. There isn't any unique quests besides the main ones, also, there are very few places to go, I know this is an expansion, but you only have ONE city you can go to and its very small.
The new skills are nice to have, each class has a new row of advanced skills which have level requirements rather than any stat pre-requisites, also the added items were nice too though very few had any significant impact on gameplay and the storage container at the Vigil was a welcome addition as well.
Overall this is a game worth playing but as a sequel to a great game I think it falls short in many areas in filling it's predecessor shoes.