Dragon Age: Origins on the PC featured a robust tactical combat system, allowing players to pause the action at any point to issue orders to the group, take direct control of any party member, or customize automated behavior with a wide variety of preset A.I. Commands. This system is intact for Awakening, and much of the joy of the game derives from maneuvering the party around the battlefield, launching devastating magic spells while taking care not to incinerate your own team members, and moving opportunistic rogues into position for lethal sneak attacks.

In addition, the new campaign contains a few new high level abilities and specializations for every class. Some classes and character types made out well with the new abilities (for instance Archers received a much needed boost in power.) The new additions for other character types, however, sometimes feel a bit redundant. There are only so many ways you can repackage knockdown abilities or multiple melee attack combos. For the most part, the new abilities and specializations only supplement or enrich those from Origins. Those players looking for a fundamentally different class gameplay experience will probably not find it in Awakening.

All the new abilities do, however, tend to clog the already congested single hotkey bar, a pet peeve of players of the original game that remains unchanged. Luckily, Awakening introduces unlimited respecs for any character in the party for a nominal fee. For better or for worse, players are now able to more efficiently optimize characters in light of the new options, and remove older abilities that might now be deadweight. There are always drawbacks to open respecs, like the loss of a feeling of commitment to identity to a character concept, but given the new skills, which an imported character couldn't have planned for, it seems necessary. This also means that players can now choose to take companions with them based more on their personality, rather than what skills they bring to the table, and ignore the others. If Oghren works better for you as a sword and board defender than an axe wielding beserker, you can simply remake him as such and be entertained by his humorous exchanges with other teammates all game long.

The decisions behind other abilities, however, are somewhat baffling. The Runecrafting skill is particularly confusing. Dragon Age players will remember that runes in Origins were upgrades that could be slotted into some weapons in original game. High level runes were sold in very limited quantities in stores, for a significant but reasonable price, and found rarely as loot drops. In Awakening, they are never sold, almost never found, and must instead be crafted by a system more convoluted than any other crafting skill in the game, requiring a player to invest in half a dozen “recipes” for a single rune type, craft dozens of lesser runes first, in a menu that is not organized to handle processes of such complexity, for costs that are more than a thousand percent higher than the original game once ingredients and recipes are accounted for.

Since Dragon Age is a single player game where developers have absolute control over economy and pacing, and the unfortunate money and time sinks found in MMOs aren't necessary, the reason for the increased frustration of the Runecrafting system over every other crafting skill in the game is unclear. On the plus side, runes can now be slotted into many armors as well as weapons, so if you feel like braving the frustrations of the Runecrafting system, you will now have more opportunities for gear customization, though they are in no way necessary to excel at the game.

Of course, some of the flaws of Dragon Age Origins are intact here as well. Level-scaled content, designed to make sure battles in the game never get too challenging or too easy for the broader audience being targeted, still has the effect of making encounters in the game feel somewhat homogenous. Other RPGs (indeed, other BioWare RPGs ) have done a better job of giving players a sense of freedom in the order they pursue content, while still letting players blunder off the beaten path into extremely challenging areas so they can experience the satisfaction of overcoming them with their wits, or the satisfaction of revisiting a couple levels later with their newly found +5 Sword of Fiery Ownage. Aside from a few dragons here and there, neither Dragon Age game is particularly good at this.

On top of this, the content in Awakening doesn't always seem like it was designed to present a challenge for its high level heroes who are bristling with powers, epic stats, and high level gear. Veterans of Origins who import a character who was handling battles with little difficulty by the end of that game, equipped with high end gear, should be able to pick right up where they left off, even on higher difficulty settings. If not, it wont be long before they are powerful enough to shrug off most of the game's enemies with little trouble. Characters level quickly in Awakening, and gold and powerful items are abundant. Most encounters, however, are populated by the same minion-level enemies as in the first game that can no longer pose much threat to a high level character. The result is that the tactical aspects of combat suffer, as parties can often simply storm through encounters with simple auto-attacks rather than targeted abilities, and combat seems less appealing overall than it was in Origins. Players looking for a truly “epic level” experience for high end characters may end up somewhat disappointed.