Dune: Awakening Reviews

The servers are empty, the whole singleplayer thing is an attempt to keep the game running and dropping server cost. Don't buy this the hype is over

To much copy and paste of assets, yes you've been in that same cave, camp, base, or outpost a dozen times already. Gameplay/combat not consistent enough for permanent gear durability penalties. The game has frozen or the client crashed too many times to count and losing durability on gear/vehicles because of a dev issue is simply not fun. End game missions are way to similar, just another room to trap you in while you kill waves of enemies. Then go kill a boss, repeat ad nauseum.

We farmed, like crazy, we ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ farmed like no one's business, the entire guild ~(40) of us, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ farmed. We wanted PvP, our entire goal was to go into the deep desert and get good PvP in after having farmed the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ best ♥♥♥♥. Funcom said no, none of that, no fun, go ♥♥♥♥ yourself. Hackers raided our base, in the safe zone, while I was on vacation, and then support told us to go ♥♥♥♥ ourselves, as funcom does.

I mainly play PVE , and i love the lore of Dune, so this is a great riff on that, similar location / ideas, but with it's diversion from the main canon, it's a great bit of fun

Great game, really don't understand the hate, forced PVP is long gone, everything is able to be done in PVE now, It must just be PVP players mad they can't grief anymore. Story is pretty good, very short though, if you removed all the traveling and side quests it would probably take 2-3 hours at most to finish what there currently is, The game is moving towards a singleplayer mode now as well which I'm excited for as a solo only player, hope they keep updating and adding to the game and now with Singleplayer coming hopefully mods will come with that too. Would love to see a NPC system for the bases though, they feel so empty, having NPC's you can recruit or even place as deco, walking about the base, interacting, that sort of thing. I'd give it a 7/10 currently, story length holds it back and lack of mod support removes longevity.

Honestly This game is great for solo play I've loved exploring the world in this game. I do recommend making the npc's better at ganging up on you.

[h1]PvP/Endgame Review Bomb Disclaimer: [/h1] If you love the Dune universe and survival sandbox games for solo or co-op play, I highly recommend this game for ~20-60 hours of fun. If you're looking for a game to play long-term, this game may be addicting and it has had moments where I looked forward to playing every time I logged on, but since Chapter 3 it has become the grindiest, most repetitive, boring, mindless ♥♥♥♥ show with endlessly repeating the same boring Landsraad missions and Dungeons until your eyes pop out. This game has never been less fun than it is right now, and boy has it had some rough spots before. Please Funcom, just get rid of thopter rockets, fix PvP gear scaling and abilities, PvP arenas, control points, make PvE encounters in the DD, raiding NPC spice harvestering operations, just anything other than the absolute purgatory of an endgame we currently have please for the love of god.

**Recommended, but with a serious warning.** The first half of Dune Awakening is honestly amazing. They make Arrakis feel scary in a way most games do not. The sun matters. Water matters. Distance matters. At the start you feel weak, slow, and basically stuck with F-tier movement, but that is what makes the progression feel so good. You slowly go from barely surviving to having some of the best movement abilities I have played with in a survival game. Hagga Basin before flying feels alive. It makes you question every trip, every hill, every stretch of sand. Base building is fun too because it actually feels like you are carving out a place in a world that wants you dead. That is why the endgame hurts so much. The Deep Desert should be the big payoff. It should be the place that takes everything the game taught you and turns it up. And honestly, the idea of having both a PvE and PvP version of the desert is an amazing addition to the final gameplay. That part is a great idea. It gives different players a way to engage with the endgame without forcing everyone into the same lane. But then the actual final loop kicks in, and it starts falling apart. The endgame becomes too much RNG stacked on top of permanent durability loss. You farm for materials, hope for the right drops, hope for the right schematics, craft the gear, and then put it into a system where it slowly loses value forever. That does not feel like danger to me. That feels like the game wasting my time. I am not saying Dune should have no risk. It absolutely should. The Deep Desert should be scary. PvP should have stakes. PvE should still have danger. But there is a difference between survival risk and a loop that makes players feel like they lose more than they gain. That is the real problem. The early game makes you want to explore, build, improve, and push farther. The endgame starts making you ask, “is this even worth doing?” That is a bad question for the game to make people ask. There is an amazing game here. The world, movement, atmosphere, base building, early progression, and the idea of separate PvE and PvP deserts are all genuinely great. But the final gameplay loop needs serious correction. Right now Dune Awakening feels like an incredible survival game that eventually turns into RNG, wasted time, and permanent item punishment. And that is tragic because it could be amazing all the way through.

This game will forever be a perfect example of a brilliant idea executed terribly. Funcom is a true believer in the 1 step forward 2 steps back approach. The first ~60hrs of pve content is pretty fun. The end game is awful. They added a late game skill tree that has time locked progression. Theoretically, it would take a minimum of 1 year to complete all of the items and that is assuming that you play at least weekly. PvP is even worse. If you are a new player interested in PvP, like I was, let me save you some $. I am over 400hrs into this character and I am still getting one shotted in most fights. That late game skill progression tree gives crazy boosts to health, damage, speed, and damage resistance. Since the progression is time-locked, there is no way to catch up to someone ahead of you. Your only option is keep getting mogged every fight until you also hit the 1 year mark and complete your tree.

At first, I really liked Dune: Awakening. Even the grinding wasn’t that bad — until you hit the high-tier tech. That’s when the real pain begins: non-stop water hunting, resource chasing, and absolutely obnoxious time-gates on every production building. I’ve played other Funcom survival games, so I know this is kind of their trademark. But in Conan Exiles, you could tweak harvesting rates, construction costs, and other settings to make the experience enjoyable. In Dune? None of that exists. I’m not a fan of PvP survival games. I was hoping for a full PvE experience like Conan Exiles had — play solo or co-op without forced interaction with strangers. But no. Instead, I had to look at countless identical concrete box-bases cluttering every safe piece of land. Then they announced local / private servers for players like me — or anyone just wanting to play alone or with friends. I was genuinely happy. Finally, I’d be able to tweak the game to my liking. On day one of that update, I downloaded the self-hosted server. But surprise — it’s not a simple dedicated server executable. It’s a full Linux virtual machine. I had to set up Hyper-V on Windows, dig into .bat file options, create an official token on their website… After a lot of trial and error, I finally got it running. And yes, it required 40 GB of RAM to emulate all game locations. For a while, it worked fine. I played, restarted it a few times — all good. Then, after a couple of days, I ran into the classic rubberbanding issue. On my own server. On my own computer. How is that even possible? I tried to troubleshoot. Shut down the server, tried to start it again. Error. Something about “failed to start battlegroup.” Spent hours trying to fix it. Gave up, deleted everything, reinstalled Hyper-V, the server — everything. Now i've got failed compatibility checks. I’m pretty sure reinstalling Windows might fix this dead end. But I’m not doing that for one game. If the devs couldn’t be bothered to make a proper, user-friendly dedicated server tool for players, then why should I waste my time reverse-engineering their scripts and hunting for workarounds? I’m sure you can get it working if you dig into PowerShell scripts and use different virtualization software. But why is that my job instead of the devs? UPDATE: To be fair, I've tried to contact tech support as I've been suggested by devs comment. They said what private and self-hosted servers "are managed separately and fall outside our area of support". In conclusion, support gave me advice to "contact your private server's host for technical and rental-related questions". Which is who I am. Absolute cinema.