Dune: Awakening Reviews
Dune: Awakening offers a beautifully crafted world, solid survival mechanics, and flexible roleplaying, but uneven combat, repetitive quests, and a lonely, empty-feeling MMO experience mean it's best suited for those willing to overlook its flaws in exchange for immersive hours on Arrakis.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
An engrossing survival and crafting game with flawed but engaging endgame systems.
Dune: Awakening is an excellent survival MMO that brilliantly captures life on Arrakis, usually to its benefit.
Dune: Awakening is a harsh survival game, an intriguing RPG, and a fierce open world PvP game all in one. Somehow, it pulls it off.
Dune: Awakening thrives in atmosphere, worldbuilding, and survival depth, even if its combat and grind somewhat drag behind its setting and systems.
If you are a huge fan of Dune, it's going to be easy for you to overlook those issues. If you're not, or just have a passing interest in the lore, you may find it's just too difficult to get into. It's a game that is capable of fantastic moments, marred by irritations and a feeling of bloat that ultimately holds it back from being truly great.
Funcom's survival MMO delivers on the fantasy of the Dune universe but stumbles in the endgame.
Dune: Awakening has impressed me at every turn. Stunning cinematics showcase an immersive story inspired by Dune's award-winning lore and set the scene for a thrilling adventure, focused on exploration, survival, base-building, and politics. In a time full of unfinished, bug-ridden game launches, Dune: Awakening is setting the bar higher for what the release of video games should be.
Dune: Awakening is a big game. Its wide array of content to explore makes the game a perfect one to boot up with a group, but it’s also entirely playable solo as long as you’re prepared for a slow grind.
Dune: Awakening is exactly the type of game the industry needs more of: ambitious, respectful of its source material, and willing to take real creative risks. It's not perfect, and it's definitely not for everyone, but for those who connect with its vision, it offers a genuinely unique experience. If you're looking for a casual survival game you can play an hour here and there, this isn't your game. But if you want to lose yourself in one of the most convincing and complex virtual worlds ever created, Arrakis is waiting for you. Funcom has created something special here: a game that honors both Frank Herbert and the survival genre, and sets new standards for what ambitious MMOs can achieve when developers truly understand their source material.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Dune: Awakening's gorgeous environment is full of danger, mystery, and lore to uncover. Although its combat leaves much to be desired, its other aspects make for a fantastic experience that, with some polish, easily sets it apart from the crowd.
Dune Awakening is an impressive MMO adaptation, but its combat gets lost in translation.
Playing Dune: Awakening is an uneven experience. The survival and building loops start strong, then eventually bog down, but experiencing the Dune universe and Arrakis is always engaging. If the game’s combat could reach the heights of its stellar world-building, Dune: Awakening would be very hard to put down. As it is, the game’s crafting/survival loops are just strong enough to keep me playing when its combat tempts me to stop.
For fans of the franchise, there’s nothing else quite like it. For MMO players tired of formulaic grinds and empty worlds, this is something richer, even if it comes at a cost. But be warned: if you’re looking for fast progress, you’re going to have a bad time. On Arrakis, everything fights back.
An immersive, immense MMO sandbox survival game that captures the fierce and mystical essence of Dune, with a merciless and seductive Arrakis. The combat system is subdued and there are technical uncertainties that limit its potential. But what fun!
Review in Italian | Read full review
If you aren't a big fan of Dune, you might ironically get more out of this game than someone who is, since you won't have to worry about it not living up to your expectations. While I can't help but be a little disappointed in the final product, Dune: Awakening is still worth playing if you are a fan of the survival genre and want to experience its unique location.
Much like the Houses that have descended onto Dune, and the Fremen had learned for millennia beforehand, Funcom will have to adapt to survive. What that looks like is yet to be seen, but I’m looking forward to it.
Dune Awakening isn't your average survival game. Where so many other titles in the genre string together mechanics with no real goal other than surviving/escaping a location, Funcom's game attempts something bigger, more coherent.
Review in French | Read full review
Engaging it with new game dynamics, with sandstorms that will change the landscape and bring to light points of interest, Fremen ruins, clearings, crashed airships. As well as, with new "interactions" between players and sandworms... maybe!
Review in Italian | Read full review
Still, there are a few bumps along the way, especially if you’re a solo player or rely on a controller. But if Funcom can smooth out those edges, this could easily become one of the standout survival games of the generation.