So I ended up stopping off at my local Best Buy today to pick up DA:A as there wasn’t a real reason to pre-order or anything like that.  I’ve got about 5 hours or so in on my archer rogue and my dual-wielding warrior combined so I thought I’d give a few thoughts.

First off, if you haven’t read up on it the folks over at GreyWardens.com have a great page dedicated to all things Awakening.  I’m going to try very hard to avoid any spoilers, so here are my initial thoughts.

The carry over from DA:O was pretty smooth although I had my Warrior come over with no weapons 🙁  I realized that all DLC wasn’t going to transfer but I thought at least the meteorite sword wasn’t DLC but oh well, I can already tell we’re going to get much better stuff soon enough so I”m not terribly worried.  There is a thread on the forums about a way to “fix” this which does appear to work, but I’m not claiming it is the correct way to do it.  If you’re interested here’s the link. However, I am a little concerned that it appears the Warden’s Keep Blood skills don’t seem to be working quite right but maybe I’m just not paying enough attention.

I’m enjoying the story so far as you pretty much jump right into things with a couple of subtle hints about what has transpired in DA:O but nothing terribly game changing.  It does move pretty quick, but I think I’d rather have that then a slow start, but that’s just me.  And for those of you who complained that your decisions didn’t matter in DA:O, already I’ve seen quite a few that could have totally changed the course of my adventures and some are pretty tough calls!  I’m real curious to see how this builds and where the story goes as so far I’m much more hooked then I was at this point within DA:0.

And lastly, I’ll comment on the new skills and such – many of them sound VERY cool, can’t wait to check them out as I level up.  As for the new Specializations many are obtainable right off the bat either as drops or vendor purchased so that’s not a huge deal.  And probably my favorite item is the re-spec scroll that is at one of the local vendors 🙂

More later – assuming I can pry myself away, but I will admit most of my upcoming news will be more DA focused and less LOTRO…