Dune: Awakening

Fairly mixed, but leaning towards positive. The game does a good job presenting Dune in a modern game. The visuals, sound overall environments are solidly good. Base building and crafting is good enough for a survival game, with a decent balance and both containing and missing various QoL features. Voice acting is on point, and the NPCs do their job of being quest givers with quirky personalities, albeit the story itself is more leaning into being an exposition piece about the Dune universe, less about presenting a captivating narrative. The gameplay loop, initially, is a pretty great mix of exploration, survival, crafting, building and combat. It just clicks, and works. At some point, you figured out how the NPCs operate, though, and at that point combat becomes trivial. Ranged enemies do not understand line of sight, and will always aim center of mass even if you're peeking around a corner. Melee enemies are more of a threat, but limited by the fact you can freeclimb onto any obstacle (which they don't). Later tiers and areas scale up the NPC's health pools and damage, but outside of very few exceptions the approach to fighting them remains the same, just taking longer. But, after all, PvE is just the leveling path to the PvP endgame content... which doesn't really exist, or work. There's virtually no ground PvP combat, because the Deep Desert pretty much forbids ground traversal, so everything is done with Thopters. Which means almost all PvP is just thopters exchanging rockets. And if you *do* end up in a rare instance of ground PvP combat by coming across a player inside of a PoI... you immedeately enter a stalemate as killed players can instantly respawn at the entrance of said PoI (with some neglegible durability damage). But hey, it's still fun to fly around the Deep Desert and just enjoy the vast nothingness, as you have a sight range reaching kilometers, and a render distance for objects of 400m. There's also spice to harvest so you can... wait, *cannot* interact with the Landsraad, because it takes a guild of 6 people less than 5 hours to lock down all of the house votes that became available on a given day. And then there's features like water/fuel on a world-map, which said resources being completely independent from their namesakes on your person/vehicle, auto-refreshing whenever you enter the world map, and with neither ever coming close to actually running out whilst you traverse it, making the entire system deprecated on launch. Or the ability to survey the deep desert and craft charts, that you can then try to sell on one of the least user-firendly player-trade-hub implementation's I've seen, until you realize that there's 81 deep desert sectors and barely 20 slots to offer items for sale, and that it's made all redundant by the random guy who already posted screenshots of the deep desert map on the internet. It's utterly frustrating to see a game, after having such a promising intro, prove all the haters and doomsayers right. And it *really* doesn't help that you also frequently have beta players chiming in, mentioning how these are all issues pointed out months ago, but not fixed regardless. So, why is this a positive review? Because, in the end, I still got good 60 hours of singleplayer content out of the Hagga Basin. It's a decent action survival game set in the Dune universe, but whether it will ever be worth a long-term investment into play is very uncertain. The devs seem motivated, if nothing else, but the number of pointless or gimmicky game mechanics seems to hint that they may be too focussed on pursuing a vision of the game that just doesn't work out in practice. Overall rating: 7/10 Good environment and setting, mediocre-to-passable execution, mostly dropping the ball on anything that is player-interaction or lategame.

Very immersive game. you can cook a well-done steak on your GPU while you play and the hot blasts of air from your PC fans truly make you feel like you are in the desert. keep a bag of sand by your desk and periodically toss handfuls of it into the air to really complete the experience :)

Normally not a fan of survival games and normally don't write reviews, but I'm gonna make an exception for this one. From gathering to combat to base building to something as simple and stupid as managing my water or deciding what time of day I should attempt to make a trek across the desert, this game really makes me feel like John Dune.

The game is good. I'm not commenting on the PvP because I have little first-hand experience, but the PvE journey of 80h had been fantastic. Especially not having played Conan Exiles before. I'm not going to go into detail here, this is a great multiplayer survival platform and I suggest you read other reviews if you want to know if the mechanics, world and gameplay loop are for you. What is not good is Funcom's take on the Live Service business model and it's already showing. After Friday's server issues, Rhea - Legg lost most bases. In our corner of the map, every base for miles around was destroyed. Only frameworks left. Of 10 bases, just one even had a claim left at the end of it. Chests gone, vehicles gone, everything except character progress gone. So basically my group of 4 had lost ~300h of collective progress. When asking (not demanding, not being a **** about it) on Discord if there would be rollbacks, I was laughed out of the room by a community mod. As expected, players droolingly brought out the "you're just a soft casual" lines. Since the days of Ultima Online and later EvE and countless hardcore mode installations, I have lost more progress in games than others have played, that's not even a flex. I have no issue with ingame consequences and feel like these are generally lacking today. But here's the deal: In each of these prior instances I KNEW what I was getting into. The games clearly communicated the danger of losing everything. Losing everything to server issues after having paid extra cash for early access (like a chump) in designated safe PvE zones that were never intended to be destroyed like this, that's something different. Devs not commenting on rollbacks or even acknowledging the massive base destruction on several Sietches, that's something else. Then jokingly passing the blame to players, trying to veil your shitty server-destroying patch in roleplay with "hurr durr, it was Shai Hulud", that's just rude. Not to mention that all tickets created via the ingame help function have so far been completely ignored without even an answer for anyone I know from my Sietch that submitted one. This game does not respect your time and frankly doesn't give a damn. If you're fine with what I've described above, by all means, buy this game and you'll thoroughly enjoy it. But I can't.

I’ve been playing with a group of 10 friends I’ve known for over a decade, i’ve now hit over 200 hours in this game together. As of today, I’ll officially have hit 220 hours (currently at 215.6). And I have to say, this game has been an incredible experience, but there are a few things I need to get off my chest. First off: Thank you, Funcom. Your game is magnificent when you aren’t zooming in on the tiny details. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun in a game. I’ve never dumped over 200 hours into something without hopping into another game in between sessions. I absolutely love the world you've built, and I can't get enough of it. Hours 0-100: The experience was absolutely spectacular. The storyline, gameplay, and how everything intermingles is superb. I wouldn’t recommend changing a thing here. There’s a great variety of things to do—whether it's dodging sandworms in your buggy or advancing through enemy types (though, I do wish there were more). You’re constantly exploring new zones and stations, and it really felt like I was part of the world, learning to survive and thrive. After 100 hours: The pace slows down significantly. You’re still doing quest lines, farming the same nodes day in and day out, and you’ve likely moved your base to the northern side of the map, where Shai-Hulud is a distant memory. You get the thopter, which is a major milestone, but at that point, the world starts to feel less vibrant. The thrill of exploration fades as you start focusing on your map marker and less on the terrain. 150-200+ hours: Now you and your friends are preparing to tackle the Deep Desert. But, this is where the experience starts to feel… rough. You can’t party up with more than 3 guild mates, and you can’t even see your guild mates on the compass. You try to work around it, but the auto-targeting system kicks in, causing your character to constantly target teammates instead of enemies. It’s a frustrating system that makes combat more of a hassle than it needs to be. Guild System: The guild system accommodates up to 32 players, but everything about it seems to work against effective teamwork. There are no guild markers on the compass, no nameplates, and no swatch customization—so anyone can blend into your group at any time. You can’t even identify who’s who without constantly asking, “Who is this I’m looking at?” Worse still, there’s no in-game guild recruitment page or system for players to browse and apply to guilds. If you want to grow your guild, you’re stuck relying on third-party Discords or random global chat messages. For a game that leans so heavily into guild play and coordination, not having a built-in recruitment tool is a huge oversight. I’m a fan of friendly fire—it has its place. But what doesn’t belong is the auto-targeting of your own guild mates. It’s hard to “git gud” when your character is magnetically drawn to hitting teammates instead of enemies. At the very least, this needs a toggle. And please—for the love of the game—give us compass markers so we can at least quickly locate our allies without needing to scan every figure on the horizon. Deep Desert & June 26 Patch: I was excited about the PvE expansion in the Deep Desert, hoping it would make the PvE experience feel more rewarding. But the changes feel rushed. The patch notes suggested the update wouldn’t come for at least 1-2 weeks, yet it’s pushed out live within 24 hours. The lack of pre-leveled characters for testing also feels like a missed opportunity. If you want us to test, give us the resources to do so. PvE/PvP Thoughts: The southern half of the map being dedicated to PvE feels off. While I understand the need for T6 mats, half the map being PvE doesn’t seem right. I scouted the southern side and found hardly any resources worth gathering, which is frustrating. Why push this update now without adjusting the current node layouts? PvP: The combat system is where things feel the most broken. The lack of guild markers and the painful targeting system in combat make the PvP experience feel disjointed. Aerial combat is still fun, but I can’t help but feel like the dev team is missing the mark with some of these changes. I’ll keep playing, but after today’s patch, my motivation has taken a dip. I hope the July update will bring some of these much-needed changes. Thanks for reading!

It's a good game with a ton of content, comparable to anything else in the Survival / Craft / Base Building genre. Anyone who thought it was going to be more than that or like shatter the notion of the genre entirely is foolish and had their expectations wrong from the get-go. If you've played Conan Exiles, Valheim, Enshrouded, Rust, or anything like it - you probably know what you're in for. The difference is that it's got the Dune IP and a variety of QOL features. It is missing SOME of these (namely more of the tools need to be merged - there's far more tools required for specific jobs that your hotbar can hold), but overall it is a good survival / craft game that has an obvious endgame unlike many of those other sandbox games. Dune has sandbox elements, but it's got structured ones too. The quests, voice acting, and writing are all good. It also has MMO elements in the form of the Deep Desert and Trade Hubs. It's broadly a remix of a lot of these elements, even if the remix of these things results in some rough edges in places. The roughest part is probably that the netcode is very weak. There's a non-trivial amount of latency present at all times between you and other players. Because a lot occurs client-side, you won't really feel this alone, but when you're with others, it becomes more noticable. Additionally the grind does ramp up around midgame and this is where the perma-loss of the Worm can REALLY cause frustration. Once you're experienced, it rarely becomes an issue, but the chance of losing it all is always there, and when you do, it's extremely punishing to lose your max tier tools, armor, weapons, everything. Helps to have backups and helps to have friends. Solo you CAN do everything. But this game is really best with friends. You'll REALLY start to feel the grind trying to get your first ornithopter solo resource-wise. Again, a team of 4 could probably get enough to craft one in one trip to the rift. Alone? Oh boy...expect a good number of hours. Ultimately easily worth the price in today's gaming environment.

My father loves the dune universe. His read all the books since the 80s. He would be proud to see me wasting my life on this game.

I'm having fun. Runs great for me. No server lag. The ornithoper flight model is amazing, it's very fun to fly. Base building is pretty decent, limits on things like lights is annoying. The story around the Freman is interesting. I wish they had PVE servers though. I have no interest in PVP. If you like survival crafting games definitely give this a look. Edit: Thanks so much for the upvotes and awards guys! I guess you like your reviews short and sweet.

[h1]Great foundation, but PvP is [i]not[/i] truly optional[/h1] [b]Hours Played:[/b] 69 hours [b]Recommended:[/b] [i]No, with caveats[/i] I've spent nearly 70 hours in [i]Dune: Awakening[/i], and there’s a lot to like. The atmosphere is immersive, the crafting and base-building systems are well thought out, and the setting captures the Dune universe in a way that’s genuinely exciting. However, I feel misled by one of the game’s core claims: [b]“PvP is always optional.”[/b] This simply isn't true in practice. While you can play much of the early and mid-game without engaging in PvP, the final tier of progression—[b]The Deep Desert[/b]—is [b][u]locked behind PvP-flagged zones[/u][/b]. This means if you want access to top-tier materials, gear, and content, you [b]must[/b] enter PvP areas, even if you're a solo or PvE-focused player. As someone who plays mostly solo and enjoys PvE, I was hoping to fully experience the game without being forced into competitive PvP. Unfortunately, that’s not possible right now. The game’s structure funnels everyone into these PvP zones where you lose your inventory (outside of equipped items and maybe hotbar) if they want to progress or “finish” their build. [b][i]That’s not optional—that’s mandatory with extra steps.[/i][/b] If the developers want to respect all playstyles—especially those of PvE or casual players—they need to provide [i]alternative endgame paths[/i] or [i]PvE versions of the Deep Desert[/i]. Until then, players like me will always hit a wall. I still think [i]Dune: Awakening[/i] has massive potential, and I’ve genuinely enjoyed a good chunk of it—but if you're buying this under the impression that [b]PvP is entirely optional[/b], you should know: [u][b]it isn’t.[/b][/u] My “Not Recommended” rating is based solely on the current lack of PvE-friendly endgame options. It’s not for me—and I know I’m not alone in feeling that way. That said, this could absolutely change if the developers add proper PvE modes or enable private servers to operate independently, without tying them to the shared, PvP-focused world structure.

From a solo player's perspective it's alright for the first ten hours, but I strongly recommend you have a group or plan to join others. As a strictly solo player things escalate very quickly and resources become really hard to gather in the quantities you need without assistance. I like the setting and the mechanics behind combat (shields are fascinating) but I find myself no longer motivated to play because gathering Aluminum seems to consume all of my time and it took forever to craft Steel before that. The end-game is strictly PvP as well, so yeah, it's not a game for people like me, which is why I'm not recomending it. It isn't bad by any stretch, it's just not a game made for people that want to play a solo PvE experience.

Dune: Awakening is both amazing and terrible. It is quite frankly one of the best games I have played, untill the endgame starts. At this point, where the game should and could have really shined, it is instead a massive let-down. The game is advertised as a open world survival and crafting game, while being classed as a singleplayer, mmo, online pvp, online pve game. The game starts off strong with a decent and proper tutorial into the survival mechanics of the game. Stay hydrated, stick to the shadows to avoid the sun and never cross large distances of open sand unless you want to become food for Shai-Hulud. Sadly these mechanics soon become irrelevant: The first major upgrade in traversal that a player gets access to is the sandbike, at which point sunstroke is no longer an hinderance. Simple enter the sandbike and it goes away. Water is needed, not just for survival, but also for crafting. As such water is not a scarce ressource that the player has to hoard and guard with vigilance. Instead it is a ressource that is commonly avaliable in large quantities, precisely because it has to be, otherwise the crafting system would be too tedious. While the sandbike makes crossing open sand a lot safer, Shai-hulud remains a constant threat when doing so. Patches of drumsand and quicksand makes traversal even harder, but this new challenge does not last long either. As soon as the player gets access to an ornithopter, travelling becomes easy. Too easy in fact. Shai-hulud is no longer a threat, it is not even an inconvinience, it is instead almost completely irrelevant. At this point in the game all the survival aspects of the game are effectively just hassles. Is it a survival game? It starts off as one, but leaves much to be desired later. Crafting is ever present. There are several ingredients and components to be fed into several different machines and generating even more items and products. There is quite simply far too many different items that are found in far too large quantities for them to have any meaning other than to contribute to the grinding aspect of the game. Coupled with the vast amount of tools and different weaponry a player would like to be able to easily access, but can't due to the hotbar being limited to a mere eight items. The crafting aspect of the game is unnecessarily grindy for no apparent reason other than as a timesink. Is it a singleplayer game? That would depend on the definition of singleplayer. It is online only, and private servers only offer part of the game world to be private. Accessing the endgame content, located in the Deep Desert, will transfer the player to one of the public servers. As such true singleplayer is not possible. Online PvP and PvE however is. Sadly this is where the game developers intention and the expectation from the playerbase as a whole starts to diverge. The Deep Desert was intended as a large scale PvP zone where players would battle for the most precious ressources, most of which are not found elsewhere in the game. However at the same time the game was depicted as being a PvE experience with "optional PvP". Gating most of the endgame content in a zone where other players can attack you on sight is not a PvE experience, whether you fight back or not. The Deep Desert resets every week, so no player or guild can make a lasting claim on a specific spot. Shortly after launch the Deep Desert was reworked in order to accomodate the vast majority of players that were not interested in the PvP aspect. Currently it is splitly roughly 50/50 between PvE areas and PvP areas. However the rarest ressources are still primarily found in the PvP part of the zone. From current experience there are roughly 4-5 nodes of Titanium and 4-5 nodes of Stravidium to be found in the "safe-zone" each week. These have a 45 minute respawn timer however, and thus can be harvested a total of 224 times during the week. With 5 nodes that puts each of these ressources at 1120 yields, split between the up to 1500 players each server accomodates. But the nodes mostly occur in areas where players can build there bases. Usually after less than a day, all these nodes will have thus been claimed and made unaccessible to others. If a player wishes to experience the endgame, there is no other option than to enter the "optional" PvP zone. Dune: Awakening could become a great game one day, but at the moment it is not. Instead it is a game one can happily sink 100+ hours into because of the immersive universe, the beautiful vistas and the deep lore. Only to drop it completely and never look back, since the endgame is practically non-existing or inaccessible, at least for the moment. Would I recommend this game? Yes absolutely. But anyone who thinks about purchasing it should be aware of what it is and perhaps more importantly - what it is not.

I've been playing solo until I hit end game, and I’m really enjoying this. Overall the experience isn't perfect but there's enough content here to justify the price. You will find yourself often playing past your limits for “one more thing” to finish.

Super fun game. Completely unfinished story and late game. Everything is great uh....right up until you get to deep desert. Deep desert makes you ask yourself a lot of things. -Why is everything late game locked to this single place? -How did someone just steal my vehicle miles away from any solid land while wearing nothing but underwear? -Why did a server connection issue just eat my late game ornithopter? -How are all these people firing unlimited missiles, flying at the speed of lightning and never needing any water? -Why did my camera just get pulled across the map to watch someone dance before crashing to desk top? All this and more can easily be chalked up to the mysteries of Arrakis, but more than likely will make you question your purchase in the first place. Which is what you should do. Highly recommend letting this bad boy cook for another year of development or more before spending any money on it. Paying full price for an early access game that is more unfinished than indie title with a single dev coming from Funcom is ridiculous. (There will be custom servers for Ark, Conan Exiles, Garry's mod, Fallout 4 that are dune themed before they manage to fix any of this.) Edit, I still play and slay on it- just saying, give it a lil while to cook lmao. It's fun, but definitely not a finished product. That being said, I deeply enjoy rocking the hell out of large clans in the deep desert to the point that my two man guild earns enough favor to blow their entire House/Team/alliance of guilds out of the sand. You can legit solo the end game even to the point of winning Landsraad after rad. It's got a lot of potential, just buyer beware lmao

Convinced my friend to prepurchase for Beta weekend, expecting we'd get a day of fun before realizing we're too old to invest time in an MMO. With Steam's refund policy, it felt like a no-risk scenario. Little did I know we'd talk about this game frequently over the following month of eager anticipation, and it would go on to take over our entire gaming lives. MMO? More like a classic survival base-building open world single player adventure with a little room for co-op. If you like Dune, even better. The game does a fantastic job of immersing you in the world of Arrakis, using common survival mechanics to make you respect the world around you. Staying out of the sun, draining NPC blood, keeping your base’s power supply topped up...wait, are we playing V Rising or Dune? The open world is dauntingly expansive. Each journey, before you get an ornithopter, requires careful planning. Even with plenty of thought, Shai-Hulud never ceases to humble... After numerous meetings with the Maker that forced me to get extremely comfortable with the early game grind into iron age, I finally started to make some progress into steel. I set up an outpost across the quicksand gap and got a little too comfortable with the route. My bike got stuck in quicksand, the worm was seconds from arrival, I abandoned my bike and barely made it to the cliffside. That started a session that made me feel like a true Fremen. I made it out of the quicksand, but my primary weapons were almost broken. No bike. Shield and suspensor belt at half durability. I was stuck on the Northern side of the gap with a brand new base and nothing but ore and a refiner. I spent the next two hours basically starting from scratch, but in a much more demanding zone where all my midgame gear eventually broke. With a junk knife, no shield and back to drinking dew off leaves, I was forced to master combat against shielded enemies who could kill me in two hits, but would only fall to 5+ stabs of my tier 1 shank. A few hours later, my friend logged on. At first I begged him to come pick me up and take me home. But then I realized I was no longer the off-worlder I had started as. I stripped down to my underwear, deposited what little I had at my new base and decided I'd either make it back alone or give myself to the desert. Each new gap around drum-sand had my heart racing, but a combination of bindu-sprint and trooper ziplines got me back to the comforts of early Haga Basin. Arrived at my friend's doorstep naked, dehydrated and with barely a quarter bar of health...but alive. When I’m humbled by Shai-Hulud again, I won’t fear. Fear is the mind killer. And now I’m a badass Fremen who doesn’t need no fear. 8/10, 9 if you like grinding. Pretty janky, but I typically find janky glitches charming. Devs seem responsive to player feedback and have already improved the late game forced PVP. If I ever get there, I'll stick to the PVE survival grind.

I have 1000's of hours in Survival Games (Ark, Enshrouded, Valheim, Minecraft etc.) as a solo player, and I can easily write, that this is my favourite game of them all after "only" 30 hours. You get enough resources, that I do not **feel** like I am at a disadvantage being solo (of course I am), but I can progress in a great paste. The aspect, that most zones are PvE only is AMAZING for me and they have done it in such a clever way. The traversal is the best I have ever experienced in any Survival Game or MMO for that matter. You have such an easy time getting from A-Z and it only gets better with more gear and levels. I have seen Reddit threads that complain about combat, but I find it so refreshing with the shields and close combat. I have had 0 issues with servers (not been in queue once, EU player), but I was also one of the first to login and didn't log out during the first play session. I have had 1 crash, which was after 9-10 hours and zero performance issues (9800X3D + 5080, ultra, 4x FG) Absolutely stellar game, and I am looking forward to explore more. 10/10 would get eaten by sandworm any day of the week.

Imagine Dupe exploits by disconnecting in 2025 game is cooked EDIT: The Patch fixed duping, but they didnt do anything about the already duped items, so glad the endgame is all about resource scarcity. woudnt be a problem if it was pve and people ruin their own game, nobody would care. but having this tryhard rust mode endgame pvp for toxic little sweats about rare resources... They dont care if they loose a MK6 Vehicle, because they got Materials for a thousand more, while everybody else needs to grind for a decent amount of time to replace one. Landsraad even more useless than before, when they can just complete all the "hand in XY house item" with duped materials endgame pvp is not skill based, but just a poor mans rust mode in planes endgame pve doesnt exist bUt HeY iTs A lIVe SErVicE gAmE.... (which today is mostly an excuse to release an unfinished product) Hagga Basin T1-T5 is a good game tho, but forget the rest until they add new content

Pros: A mix between Anarchy Online and Conan Exiles, it feels more like Conan Exiles 2.0 Game is too easy to follow, don't rush the progression, adventure and enjoy the content. Cons: I really hope that I can make a Linux personal server soon or I may just abandon this game. As public servers are too full and private servers are just to expensive just to enjoy this game and there is no solo / co-op options.

I've only scratched the surface so far, but here are my two cents. Dune Awakening is a PvPvE open-world survival game, it's really interesting mix between No Man’s Sky and Rust, with strong Conan Exiles vibes (duh, same devs). Building feels similar to Rust, with a bunch of player bases scattered around) while the overall exploration and survival elements feel like No Man’s Sky. It's a solid blend. When you join a server, you can build and claim land freely, with not being able to be too close to landmarks. If you take the same character to a different server, you can't claim land there. You can still build if a friend gives you permissions though. It’s a bit awkward at first, but manageable if you play with others/make friend with the Voice chat/chat feature. Melee combat is... okay. It mostly boils down to M1 spam or holding M1 for shielding (which is a neat feature), but overall it feels a little bland—especially considering how important melee is in the Dune universe. Gunplay, on the other hand, feels great.. almost too good. Powerful, punchy, smooth and awesome sound design. It balances the experience well even if it doesn’t feel entirely “Dune.” This doesn’t feel like a generic MMO with Dune slapped on it feels like an actual Dune MMO. The aesthetic, the environments, the sounds.. (walking across the sand with the fear of being Shai-Hulud'ed) However... No sandwalking or worm riding?? I get it might be tricky gameplay-wise, but please let us sandwalk! Even if it’s slower or less efficient, it would be an awesome in-world mechanic to have fun with and feel even more immersed. As for worm riding.. I can see it being a complicated feature to implement, sure, but even something would go a long way for immersion. In the intro, your character flies an Ornithopter and it's a CUTSCENE? Make us fly it please (IN THE INTRO I MEAN)*? for a bit? or not make our character fly it. Almost like giving us a small taste of what is to come, mayhaps? <3 [*edited.] Pros: - Strong Dune atmosphere. Worms become increasingly terrifying the further you get with more open spaces later on in game. - Base building feels good—very No Man’s Sky in a good way, with nice QoL features like blueprint orientation. - Vehicles are well-designed and actually useful. - Resource gathering is repetitive but enjoyable. It's satisfying about walking the dunes and hearing distant worms or running into scavenger camps. Cons: - "Hold E to loot all" is counterintuitive. Why add delay to a quick-loot feature? I know I want it all... just let me take it instantly, please. - Lack of immersive mechanics like sandwalking or worm riding as I stated before. - Water is too easy to come by. Arrakis is supposed to be deadly dry, but right now it feels like hydration is barely a challenge. Killing one guy gives you enough water to survive. I’d love a harsher survival experience that matches the lore. If you like DUNE, play it, DLC's currently are VERY bad with paid statues right now? I'm good, not going to pay for that.. It’s early for me still, and so far I’m enjoying it. It's a proper DUNE game and it is really special. The atmosphere is spot-on, and with some QoL changes and deeper immersion options, it could be one of my favourite games of all time.

I really wanted to like this game. And I really did, up until I reached the endgame. If you're not planning to spend hundreds of hours here like me, but just want to experience the story and play a decent survival game - go for it. But if you want a fun and engaging MMORPG endgame - look elsewhere. My previous experience with Funcom MMORPGs was The Secret World. It was also the only MMORPG I played for longer than a month - very actively played it for about 2 years. Was expecting something similar with Dune, but, after playing it for only a few weeks, I'm already ready to give up. [h1]The Good[/h1] Dune starts strong with solid survival mechanics and base-building. I could find some nitpicks here and there, but overall it's a fun and engaging gameplay experience, and the best part of Dune: Awakening. The most major nitpick for me is being unable to label your chests (at the time of writing this review - they promised to add it later), so hopefully you have good memory and will remember which resource is stored in which out of the 20+ chests. :) The storyline is good enough - not great, but good. You're a silent protagonist and your choices do not matter, but that's to be expected from a MMORPG. I will also give huge props to Funcom for staying true to Dune lore - they really studied the books and most game mechanics and entities are based on them (loading screens even show quotes from the books and describe the related gameplay mechanics). But then, after completing the story and all the side missions, after building your perfect base and amassing good reserves of resources, you get to the worst part - the endgame. Which takes place in the Deep Desert, which is a free PvP zone. [h1]The Bad[/h1] For context, in The Secret World, I was one of the top PvPers, so I do not shy away from player conflict. But in Dune, PvP is unnecessary, unrewarding, unbalanced and outright frustrating. Funcom's idea was that there are limited resources in Deep Desert, and you need to PvP in order to deny them to opponents and claim them yourself. In practice, there are huge spice fields, which can easily be harvested by a couple dozen players without hindering each other. But then you come to such a field alone, start harvesting it, get ambushed and killed with rockets by a guy flying in an ornithopter. He didn't have to kill you, he could've just landed nearby and got his full share of spice, but he kills you regardless, just because he can. And he doesn't even get any gameplay rewards for that, other than maybe some sick satisfaction. The worst part is if your ornithopter also gets destroyed in the process, because restoring it takes at least a couple hours of real time in traveling and resource farming, just because you got ambushed and killed once. So you may wonder, what's the intended counterplay? As the developers themselves say - finding friends and creating guilds (for which the game provides no tools like LFG - you have to just use the chat), and organizing so that one of you gathers spice, while others hover in the air with rockets. You can't even equip both a storage module and rockets on your ornithopter, so you have to literally choose between being able to PvP and being able to collect rewards. If you're a solo player who doesn't want to coordinate with others in chat - guess you're out of luck. Your best bet is logging in at off hours and hoping that no gankers are online to ambush you while you collect spice. Ground PvP is very rare, it's mostly just ornithopters with rockets flying around. On the ground the same rules apply - you need numbers, otherwise you can easily be ambushed by a bigger group. Developers intended for you to be able to escape from PvP if you really want, but it doesn't really work like that with ambushes, when you get attacked before even seeing the opponent(s). Fortunately for me, I have a couple good friends to play with, so we can field the numbers for PvP. But to what purpose? Do we just fly with rockets and gank other players trying to gather spice, without even receiving any rewards for that? I killed a guy like that today, and I felt more sorry for him than I felt any satisfaction, because I've been on the receiving end of that and know how that feels. You can strive to get the best gear (MK6) and unique blueprints, but there isn't really any fun gameplay ways to use them. You can easily kill all PvE enemies with standard MK5 gear, and PvP... See above. There's also the Landsraad mechanic, which, according to the devs, is supposed to be the main endgame goal, but I don't really see any point or satisfaction in it. You compete with the other faction (Atreides or Harkonnen) to complete the weekly tasks first in order receive one of the three possible bonuses for the next week. But the bonuses are not particularly powerful and the weekly nature of the system means there's no lasting impact from winning such a competition, it just fully resets each week. And in the Deep Desert PvP area you can't even ally yourself with your faction or identify who belongs to which faction, because it's a free-for-all. One other thing I didn't like is the Dune's server system - there are a bunch of different servers in different regions, and your server choice will greatly define your gameplay experience. Out of the 100k+ total players, you are going to be stuck with a subset of about 1k players, so hopefully you get decent ones and without too many huge guilds. Back in The Secret World there were fewer servers and they weren't divided by regions, which gave you a balanced international social experience. [h1]The Conclusion[/h1] The game is good up until the endgame, at which point it becomes frustrating, unrewarding and just pointless, regardless of how good you are at PvP, or how many friends/guildmates you have. So, in its current state, I can recommend to play the game for its story and survival/base-building, but absolutely can't recommend to play its endgame.

[b]I've always wanted a game with giant sandworms just so I could run from them.[/b] By now, it's a well-known fact that Funcom have a tendency to bite off a bit more than they can chew, so the game’s a little rough around the edges. But - surprisingly - it works. Albeit with some bumps along the way. Most importantly, it [i]feels[/i] like Dune. And honestly, that’s enough for me. I’m all in.

I'm giving a positive review with the immediate caveat that PvP blows ass, and will always blow ass in these games because the motivation for engaging in it is 10% necessity, and 90% harassment/trolling/power tripping. It is solely in the game to keep players on a treadmill of their own machinations, as opposed to maintaining a PvE-only environment that would need frequent updates to keep the bulk of players engaged past their initial month of grinding the game out. That all being said: the PvE in Dune is fun. Very fun. The mobility afforded to you by the Trooper class' grappling hook alongside your suspension belt is up there with Warframe in terms of the sheer freedom and versatility they allow, and traversing the world by way of that or vehicles is beyond satisfying. Whether you're leaping from canyons to cliff faces with your belt, tearing ass on your sandbike, plodding from node to node with your mining buggy, or taking to the skies in an ornithopter, the world is packed with locations to explore and resources to farm. The constant threat of being swallowed by a sandworm whenever you cross open sand is as terrifying as it is exhilarating, and I'll never get tired of the rush that comes alongside narrowly avoiding becoming worm food with a trunk full of resources in tow. Base building ended up being a brighter highlight than I thought, as I often lose interest in craft-em-ups after my patience for chopping down entire forests to build Ultra Mega Base starts to wane. But in Dune you simply laser down chunks of resources by the hundreds and have enough to build a fully furnished castle in no time, in addition to the ease that comes alongside Funcom's lax rules for what constitutes a proper foundation. You can even have multiple bases across the map, allowing yourself an entire network of refuge if/when you attain the resources necessary to maintain it all. PvE content is very similar to The Division in that you run into dungeons and other points of interest, gun down some grunts and the occasional elite enemy and pick up chests of loot/resources on the way. Combat is fun enough, with melee being somewhat buggy but mostly manageable once you get into the (literal) swing of it. NPCs are middlingly intelligent when you fully engage them, using parries and wiggling around while you try to line up shots on them, but are also stupidly easy to just walk away from in more open environments. Your arsenal is also fairly basic, with shotguns, rifles, SMGs and the like at your disposal alongside a selection of knives/swords and offensive/defensive skills on cooldowns (grenades, heals, mobility, stuns, etc.) Overall as someone who's not planning to engage with endgame PvP at all, I would say there's more than enough PvE content to justify a purchase, even for solo/duo players. The map is enormous and made worthwhile to explore, character and tech tree progression is expansive, traversal is awesome, and the freedom afforded to lay your stake anywhere you want, from the lowest valleys to the highest peaks, makes for one of the best base building mechanics I've experienced in a game of this genre.

Let me tell you about my first death after 15 hours I had just seen a ship crash into the open sand not far from me—smoke, fire, a beautiful “go check that out and loot everything” invitation. Naturally, I obliged. I get to the ship and It’s a billion degrees and I am in the middle of NOWHERE. I’m sweating, and I’ve got a backpack full of shiny, mysterious loot I definitely don’t understand but KNOW it’s valuable. After scooping up everything that I saw, I hear the rumble. The sandworm vibration reader is RED. I turn around and see in the distance a sandworm the size of my hopes and dreams, and it's hungry. I panic. My brain goes full static. I forget the button to summon my speed bike. Cue me mashing keys like a chimp in a flight simulator. Eventually, the bike shows up. I jump on, take off at full throttle, wind in my face, screaming triumphantly… for about ten seconds. Then I get swallowed mid-‘FUUUUUUUUU' 10/10, would panic-loot and become worm food again.

This game was so much fun. Even as a solo player. I could spend hours just farming away. Improving my base and gear. One of the best survival games. One moment I am flying my Ornithopter in the sky, going back to my base and my game begins to lag and eventually freeze. It says I have disconnected from the server and my game is completely unresponsive. I wait a few seconds to see if it will fix itself and next thing I know, the game crashes. It automatically closes on steam, so I reopen it to join back. No big deal. I log on to find my self thousands of meters away from my base and my Ornithopter completely gone. I try to respawn to see if it's available somewhere in the world, but no. The Ornithopter is completely gone, erased from existence. I spent 8 hours to get that vehicle and because of a bug I lost all that progress. I could log on, probably grind pretty hard to get it back. Probably only take 4-5 hours to get another Ornithopter and continue my journey. But what is stopping it from happening again? I don't know what caused it. Am I just supposed to accept that I might lose another 4-5 hours of my life? I dont think so. Many people might not see this as an issue, but I do. In 2025, I expect to be able to play games and not have 8 hours of progressed erased from a multiplayer server. I can't recommend this game to anyone because they might lose all their progress and waste their time. If you do nothing but play games for 24 hours a day, then this probably doesn't matter for you. Most big streamers wont care. But to me, an average person trying to enjoy his time, this is a big deal. I don't get paid to play games. I do it for fun. All of my fun has been removed from this game because of this. Do Not Recommend.

Overall, the PvE survival aspects, the story and the world are amazing. The guild missions could use a bit more tweaking. I ran into very few bugs. The enormous worm keeping you on your toes and giving you a thrill after almost getting eaten will never not be cool. if you don't plan on going in the PvP areas, this game is top tier. Solid 9/10 to this point. Highly recommend. Unfortunately the problems with the game starts at the end-game. It wont take players too long to all run into the same problem. the only way to progress to the final tier of gear, is to enter the PvP zone (or spend an eternity trying to farm in the extremely congested PvE area) The Deep Desert currently is full of hackers, bug abusers and massive guilds that spend hours just ganking solo-duo players, and the machines you just spent 20 hours working for just got destroyed 8 seconds after entering the PvP area. At its core, the PvP mechanics are janky and unbalanced already. Pair that with griefers and you have arguably the most unfun experience ever created. I personally never enjoyed PvP in any game, so feeling like i'm being forced into it is really rough. So sad that i cant recommend the game at this point until these glaring issues are dealt with because I thoroughly enjoyed 90% of the game. Might come back after some of these kinks are worked out and do another review, but for now, maybe check out the game when it goes on special. Will give you a few dozen hours of fun for sure.

I should probably preface this review with a few caveats. Obviously I am a huge Dune fan, notice the handle and profile picture, so there was literally zero chance I was not going to play this game. The flip side of this is that survival games are really not my jam and on top of that my experiences with Funcom have been resoundingly meh - Age of Conan had a great start on the island of Tortuga but dropped off steeply after that, and The Secret World just did not draw me in despite its promising premise. So I was interested to see how these two points were going to react with each other, the unstoppable force of fandom meeting the immovable object of mediocrity. I am pleased to report that this game succeeds in evoking the Dune Universe for me while at the same time providing me with a satisfying gameplay loop. There is actually a plot which kind of surprises me, and they made the good decision to kick off with an alternate-universe Dune where Lady Jessica provides Leto with a daughter (like she was told to by the Bene Gesserit) rather than a son. The upshot of this decision is that Yueh failed to betray Leto and the battle of Arrakeen was fought to a standstill. Most of the Fremen are dead, killed by the Sardaukar, and the main plot has you looking for their remnants while you decide if you are going to pick sides in the ongoing war of the Atreides vs the Harkonnen. You start the game as a prisoner but your prison ship is destroyed by a mysterious benefactor and after your crash landing you have to scrabble for survival on Arrakis. Funcom does a great job balancing the survival aspect of things with the combat/RPG aspect. You do have to kind of struggle to survive, especially early on in the game where finding water and staying hydrated is a real pain in the arse, especially if you are foolish enough to stay in the sun which will rapidly give you sunstroke. There are plenty of resources to harvest and the harvesting of those resources is made slightly more interesting by turning it into a mini-game where you have to laser a specific wiggly line in order to blow up the thing and turn it into goodies. A lot of stuff you have to get by killing bad guys and fortunately there are plenty of those as well in camps big and small, as well as some pretty long dungeon type areas filled with treasure and enemies. While it would seem on a desert planet that traveling/adventuring at night is the way to go, unfortunately patrol ships full of Sardaukar are looking for you at night and if they catch you it can be kind of scary as you get stuck in a tractor beam for a bit and then have to fight some professional troops. And of course if you are traveling across the sand you always run the risk of attracting a big sandworm who thinks of you as a tasty snack. It's all a lot of fun and the game gives you plenty to do, so much in fact that it's difficult to put the game down. There is a leveling system - you gain xp every time you kill someone or harvest something (even if it's just picking something off the ground) and if you get enough to level up you acquire both research points (which govern what you can build) and skill points (which go into skill trees that you use to get bonuses to both combat and non-combat abilities as well as special powers). You pick a class to start the game but later on you can find trainers that will help you learn the skills of other classes so you don't feel too hemmed in. It feels good to level up and I read that the level cap is 200 so you don't have to worry about reaching it for a long time (I am 46 as of this writing). There is a button you can press to respec, but I have never pressed it. The combat is surprisingly well done, balanced well between melee and ranged, shielded and unshielded. You get plenty of new combat abilities although you can only equip 2 active ones (there's a third slot, but it's been locked for me) and because of the existence of shielded enemies and their special powers it is actually fairly dynamic, much more so than I was expecting. It is naturally all in real time so get your reflexes ready. There is PvP in a few places - so far the only place I have found with PvP enabled was a crashed ship that had a bunch of resources in it that were otherwise pretty hard to get, but it turns out you can buy those resources at another outpost with enough solaris so even if you are not great at PvP you won't get locked out of certain items. Characters move pretty well, you can dodge and jump and the trooper even has a starting ability that lets him hook people and things and then instantly pull himself close to whatever he hooked, which is obviously great for traversal. There are lots of items that let you jump, glide, and fall better, and you can climb by default. There are also vehicles you can build, and you probably should to try and get across those big stretches of desert without being eaten by a sandworm. Dying is not normally that big of a deal - if you get downed you have a self-revive which can be pretty handy, and even if that fails you get to keep most of your equipment, all you lose are your solaris (money) which you can get back by running to where you died, Souls-style. The only exception to this is when you get eaten by a sandworm. If that happens to you, you will lose everything you had on you and it's gone forever. This happened to me once and I would be lying if I said it felt good, but on the other hand it does make sense that the gigantic sandworms would be the most fearsome things in the game and this is a good way of simulating that. In my explorations I found a blueprint for a rare pair of shoes that make it much less likely for you to attract a worm and you better believe I am wearing those all the time now. Overall I have been very much enjoying the time I have spent on Arrakis and I am really fanboyishly happy to be playing a Mentat in one of my favorite franchises of all time. Funcom has been really hit or miss but I think they might have hit the sweet spot on this one. If you are a fan of Dune, survival games, or MMOs I would definitely check this out.

I spent 100 hours playing the closed beta. I pre-ordered almost immediately to get early access. On top of The Hammer, the highest point of the second zone, I waited for the servers to shut down in the company of a stranger I had met there by chance. We waited together for the last sunset. I was immersed in memories of unforgettable sunsets and explorations, always accompanied by the fear of dying from sandworms or a sandstorm. At night, I dreamed of Arrakis. During the day, I heard the change in music that heralded the sudden arrival of a sandstorm. When the servers went down, I waited for early access. The longest 48 hours of my (long) life as a gamer. In an era when even AAA games disappoint, Dune: Awakening is an incredible and beautiful surprise that you will find hard to forget. Is it perfect? No, but it won't matter. You'll be immersed in stunning scenery, unforgettable orchestral music and an intriguing storyline, with a survival mode that's challenging but not overly difficult. Chani was right: Arrakis is so beautiful when the sun is low...

Built a base. Mined some ore, Killed some guys. Got eaten by a worm. Lost all my gear. Built another base. Made some more gear. Did some legal drugs. Got eaten by a worm. Got a free bike. 10/10

In my first 100 hours of playtime i would never have imagined i would be giving this game a negative review, but here i am. The game starts in hagga basin, which is your pve survival gameplay area. You go through the typical loop of gathering resources, taking care of a few survival meters (in this case water and heat), building a base and advancing to the next tier of resources. The game's flavour is its dune atmosphere and sandworms that can eat you and everything you have on you if you anger them too much. You can build bikes, buggys and ornotopthers(helicopters that can glide basically) and you use your vehicles inventory to be able to gather large amounts of resources so you can build better equipment and vehicles. Overall your typical survival loop with a good pacing. In addition to these the game has skill trees like an rpg and you can customize your character to be more efficient in various combat and non combat tasks. There are multiple camps of enemies and various labs and shipwrecks to fight, raid and loot. You will likely spend dozens of hours here having a lot fun. Homever, the game does not leave you with fond memories and a good time. Any amount of good will i fostered in hagga basin towards the developers have been destroyed when i got to the last tier of progression, the deep desert. If someone told me that the endgame for the best survival game i have played in a good while would be a very bad adaptation of helicopters with missiles against other players i would not take that person seriously. Yet here we are. But it's worse, remember how i said you use your vehicles inventory, you need that inventory to be able to make any meaningfull progression, and in the deep desert, it will take around 5-10 mins just to get to where you need to be able to gather. The design is as follows: You can either arm your ornotopther(you have to fly everywhere in the deep desert) with missiles or you can put a storage module on it. Guess what happens when someone attacks you while you are trying to gather? You have no way to fight back and there is a good chance you will be shot down from the sky before you can get to safety, resulting in the loss of your vehicle. The gankers are in no danger and have nothing to lose except a little bit of time chasing you. Essentially funcom created a large pve playerbase who got practically addicted to the game in hagga basin, only to feed them to a few gankers(sorry but this is not pvp) at the endgame so a very small minority of players can have a laugh here and there at the majority's expense. No one likes this "pvp", not the pve players, not the pvp players because lets face it - its just helicopter missiles all day with the skill trees being redundant, only the gankers i told you about want the system to stay as it is. Yet the developers are firm in their stance that this is their vision for the game and that is the biggest reason i lost my good will against funcom. The pve players are being bullied and gaslit in the game and in the forums, "this is a pvp game" "if you dont like it leave it" "git gud" etc. The developers are not better: "You don't HAVE to engage in PvP, but you run the risk of meeting hostile players. There are currently no plans to change this for the Deep Desert." I think this is as rude and insensitive as they can be while still making a public statement. Forums and discord are filled with people that voice their discontent on this topic and i think they will soon take the advice and "leave it because they dont like it". I would have liked to remember the game as it is in hagga basin, but the deep desert and the developers behind it have tarnished that image. Edit: Apparently this review gathered a lot of attention and i need to adress some comments that keep reoccuring. I spent enough time in the deep desert to build a large spice refinery and thousands of plastinium, i have played a lot of this game like an addict. On a pure dollar per hour standpoint this game is worth it. I also spent 10s of thousands of hours on world of warcraft and there have been large periods of times where i thought the game was bad. Steam has a filter function for reviews, you can check how the overall score drops when you filter by people with over 100 hours. I am not alone in this. About recent changes, everytime an announcement or change is made people will come and declare this review obsolete. Fine. If you want the latest opinions steam also has a filter for that. Spoilers: Review score keeps dropping as time goes on. I would very much like it if the game got to a point that will make me want to change my review to positive and i expect it will. I just dont think it will be some change to deep desert. I dont think deep desert is salvageable. It will take time and effort but i am hopefull. While i dont like being called names, i like that steam allows people to say what they want to say, those people are proving one of the points i made in this review. I want to add that i despise all attempts to get people to refund or review bomb this game, neither the game nor the developers deserve such treatment. Please make your own judgement and give your honest feedback. I put some white space between pharagraphs and i hope it makes reading easier.

The latest patch completely wiped out weeks of progress for many players and the developer refuses to roll back the servers or give an official statement for whatever reason. So, if you don't want to risk losing your progress without having control over it, I wouldn't recommend this game at the moment. It feels like a massive waste of time.

DUNE good. End game MID. Worth it until the end, probably the best survival game I've played yet. Worth every penny, if it ever goes on sale, instant buy. 9.5/10

Game started out great. Felt very much like an open world destiny. It does have it's bugs and needs improvement but even then I had a blast... Till Endgame. I will be honest and say I am not a fan of forced pvp but that isn't even the real issue. The endgame literally switches game modes completely and goes for a guild wars fighter pilot sim. The open pvp dessert will just be filled with bored guild/groups with all the endgame goodies waiting to bully some poor sap who decided to venture alone or with a friend looking to progress being outnumbered and gunned. For what it was till endgame it was great, even having to go to pvp zones for some loot but the endgame it falls flat. I never understand games that give so much advantage to groups and not just a balance for all players, Forget about skill, This game is about how big and sweaty your guild is.

I've been playing Dune Awakening for a while, it's a very fun game but personally (and from a PvE player perspective) i liked Once Human a bit more, despite its flaws. I compare them because they fall into a similar style of game/progression at their root, in my mind. Dune Awakening is well made and the Dune world has lots of atmosphere, but the gameplay loop is a lot of busy work leading to a sense of relief as you get better facilities/tools, needing less busy work to sustain yourself and your base. A loop that can be addictive as Funcom made the jump from tier to tier feel meaningful: a buggy with the mining turret drastically increases your gathering capabilities, the late water management tools make things so much better, etc. The problem for me is that it doesn't feel like the world also progresses with me, with varied point of interests, enemies, bosses etc (you may adore it just for the gameplay loop, it's personal taste). All the gathering progression leads towards the samey PvE enemies, just stronger and with a couple abilities added, located in similar looking corridors, rooms and buildings. What i found funny is that the sandworm, something i thought i would hate, ended up being the most memorable/cool thing in the game for me, as it adds a big element of danger and intense moments. I disliked the melee combat so much at first, but it felt a bit better after i got the parry timings down. Attacking enemies still feels like a weird dance around them more than a fun flow of moves and abilities. Once Human is very far from perfect, but to me the world was varied, the point of interests were many and felt different enough from each other, the enemies were memorable, the base moving/blueprint system felt superior compared to Dune (the bp contained all your facilities and stuff, not just the building structure), it had dungeons with fun bosses. It has its own big issues too of course, with the lack of direction in certain areas. Again, all personal opinions as i can see how Dune fans will just like Arrakis more because... it's Arrakis, and based on your tastes the loop of going through the tiers may be enough for you to love the game. The deep desert is still a question mark, the majority of players are not there yet so we can't see if the design will work. It's very... big and full of sand, with PvE but mostly PvP focused. I am excited to see what the devs will add , as i can see myself playing more once there are more varied activities and content.

Only 12 hours in. Started as Bene' as many streamers advised. *nah* 'Bene' can goose step runz well across the sands but, .. she aint got no punch when you get to your wanna be. Then it's a fight with your bits to give. I watched too many streamers. Formed a logical strategy. Start as Mentat ( to toss the turrent pew pew + poison kill zone ) Then get the Trooper for *boing boing* ............. Simply said. I'm 64 years old. Read all da Dune books, ... watched all the Dune movies and TV series. I have a 1TB Steam game folder, 500GB Epic game folder, have every RPG / MMO / Survival game ever made Played WoW since first release until spinning guild pinnacle splendars .. This is the best 'DUNE' experience I have ever personally "felt" since the books. If you are. "From the books" or "Books plus movies and TV series", ... you MUST EXPERIENCE THIS GAME ! After the first few hours of "WTF" ........... " This is uncomfortable, no one is holding my hand the right way". The game will "envelope you". When once I sucked on the juice of flowers, ... I then made devices to convert the blood of my enemies to water - to keep me alive. Then made machines to store and make my journeys better. A still suit made I can keep further journeys. A Literjon made, even further. I now seek the want of a vehicle, lest these hot cumbersome journeys across these forsaken sades are made quicker and easier. The "want" opens the doors "obliging". The more doors you open, the easier the path ahead. I love this game. It is 'placed me well into the spice melange". I fear in here I will dwell more than I should : ) ...... 48 Hours in now. Still maining as Mentat, then Trooper and Planetologist so far. Packed up my old base off to travel Northbound. It's been a wonderful crazy journey, loving it more and more the further into the sands I go. The atmosphere is so deeply enveloping. Unlike many other games, planning your trips is critical. Choosing the right time of day, plotting a way to keep the shade in favour and into the darker hours avoiding the Sardaukar sky patrols that cam be very nerve-racking when they spot you. For those that complained about my writing style - "shoo fly shoo" For those that reckon this game lacks true Dune lore - "shoo fly shoo" I absolutely love this game. Definitely game of the year for me.

Just make PvE servers and all-PvP servers, you're trying to mix two playerbases where half don't want to interact with the other, and the other half want to forcibly interact with the first half to avoid having to actually interact with themselves (I wouldn't want to interact with them either tbf). It seems like the devs knew a PvP game would sell poorly, so they setup an elaborate rugpull where you get 85% of the way through the resource tree making you feel like you need to go into an empty, boring flatland in order to see the game through. Unlike 80% of the playerbase I actually checked out the deep desert and it was before the changes, and when I got there the entire chat was just whiny manchildren that sit there all day stroking themselves and accusing each other of being unemployed (they all are). You put me into a position to where I actually need to sit in the PvP area for longer because nobody just gets a kill and moves on. They either wipe your ornithopter that takes ~3 hours just to process the raw ore for, or if they happen to catch you on open sand they summon a sandworm that wipes out everything you built and have on you while watching like creepy psychopaths that pulled the wings off of a butterfly to feed it to a snake. These are not people that need to be catered to. I never once died in the deep desert before the changes, but I also had to play like a complete coward because you either can have missiles on your thopter or storage racks. I had to be forced to choose whether I could defend myself (because your player build doesn't matter, everything is just thopter combat) or carry more than 3 nodes worth of ore (because the inventory amount is pitiful and there's zero upgrades for it). After the changes I managed to find a whopping 4 nodes in the PvE area, so what's the point? The changes feel passive-aggressive and pointless. The first part of the game was a lot of fun, and full of tension on its own without having to worry about being some jobless latent serial killer's pet torture project for the hour, but now my options are to wander a boring flat plain for hours on end, or get pushed into a tinier area with the same amount of weirdos. This idea that people are supposed to spend every waking minute of their free time in a video game is sad and dystopian, plenty of people are happy with buying a game, seeing the content, and then moving on, and the ones that aren't are a sad vocal minority. Nobody seems happy anywhere, so I'll just not play the game and recommend that anyone who doesn't want some forevergame substitute job do the same.

Dune: Awakening is a masterclass in how to waste a legendary IP. A shiny UE5 coat over a skeleton made of trash systems, half-finished ideas, and corporate hype. I went in expecting survival, strategy, maybe even some good faction dynamics. What I got was a lifeless sandbox full of broken mechanics and design shortcuts. Here’s everything that’s wrong: 1. Skill trees are an absolute joke. They feel like someone skimmed a wiki on RPG design and gave up halfway. "+3% to this," "+5% to that" — wow, thrilling. No build uniqueness, no cool synergies, no choices that feel impactful. It's filler XP grind to pad out nothingness. 2. Classes are meaningless. You can unlock almost all classes within a few hours. No long-term playstyle commitment, no progression arc, no excitement. Just “here, have everything” like it’s a debug sandbox. What’s the point of specializing if nothing feels distinct? 3. AI is criminally bad. They stand in the open, run in straight lines, or just derp out and ignore you. Enemy patrols? Don’t exist. Tactics? None. Worse? NPCs “see” you through walls. No vision cones, no stealth logic. You walk behind a rock, they immediately aggro through terrain. It’s like someone forgot to code actual line-of-sight. 4. Combat animations are stiff and lifeless. Your melee swings look like mocap done by a mannequin on a treadmill. Running is floaty and disconnected from the environment. Ornithopter flight? Wings literally teleport when you turn — not exaggerating, go look at it. This is UE5? Really? 5. Melee becomes worthless later on. Melee builds get dumpstered once enemy scaling kicks in. Guns out-DPS you easily, and AI doesn’t react properly to melee spacing anyway. There’s zero incentive to focus on close combat — just pick up a rifle and delete that Swordmaster tree. 6. Quests = copy-paste trash. Every objective is “Go here. Loot thing. Kill thing. Come back.” Repeat that 50 times. No variety, no branching, no story nuance. The quest system is an insult to player engagement. 7. Weapons have zero customization. Want scopes? Attachments? Mods? Nah. Every gun is “what you see is what you get.” Weapon tiers are just lazy stat bumps. 8. Vehicle progression is a scam. You "unlock" higher vehicle tiers, but the models are identical. Stats barely improve. Some upgrades feel so minor you question if they even applied. And again — animation jank galore. This isn't just laziness — it feels unfinished. 9. BattlEye makes everything worse. Crashes, false positives, and unnecessary overhead. BattlEye is garbage and doesn’t belong in a game that can't even keep its enemies from walking into rocks. 10. No Dune atmosphere — just Dune wallpaper. They slap sand, spice, and a worm in and call it a Dune game. But there’s no soul. Factions have no depth. Political systems? Barely there. Spice addiction? Meaningless. Where's the intrigue? The tension? It’s just a generic survival game with a Dune coat of paint. What’s good? Sand looks nice. The worm is big and scary. You can climb some rocks. That's it. No meaningful story. No smart AI. No depth. Just jank, grind, and corporate hype banking on the Dune name. If you liked Starfield for its depth and gameplay loop, this game is for you. This game is wide like an ocean, deep like a puddle. Don’t buy the hype.

I can't recommend this game right now. It is fun to play, yes. But what Funcom WON'T do is ruining it. Server disconnects that cause you to lose thopters. An endgame zone that has an identity crisis. Hacks and cheats and glitches are everywhere with no fix and relief in sight. QOL that is missing or flat out stupid decisions that were put in. Funcom enabling griefers by not making obvious changes and sticking to "the vision". Griefers EVERYWHERE. Poor customer service and communication. The list goes on. Games gonna fall out of relevance fast at this rate. I do hope I am wrong.

I had low expectations when going into this game...I'm glad to say I was wrong. The world, the environments, the crafting and building, exploration and quests, all of it just feels so good. Even as a solo player it's more work but it's a very rewarding experience. (Jesters is just points in my pocket so thanks!)

An incredibly fun game with awesome design, creative base building, and tons of cool customization. However, the PvP is currently unplayable due to an outrageous number of cheaters using speed hacks and vehicle stealing exploits. This completely ruins the PvP zones where you gather late-game materials. Until the developers seriously address this, I recommend avoiding this game.

Super enjoyable survival game, once you figure out the sun and water game really gets enjoyable. Challenging NPCs. Flexible PVE / PVP rules. Wonderful visuals. Sometimes you eat the worm and sometime the worm eats you. Ok the worm always eats you, but that is why you are here.

Don't buy this until Funcom figures out what they're doing. They may, they may not. It was most stable at launch, but it's a mess right now.

TLDR: Game is reasonably priced and fun if you like PvP, but if you prefer playing solo or with friends or with mods then wait to see if the devs release the server files, or just buy Conan Exiles instead. The story is currently unfinished, and be wary the Season Pass which is actually just three skin packs, one small quest, and one new map next year. Warning: in order to play this game you are forced to agree to an arbitration clause in their EULA, which [strike] is only shown to you after buying the game but before playing. [/strike] can be previewed on the store page under the tags section. I prefer playing games solo and I spent many hours in their previous game, Conan Exiles, which allowed players to play solo or co-op within the game itself and change a lot of intricate settings to customize the game how you like, and they also released server files before the launch of the game so that anyone could set up their own private server. That's why I was disappointed to see that the devs are currently refusing to release the server files, likely because they consider this game as an MMO, despite it being almost identical to Conan Exiles or ARK which are survival crafting games and not MMOs, same as Dune. Dune Awakening has three maps to travel between, sure, but Conan Exiles players and ARK players know that it's not that hard to set up a private clustered server that allows travel between maps. Conan Exiles has 70 players per server while Dune Awakening only has 40 players per server until the endgame desert area which only has 100 players maximum per instance, while real MMO games usually have their player limit in the thousands. When travelling between the maps you will be placed in a queue, and since you need to visit the city often for quests, you will often be put back in a long queue every time you want to hand in a quest, which sounds like a nightmare for players during release. I wasn't planning on buying this game at launch due to the lack of private servers and mods, but a few days ago they announced that they are partnering with three server hosting websites to allow players to rent a private server. However these servers still need to be arbitrarily connected in two of the three maps, justified by the devs by saying they didn't want players to be missing part of the whole experience of playing the game. We are the customers, please let us play the game how we want. Besides, as an Australian, only one of the three available server rental websites has Australian servers, so I don't even get a choice of which website to rent from. It's already crazy that I'm being forced to rent a server despite having the capacity to self-host, but the restrictions make it feel even worse. Besides, I guess you're also coerced into paying for the server for many months because once you stop playing you would likely lose your character and all of their progress. The rented private servers also are missing a lot of the settings that made playing Conan Exiles so customizable and fun, instead there are only three settings that can be changed. In their last game it felt good to increase the amount of resources gathered so you could skip the grind if you wanted, and I had a lot of fun flying around and making bases in god mode, but it won't be possible to play the game the way you want anymore unless the devs take private servers more seriously. Apart from custom settings, mods were also a great part of making Conan Exiles fun, but if the devs never release the server files then it's likely that we'll never see any mods made for Dune Awakening, which would be a huge shame because mods significantly extend the lifespan of a game like this. Devs, if you see this, please genuinely reconsider your choice to disallow self-hosted private servers. We don't mind how difficult it is to set up a clustered server, and we don't mind missing out on part of the experience of players in the city or PvP in the desert. We love your games and prefer when we can tinker with the settings to change reource rates and other things, and your dedicated community loves making mods and sharing them with everyone online. Please release the server files someday, hopefully sooner than later. Until then, I will begrudgingly rent a server from the only provider available just to enjoy your wonderful game by myself during the release hype, but I obviously can't reccomend that to anyone else.

**Dune: Awakening – All Spice, No Soul** Over 400 hours in beta and release. I saw potential once. I swear I did. But like water on Arrakis, it evaporated fast. And saying this hurts my soul, I wanted a Dune game MMO since Star Wars Galaxies. Combat used to feel tight. You could stagger enemies, block, dodge, and survive a swarm with skill. Now you get one dodge, one block, a sad little counter, and then you're wheezing for stamina while trying to bandage... which gets canceled if a gnat sneezes on you. Testing Stations? Less “tactical encounter,” more “knife jugglers, machine gunners, and grenade clowns all at once.” It's like being mugged by a Cirque du Soleil cast in body armor. And the Deep Desert? Oh, you'll love it. A massive, mostly empty map where all the good loot hides behind PvP gates. Bring a squad and top-tier gear or get farmed by the players who got there first. It’s less *Dune* and more *Doom* (but with worse odds). Crafting? Fun at first. Then the materials list starts to look like a tax form and the rewards stop being worth the grind. Oh, and spice harvesting? Used to be a thing. Now it’s another PvP carrot you’ll never reach if you enjoy solo play. And then there’s the Landsraad. Sounds awesome, right? A political system where player factions shape the server by fulfilling tasks for House Atreides or House Harkonnen. In practice? It’s just another grindfest. Deliver vehicles. Capture control points. Fight off PvP squads camping objectives like spice-addled vultures. Instead of diplomacy and manipulation, the “council of Great Houses” is a glorified scoreboard with extra chores. It feels uninspired and unreflective of the IP of Dune. I bought the Deluxe Edition thinking I was getting the next big survival game. What I got was a beautiful PvP loot-delivery simulator with fewer features than the beta had. **Pros:** * It’s pretty * The sand doesn’t crash your PC * Early crafting is kind of fun **Cons:** – Melee combat now feels like slapping a worm with a wet sock – PvE becomes punishment ritual – Deep Desert is an empty PvP meat grinder (You're the meat) – Crafting gets tedious fast – Solo players? Lol. Good luck – Spice is only part of the end game – Landsraad system is just PvP in a fancy hat and unavailable until end game pvp – Completely misses the vision and soul of *Dune* **Final verdict:** Gorgeous game. Terrible design. Should’ve stayed asleep.

This game, in general is mostly quite good, but where it fails is the end game and it ruins the rest. Instead of having fun PvP battles in the deep desert, you're mainly forced to focus on who is who as even your own guild mates are not identified with name plates, and most of the time even your own party members don't show correctly. It just takes away so much from fun pvp, you and your friends spend most of the time 'HEY IS THIS YOU, I'M DIPPING MY WING LEFT AND RIGHT, oh nvm I died' Oh and don't dare try to bring this discussion to the Dune Awakening Discord, the discord moderators there upon seeing your opinion of the matter come in, tip their fedora and say "I've attracted many M'Lady with my superior awareness of identifying who is who, we don't want no hand holding"

I'm liking it a lot, as somebody who played tons of Conan Exiles it's like that, but AAA since it's the Dune franchise, and since it isn't early access but a full title release it's a full and polished game. I'd call it the "survivalbox" of the year just based on the sheer engine Funcom brings from Conan Exiles. Funcom is also very good about supporting their MMOs and I expect they have probably a decade of support planned. It's currently PC only. The PvP would be classed as "PvEvP" so it's primarily about PvE but guilds can compete at the end-game zones, plus various PK arenas. I haven't experienced any PvP aside from some optional dungeons having PKing enabled, which makes it a little more exciting even when still just fighting NPCS. If you die you just drop your current money and resources, no equipment loss. If you die in a PvE zone only you can pick it up. It's sort of like "desert rat simulator", a lot of scavenging, crafting, and exploring. Movement is quick and fluid, and the climbing system is great. Vehicles are really fun (there's no collision damage). The gameplay is hitting camps, progressing through zones, and leveling up your character's skills and equipment like most sandbox RPGs. There's a main city hub, Arakeen, where the server shards are linked and an auction house is there for trading.

This game is awesome. It's probably one of my favorite survival games. So why do I not recommend it? The Deep Desert. This sentiment has already been echoed in a fair few other reviews, but for posterity sake, I will say it here. The deep desert is the most uninspired execution of PVP I could think of. In the trailer media, we see a lot of broad, open combat, combined arms as two guilds clash. The guilds clashing part could exist, sure. But good luck if you even attempt to bring any sort of land vehicle in. The worms will get you far before any PVP. Which brings us to the problem at hand: ornithopters. Put simply, if you are a solo player, or even with 1-2 other buddies, you're due for an awful time. Tier 6 scout ornithopters with their tier 6 rockets are simultaneously faster than tier 5, assuming you don't have boosters, as well as significantly stronger damage wise. Combined with the fact that you can put these in your proverbial pocket with the vehicle backup tool, means that people can hide away in a cubby, wait for an ornithopter to approach, and then attack. Now, let me be clear, I have no problem with PVP. But I will sooner quit playing than need to be chased for 5 minutes through the deep desert by 4 players who have nothing else to do but kill. And that is the exact problem. As it stands now, the only end game is griefing. There is no end game PVE content, unless you consider doing landsraad assignments that are typically completed the moment they go up as PVE. And to those who say "PVP is optional", sure. So is getting a vehicle. So is getting your contracts done, and your quests. This game was advertised as it being optional, too. But you're going to have to engage in it if you want to get the final tier of items. One of those items, by the by, being a large refinery that consumes less raw material for an overall higher yield. How optional! Not to mention, the deep desert entirely ignores what faction you're in! How cool would it have been to have a foxhole-like warfare system? Harkonnen and Atreides could claim zones, pushing your FACTION to work as a team as opposed to a guild of 20 players killing everyone who dares touch a single resource node. Nope, we get a free for all. The deep desert sours the entire experience. Such a shame, as up to tier 6, the game was awesome. It is so thoroughly unsatisfying to have an entire tier locked behind uninspired PVP. I'm sure I could get through it after enough time, and enough running away from large groups of ornithopters, but why bother?

HUGE game. Slow progression. Worms are the scariest thing in a video game.

Utterly splendid. It is a brutal and hostile world that we find ourselves upon but one that's so well perceived and laid out for us to feast upon with delight. Head-start was a little wobbly, but then what live service game isn't... The wrinkles seem to be quite well ironed and the first day or twos server issues are but a memory. Servers stable, no queues, friendly, helpful and engaging community are making the experience all the more enjoyable. Though my significant concerns in respect to servers, pvp, death etc have been somewhat allayed, do not fall into the mindset of thinking you can cross a wide expanse of sand with no sort of potential consequence. Planning is key to any traversal, plot your route from A-B with caution and consider the shortest ergo safest route. Graphically stunning, narrative engaging, community helpful and engaging there is nothing here to dislike. There will of course be those who lambaste the game for x, y or z, but I would ere on the side of caution for such reviews. Those will likely be laboured from the rage quit mentality of having personally met Shai-Hulud or the ravaging cleansing a sand storm provides. As mentioned earlier, plan, plan, plan... Measure twice, cut once! Congratulations FunCom on providing a stunning game with a very well delivered live service! 100% recommended. PS - Yes you can play solo. I've been solo since early start on the 5th of June and am just now breaking into aluminium and finished my faction quest. There is sooooo much to do and see and explore in this game. Base building is exquisite and utterly intoxicating. On the fence? Jump down and enjoy! Wholly recommended game!

★ ★ ★ ★ I give a 4 out of 5 Stars ★ for Dune: Awakening Too Early to play for PVE focused Solo Players. WAIT FOR 2 MONTHS. For PVP its the right time. I am Solo PVE player and after playing for few hours i can already sense the game is not fully finished. So my advise would be wait for some more time perhaps 2 months before they polish it. I break down the Pros & Cons for anyone who didn't play the BETA Pros : - Same developer who made Conan Exiles so a lot of familiar elements - Focus is Survival + Rest. So you need prioritize survival meaning no idle around unlike other MMO - Survive, Craft, Build, Quest, Combat, Scavenge ... repeat - The Desert is Rewarding & Unforgiving but raiding felt routine and combat pretty straight forward - Sand-worm - You gonna love it - The quest missions which involves a lot of combat felt decent and engaging so good enough for Solo - Surprisingly good exploration environment for what is largely a Desert Cons : - Game not 100% Finished so there is already too many patches, server down times which are disruptive - Lack of Private Servers for now, so lag can affect your game play - Players who have Minimum requirements may struggle with loading times & texture load delays - Players with Recommended requirements have the best experience - Check your specs, upgrade if necessary as unlike other MMO this one is spec heavy - Focus despite what they say seems to be mainly PVP & less for PVE Overall Dune Awakening is a promising MMO that requires a bit more time for developers to fix the issues and i believe in 2 months the Game will be fully ready. Funcom seemed to have modeled this based on their experience from Conan Exiles, so it will be much easier for players who played Conan to transition to Dune Awakening. Cheers! Have Fun!

The game is cool but if you play by yourself just save yourself the trouble and keep moving. It started off cool but after you get to PVP areas its over if you're solo.

-> Get back from lectures -> Play Dune like it is a 9-5 -> Spend 30-40 hours on getting your ornithopter -> Spend 60ish hours to finish the campaign -> Realize how many ores you have to mine to harvest spice in the Deep Desert -> Fly to Arakeen and harass Atreides scum. This is a certified Harkonnen classic.