| Dune: Awakening | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Dune: Awakening is a massive multiplayer survival game by Funcom based on the Dune sci-fi universe. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Dune: Awakening Review Overview
What is Dune: Awakening?
Dune: Awakening is a massive multiplayer survival game, where players will rise from the bottom of the ranks to greatness in the open-world of Arrakis. In this alternate but nevertheless familiar take on the popularized sci-fi universe of Dune, players will go through many trials and challenges throughout its expansive world, rising from nameless prisoner to becoming an agent of the Atreides or the Harkonnen. One can play alone, with a party of friends, or get to know any of the strangers that inhabit the same land. You are the protagonist of your own story in Dune: Awakening.
Developed and published by Funcom, it aims to deliver a unique experience for its players with a wide variety of things to do, taking familiar elements from the survival genre and blending it with some traditional MMO features and mechanics.
Dune: Awakening features:
⚫︎ Immersive Open-World
⚫︎ Stunning Graphics
⚫︎ Intriguing Storyline
⚫︎ Customizable Ability Sets from Different Classes
⚫︎ Tons of Content to Discover
⚫︎ Sandbikes!
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
 PlayStation |
 Xbox |
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| $49.99 (Standard Edition) | Wishlist Only | ||||
Dune: Awakening Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Tons of Content To Go Through A Massive Open-World Intriguing Plot, Starring You Forgiving Gameplay |
Frequent "Server Restarts" Still Buggy Slow Pacing in the Beginning Combat Can Be Stiff |
Dune: Awakening Overall Score - 74/100
Dune: Awakening is a solid multiplayer survival title that offers a lot of gameplay and content to go through, catering to all types of gamers by combining the best of survival genre gameplay with familiar MMO elements bundled up into one hefty package. However, for being a full release at $50, its current state leaves quite a bit to be desired and needing some polish, the experience marred by clunky melee combat, bugs and glitches, random stuttering, and server disconnects.
Dune: Awakening Story - 8/10
Dune: Awakening’s story sets itself apart from other recent Dune universe media for introducing a completely alternate timeline where its protagonist Paul Atreides never existed, instead giving the spotlight to the player. It’s a common rags-to-riches story, starting as a nobody prisoner who is given a second chance at life, who has the means to become a loyal agent to their Grand House—it’s quite a fresh take in the franchise, but still has all the familiar elements that Dune fans will surely recognize. With that said, story pacing can feel slow, especially in the beginning, as story progression is also locked by research or content progression.
Dune: Awakening Gameplay - 7/10
Gameplay-wise, it’s great that there’s a wide variety of things to do—combat, base-building, progression through researching items, player interaction, exploring the immensely vast world of Arrakis, and more. However, given the nature of its overall mechanics, these can easily start getting repetitive the more you progress, requiring more grinding and commitment to finish things. There are also instances where the controls are faulty and don’t respond, souring the experience by a bit. Even without the bug, combat controls can feel rather clunky at times, alongside having a few awkward and stiff animations during melee.
Dune: Awakening Visuals - 7/10
Dune: Awakening’s visuals are stunning from the get go, really bringing the world of Arrakis to life. It’s realistic enough to be pleasant to the eyes, and it lends a lot to create a more immersive universe for players to involve themselves in. However, it’s nothing mindblowing either, and it suffers from a few performance issues—the game does evidently stutter quite a bit, whether it’s just running through the vast expanse of the sand or in more asset-heavy cutscenes.
Dune: Awakening Audio - 8/10
Audio and sound design work well in the game, lending themselves well to add to the tension of living on the most dangerous planet in the Dune universe. Every footstep, every alerted enemy, every clash of a flying bullet, accompanied by adrenaline-pumping music that raises the stakes and the atmosphere makes for one heart-stopping experience. Voice acting is well-done, with all lines in the game being voiced, even the ones in a fictional language, which makes it even cooler to hear.
Dune: Awakening Value for Money - 7/10
Players will get their money’s worth of $50 simply from the amount of content available. You can play for up to 20 hours but still be barely scratching the surface of what Dune: Awakening has to offer. However, for a full release game, it still needs quite the polish in different aspects, from the servers’ capacity, clunky controls and stiff combat, and several bugs and glitches that can take away from the immersive experience.
Dune: Awakening Review:
I’ve had my fair share of playing MMORPGs since I was young, ranging from titles like Trickster Online, classic World of Warcraft, Dragon Nest (when it was still on PC), and recently, Final Fantasy XIV. On the other side of the spectrum, I’ve also enjoyed delving into survival games, both singleplayer and multiplayer, like Minecraft, Don’t Starve (and Don’t Starve Together), The Forest, and The Long Dark, to name a few. Putting two and two together seemed like a good move—and Dune: Awakening seemed just right up my alley. The more I saw of it, the more I was compelled to step into its harsh but otherwise intriguing world…and here I am.
Now admittedly, I don’t know much about Dune and its history, but Dune: Awakening has definitely inspired me to go check out the franchise and its deep, well-thought universe. While my stay in Arrakis has been quite pleasant and exciting, there are still a few things that need to be polished thoroughly to really make it stand out.
Incredibly Lore-Heavy
For starters, players will quickly realize just from the game’s description that this world is not entirely new—it’s based on a fictional universe that has existed since the 1960s, staying strong for decades. The big question is: do you need to know ANYTHING about Dune’s world before playing? And the short answer is, yes, to really understand all of its terminologies and intricate history.
As a game set in the universe of Dune, a sci-fi franchise spanning all kinds of media, from the original novel, to several films, and quite a number of video games. With such a canon universe already made, all its media has to connect somehow. Despite its completely alternate timeline, it seems to share several plot details and terminologies already present in the world of Dune and Arrakis. In fact, the moment you boot up the game, you’re greeted by the voice of Paul Atreides, the protagonist of the novel, the movies, and in several Dune games—if you had to compare him with someone, he’d be like the Harry Potter of Dune. He gives a quick summary of the happenings of this alternate timeline, where he never existed. After all, the protagonist of Dune: Awakening is you, the player.
Dune fans will surely have a blast understanding most, if not everything, that the game throws at you within the first few hours of the game, even appreciate the little introductory cameo done by Paul. However, as a newer enthusiast or someone who has yet to dabble on anything else Dune-related besides the game, it might come off a little overwhelming and will need extra research outside the game to fully comprehend. I remember being pelted with so many foreign words out of the bat, which confused me even more with the lack of context clues. While there is an in-game archive of some sort, it does not exactly explain everything.
Not Your Traditional MMO—It Feels Like A Singleplayer
Funcom has since retracted their description about Dune: Awakening being a survival MMO, instead labelling it to a "multiplayer survival game on a massive scale"—which is a good idea on their part so that players would be able to manage their expectations, because it’s in no way a traditional MMO. In my several hours of playing, I barely encountered any other non-NPC player like myself, except the ones chilling in the Tradeposts. Traditional MMOs have a massive number of players online at any given time, which makes most places impossible to be empty. Here in Dune: Awakening, you probably have to put in some effort to actually find anyone in the expansive sand dunes outside of the social hubs (of course, unless you’re playing with friends, but that’s a different story).
In fact, you probably never even have to play in multiplayer if you can help it. I’m a solo player by nature, and I wholly appreciate that I’m not entirely locked out of content just because I play alone most of the time (nor have any friends to play with, huhu). Now, the endgame might be a completely different story, but that's around 50+ hours down the line, and it'll be a bridge to cross when we get there. But for now, PvE enjoyers can rejoice in knowing that they don’t have to play in multiplayer if they don’t want to.
I also highly appreciated that a server is split into the PvE area (Hagga Basin) and the PvP area (Open Desert). There are some PvP spots in the PvE area and vice versa, but they’re rather small and can easily be avoided. Again, as someone who prefers to play solo in MMOs and is non-confrontational, it was nice that I didn’t have to worry about my base getting looted while I was away or a much higher level player killing me on the spot while I fumbled frantically with my hotbar.
Chock Full Of Gameplay
Ah yes, the gameplay. Dune: Awakening is blessed with a myriad of content and things to do with different gameplay mechanics—after all, it is a mashup of the survival genre and MMOs. There’s a little bit of everything in the mix, such as resource gathering and management, base-building, melee and ranged combat, a vast open-world to explore on foot or on your trusty Sandbike, quests and contracts to fulfill, better upgrades and items as you progress through your research schematics…there’s something in it for everyone.
Even if plenty of upgrades and better items are locked behind story progression and levelling up, players are free to play at their own pace without any pressure. Do you want to spend all your time gathering Granite Stones and Salvaged Metal to create your perfect home base? Go for it. Or would you rather take the all combat route and extract all the Scavengers for that sweet sweet blood to turn it into water? The freedom is yours. Get eaten by a sandworm because you miscalculated its distance away from you? Um, okay, you do you.
In terms of combat abilities, what’s cool is you’re not locked to a singular class for the entirety of your playthrough—you start off with one of the Grand Schools’ skill tree unlocked with the basics, but as you explore Arrakis, you’ll find out that you can delve into other classes as well, making for customization in combat style. Need some poison darts from the Mentat tree, but want the Bene Gesserit’s manipulation skills as well? No problem, you can have them both simultaneously.
Other than the funky melee combat controls (we’ll get to that later), everything else is quite smooth. Building bases are easily done with an intuitive base building mode, and the resource gathering gameplay in the form of using a cool laser device that cuts it down into tiny pieces for you was admittedly enjoyable to do. Movement is solid, and ranged combat is fun to play.
Despite it being a survival game, where it’s superbly easy to succumb to your death either in combat or having one of your needs meters depleting, Dune: Awakening is much more forgiving in that regard.
Firstly, should you fall in combat to a sneaky little Scavenger or even an ill-timed sandstorm, you don’t pass out and respawn immediately—you’re given a chance to revive yourself. What’s more, you can keep reviving yourself despite your health bar being depleted to critical health three times in a row as long as your second wind health bar is still up. It’s what saved me from losing my items when I was too far from my base, in the middle of nowhere, and a sandstorm started chipping away at my health.
In terms of material collection, resource points are quite generous in giving materials, and coupled with a surprisingly fast respawn rate (you can circle an entire rockface and suddenly, you’ll have Granite or Plant Fiber to collect again). It makes the whole gathering sequence much easier, especially because as you progress or expand your base, you’d be needing a lot more of those materials.
However, do note that given its survival genre nature, gameplay will eventually start to feel repetitive. Nevertheless, if you’re a fan of cyclical routine and seeing progress in your game, then this wouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Melee Combat Can Be Clunky At Times
While I did give plus points to the other aspects of gameplay the game has with its myriad of activities, its melee combat can feel quite flat and stiff at times. Parrying is awkward, like there’s some sort of input lag. Enemies themselves can feel weird at times as well, evident when you’re squaring against them with your melee weapon.
Due to the unnatural stiffness of melee combat in game, I much prefer to use ranged gunplay and shoot my enemies down from a distance instead. Unfortunately though, early in the game, you are sometimes forced to switch to a melee stance because some enemies have an impenetrable barrier that can only be broken with a heavy attack with your blade—you do unlock a gun that can destroy the shield no problem, but that’s somewhere a few hours in, after travelling to the next map.
Network Issues, Bugs, Glitches
Given that the game’s overall structure of being a survival game-MMO hybrid that’s not really an MMO, the game’s network structure could use a bit more tweaking. Within the span of 30 minutes, not even passing the character backstory creation with the Reverend Mother, I’ve been disconnected twice—once during the character creation process (much to my chagrin since I had to restart creating my character from the beginning) and the second in the middle of a conversation…and I haven’t even gotten out the room yet, not even stepping on Arrakis.
According to the game, my server ping was a pretty good 23, so I’m not entirely sure why I was getting kicked out. Not really a good sign on their part if it’s acting like this at Advanced Access where there’s considerably less players to deal with—hopefully it will be all ironed out when the full release comes. In my excitement, I joined the Dune: Awakening Discord server as well, and it seems that they quickly addressed some of these issues.
A few weird glitches on my end too, where my gun just stopped working all of a sudden—it was easily remedied by logging out into the main menu and going back in, but it’s frustrating that it just suddenly stops working after some time. It happened several times over the course of my initial playthrough too, particularly after I left the initial Tradepost.
Story and Game Feels Slow in the Beginning
Given the story plot, there’s a reason why you need to work a little extra hard in the beginning of the game. You’re a nobody prisoner from another world, and you would have been left for dead if not for the Arrakis outlaw that saves you. With nothing but the clothes on your back, you learn more about the most dangerous planet in the universe’s solar system and how to survive it…for the next couple of hours.
While this isn’t entirely new to seasoned gamers, others may find it boring being tasked to WALK around the stretch of the South Hagga Basin, which, in an open-world setting, is quite large. You manage to unlock a sandbike by the end of it all since you need it to progress the story, but given that your entire environment is just rocks, sand, and more sand with some Scavenger Camps and Ships and whatnot, it can get pretty draggy going to and fro just to get things done. If you can get past the initial start, Dune: Awakening will be sure to give you more.
Is Dune: Awakening Worth It?
Worth The Content, But It’s Not Yet At Its Best
Dune: Awakening is definitely a game to experience, whether you’re a Dune enthusiast or a newbie, a survival genre gamer, an MMO player, or just a gamer looking for something new to play. It has a little something for everyone to enjoy, and while the game gets better as you progress, you’re not forced to strictly adhere to the story and still have freedom to play at your own pace.
However, at its current state, it still suffers from several frustrating bugs and glitches, performance issues, clunky combat, and network or server problems. Luckily, the Funcom team seems to be ironing out these creases as quickly as they can, and hopefully it will all be well for a full launch.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steam |
PlayStation |
Xbox |
|||
| $49.99 (Standard Edition) | Wishlist Only | ||||
Dune: Awakening FAQ
What are the classes available in Dune: Awakening?
Players can choose between the following Great Schools of the Imperium:
⚫︎ Trooper
⚫︎ Bene Gesserit
⚫︎ Mentat
⚫︎ Swordmaster
⚫︎ Planetologist
When will Dune: Awakening release for the PS5/Xbox Series X|S?\
Funcom has yet to formally announce a definitive release date or window for the game’s console release.
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Dune: Awakening Product Information
 |
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| Title | Dune: Awakening |
|---|---|
| Release Date | June 5, 2025 (Advanced Access) June 10, 2025 (Official Launch) |
| Developer | Funcom |
| Publisher | Funcom |
| Supported Platforms | PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S |
| Genre | Action, Adventure, Multiplayer |
| Number of Players | 1-4 |
| ESRB Rating | PEGI 16 |
| Official Website | Dune: Awakening Official Website |
