Dune: Awakening – Early Impressions Review and Benchmarks

Welcome to the Sands of Arrakis

In Dune: Awakening, the survival MMO genre meets one of the richest science fiction universes ever imagined. Developed by Funcom, the minds behind Conan Exiles, this persistent-world survival MMO drops you into an alternate timeline where Paul Atreides was never born. Arrakis is now a volatile sandbox torn between Atreides and Harkonnen forces, with the Fremen mysteriously absent—and it’s your job to survive its deadly ecosystem.

After 25+ hours in-game during the head start period, it’s clear Dune: Awakening has tremendous potential. Setting is everything, and even though I have never gotten into anything Dune – I got the vibe right away, and it’s nailed here. But it’s also clear this game still has much to prove, especially in how it fuses MMO depth with survival sensibilities.

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Survival First, MMO Later

Dune: Awakening starts like a traditional survival game. You scramble to stay hydrated, hide from the sun, and avoid being eaten by sandworms. Crafting water purifiers, stillsuits, Holtzman shields, and hunter-seeker drones makes the first 10 hours a solid loop of crafting, exploration, and desperate scavenging. It was extremely tedious and BORING – and I fear a lot of players will drop off quickly before they get to experience the amazing potential of the mid game and what this game truly has to offer.

What sets this game apart is how deeply tied these mechanics are to the Dune universe. Even non-fans will find it fun to reverse-engineer sci-fi tech. Survival systems are weighty and engaging, but MMO systems feel faint, almost ghostlike in the early hours. Global chat is nearly silent, and player interactions, outside of co-op parties, feel minimal. This may change with broader launch adoption, but for now, Dune: Awakening feels more like Conan Exiles: Dune Edition than a true MMO. This game is by far much better with friends, and if you start there right away, you can have a much better time. As a solo player, it is still rewarding and a blast to play after its rough couple of introduction hours.

For example, I was told to build a base near my general area, with no warning that it was 1.5 km away from the nearest social hub. So I built up everything following the progression guide, grinding materials, and then had to walk back and forth a total of about 4 times to progress quests, refine ore, or build a stillsuit to progress. I quickly abandoned all that work, rebuilt everything, only to find out the starting area is pretty much pointless later in the game, where the other areas are really where your main base would be. I really dislike wasting my time, and it really depends on the player here and what you can tolerate.

The onboarding process for some will either be just fine or extremely tedious and cumbersome to get to the meat and potatoes of the game. 4 hours in, and most gamers will decide if this is their “next” game to devote their precious time to, and while the onboarding wasn’t terrible, it needs some more explanation and guidance to prepare the player for what’s to come. If it wasn’t for trailers, I would not know just how exciting this game could be down the line.

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Performance

For PC players, Dune: Awakening takes full advantage of Nvidia’s cutting-edge technology. Out of the box, the game supports DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, DLSS Super Resolution, and Nvidia Reflex—which reduces latency by up to 50%. On RTX 50 Series GPUs, players can see up to a 4x boost in performance at 4K ultra settings, with the RTX 5090 pushing frame rates past 300 FPS, making it one of the most fluid, high-fidelity experiences currently available in PC gaming.

Performance was fantastic, we had 2 bugs where our character could not crouch, and another where we could not put away a weapon. A quick respawn fixed this, but other than that, the game has been extremely fluid and plays very well.

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Exploration and Environmental Design

Arrakis is massive, vertical, and frequently stunning. Roving sandworms serve as living hazards, punishing anyone who lingers on open sand too long. Coriolis storms reshape parts of the map weekly, promising “infinite exploration,” and the level design supports this. Vast cliffs, deep ravines, and imperial testing stations invite—and reward—exploration.

Unfortunately, biome fatigue sets in. Desert stretches, while gorgeous, become repetitive. The sun is a huge factor, and the developer did a lot to ensure you felt its oppression. Arrakis is punishing – and you feel it. The sandstorms, the sun causing dehydration, the worms, all of it comes together to create an oppressive but engaging system you have to manage to survive on top of everything else.

Some locations, like shipwrecks or hydration caves, lack meaningful challenge or reward, especially in shared instances. I was on a pretty crowded server and was often excited to come up to a dungeon-like area only to find all the enemies had already been killed by a previous squad, but I could loot everything. So yes, I got loot but no challenge because the server had already cleared it.

Climbing, which could have offered traversal nuance, is plagued by bugs, often stranding players mid-ascent while draining stamina. Eventually, however, you can unlock some pretty amazing abilities that can stack so you can do an ability jump, a fast dash, and a hook into the wall at once. Once you have put in enough skill points into these trees, the game becomes much more exciting and easier to play, but it does not do a great job explaining that these are key features most players should go after.

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Combat: Promising Tools, Uneven Fights

Combat is currently the weakest system. Enemy types are overly familiar—knife guy, rifle guy, minigun guy—and offer little tactical diversity. You can unlock useful tools like poison darts, turrets, and precision rifles, but even with access to all skill trees, engagements grow stale fast. Animations for melee combat can seem very clunky, especially since it auto-locks onto someone you are near. In a Dune game, the melee is critical, so this needs some serious work and updates, and fast.

There are also shielded enemies that can quickly make this system fall apart. The shielded enemies can only be damaged by a “held” melee attack that pierces their shields. If you have 2 or more shielded enemies right on you, this system just does not work well. I was overjoyed to find out guns can eventually be found or crafted that pierce this armor, so I never used melee on these enemies in groups at all.

PvP is rare but present, particularly in zones like the Deep Desert (not accessible early on). PvE difficulty is wildly inconsistent: some areas are a cakewalk, others are overwhelming. This lack of tuning undercuts what could otherwise be thrilling, high-stakes encounters. PvP could be a mainstay of the endgame, and I could see it being extremely silly and fun with the sheer amount of abilities and so on, but it will take a bit to get there for most players, and it is not heavily forced.

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UI and Systems Design

Crafting is deep but clunky. The inventory menu lacks sorting and search features, which feels painful in a game that demands so much crafting and tool-switching. The eight-slot hotbar is overloaded, and without a second row, players are constantly forced to swap tools mid-task. Vehicle navigation is frustrating too—no minimap, and checking your full map while driving causes your vehicle to slow or sink.

For a game so focused on movement and survival logistics, these UI shortcomings quickly compound into real annoyances. If you can overcome these, however, the game is deep, and with love, it can be amazing. Things like the fabricator, the stillsuits, the ornithopter, and even Dune’s radio system are deeply layered and have hours of joy and fun for any user. If you can get past its initial clunkiness, Awakening has its glory and fun systems to play with here.

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Sound, Score, and Atmosphere

The game’s soundscape is superb. Sandworms sound like natural disasters. Storms roar with terrifying force. Composer Knut Avenstroup Haugen delivers a score that enhances every moment—atmospheric, cinematic, and deeply Dune. This was one of our favorite parts – the world is beautifully crafted, and the game runs well. With DLSS and other settings, here the game runs well on most machines, and we only ran into one game crash total in our playtime.

Environmental storytelling shines in testing stations and key narrative areas. Sadly, most other NPCs are flat, and the main story (guided by your mentor Zantara) is engaging only in fits and starts. Without deeper narrative beats, even lore fans may find themselves lost or disengaged. As mentioned, Dune Radio is a hidden gem here, and the lore found there alone is great, but many players may miss it.

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Early Verdict: A Promising Foundation

Dune: Awakening is already a strong contender in the survival MMO space. It delivers:

• Unique, lore-driven survival systems
• Expansive world design with real verticality
• Beautiful, terrifying environmental threats
• A haunting and effective audio-visual presentation

But it also suffers from:

• Underdeveloped combat
• Weak MMO systems
• Frustrating UI/UX design
• Repetitive early enemy types and terrain

If you’re a fan of Dune or survival games, this is an experience worth watching—if not jumping into right away. For MMO fans or casual players, it’s best to wait for a few updates. Dune: Awakening could become something great—but it’s not quite there yet.

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Final Thoughts

I’ll revisit this game in a month once I’ve had a chance to explore faction systems, late-game PvP, and Deep Desert endgame content. Until then, consider this an early check-in: Dune: Awakening is off to a compelling but cautious start. Dune: Awakening is a solid 7.5/10 survival/MMO game and likely one of the best in a variety of categories: setting, fidelity, and potential. Of course, it is not without its drawbacks, with a janky melee and animation system with limited enemy types for now, but these can hopefully be addressed and tuned. It’s exciting, and if the game continues to expand to places beyond the desert, it could hold a large audience for years. Only time will tell how updates will proceed.

Dune: Awakening is officially launching today and is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, GeForce Now, Linux, and Microsoft Windows. Happy Gaming!

Disclaimer: Nvidia provided us with a review code for Dune: Awakening for benchmarking purposes. This in no way influences our analysis, opinions, or editorial integrity. All findings and conclusions are based on our independent testing and gameplay experience.