When I first read “Dune: Awakening’s dungeons are Buy Solari so atrocious that I’d rather get slowly digested by a sandworm than fight through another one,” I winced. But after logging dozens of hours in Funcom’s survival‑MMO, I’m starting to agree. The dungeons in Dune: Awakening are some of the most disappointing parts of what is otherwise a game with immense potential. Here’s why they fail — and more importantly, what they need to change.

1. Repetition kills the wonder

One of the core issues is that the dungeons are formulaic. Underground facilities with the same kinds of rooms over and over: locked doors, loot caches, waves of enemies, heavy gunner or shielded melee type, rinse and repeat. The PC Gamer review specifically calls out how almost every room feels like a carbon copy — “a melee guy with a shield charging, ranged dart‑throwers, then a heavy minigun foe who takes twice as long to kill.” 

When you descend into what should feel like strange, dangerous, hidden spaces on Arrakis, you expect a sense of exploration, variety, maybe environmental storytelling. Instead, the dungeons offer more of the same. After a while, the juxtaposition of identical visual motifs and predictable enemy loadouts makes them tedious rather than thrilling. Even crafting weapons with special tools (like disruptors) or using gravity grenades, while fun, can't compensate for a lack of strategic variety in the spaces themselves. 

2. Combat that frustrates rather than challenges

Dungeons amplify flaws in combat mechanics because so much of the game’s difficulty and pacing come down to the fights. And Dune: Awakening struggles here. Shooting is described as “perfunctory at best,” which suggests it lacks punch, weight, or feedback.  Melee combat fares worse: sluggish, unresponsive, and often a last‑resort because early in the game many enemies have shields. That forces you into melee mechanics that feel weak or undercooked. 

The worst part is that many early dungeons force you to fight shielded foes with limited options to break or bypass those shields; guns don’t cut it, melee is too slow. Even when disruptors are craftable, they feel like stop‑gap tools rather than reliable solutions because of how slowly they work. 

3. Uneven pacing, unclear rewards

A good dungeon should feel like a risk/reward proposition: you invest effort (resources, gear, time), you face danger, and you walk away with something meaningful — loot, progression, story. In Dune: Awakening, the rewards sometimes feel worthwhile (lots of loot is cited) but you're put through so much slog that the trade‑off begins to feel hollow. 

Rooms drag on, the same enemies show up, you wait for animations, get stuck because of camera issues, or find basic mechanics like cover are poorly implemented (or non‑existent). All of this adds friction. Even when the final boss fight is appropriately harder, without engaging mechanics or enough build variety, it can feel like a chore more than an climax. 

4. Visual and mechanical sameness

Visually, the dungeons do little to distinguish themselves. Once you’ve seen one underground facility, you’ve seen them all—expecting different architecture, environmental hazards, puzzle elements, traps, or at least thematic variation. Instead, bigger dungeons tend to be just more of the same. 

Mechanically, there's a lack of surprise. Few puzzles, very few traps, and bosses are not “unique” enough. The best fights are memorable because they are slightly bugged, or because something went wrong (camera get stuck, equipment breaks, etc.). That’s not a compliment, it’s a sign: the unintended quirks are more interesting than what was designed on purpose. 

5. What could make them better

If I were on the dev team, here are some suggestions:

• Introduce environmental diversity: Different types of underground areas (sandstone caverns, ancient labs, abandoned spice processing plants), with unique hazards— collapsing ceilings, toxic gas, flooding, etc.

• Mechanic variety: More than shields + miniguns. Enemy types that force you into stealth, platforming, team coordination, traps. Maybe environmental puzzles or timed events to break up the combat treadmill.

• Reward structure: Disparity between effort and payoff needs smoothing. Make gear upgrades meaningful; ensure alternate paths through dungeons; make sure loot is interesting, not just incremental stat bumps.

• Improve feel of melee & ranged combat: Better responsiveness, clearer feedback, smoother animations, more robust weapon‑balance (esp. for shielded enemies).

• Boss design: Unique visuals, mechanics, patterns. Make them feel like the end of a gauntlet, not just another room with more Dune Awakening Solari on sale here HP.