Jade Empire

[coldcut]

So apparently Jade Empire is about to consume my life. Reviewers are saying that it's ten times awesomer than KOTR, their usual eloquence stunted by the short lengths of time from which they're able to pull themselves away from their X-Boxes. Mine arrives tomorrow. So if you've got anything urgent to say to me, I suggest you do it now.

[Stalking Shadow]

Keep plenty of water and a chamber pot nearby, is all I'm saying.

[Tarkenchi]

Gamefly shipped it yesterday... should be here... Tomorrow :D

I love renting online, with no due dates, no late fees, and when I am done, i just send it back and get the next game available on my queue And if i like it, i can buy it at a fraction of the price!


(shameless plug, over, and if you like, want to try it, I can reccomend for a free trial thing! :D )

[Noble]

bought Wednesday and have already put probably around 8 hours into it.
Pretty interesting plot line, but they give a lot of it away in little tid bits so that no major plot line is dropped like a bomb. Very interesting characters though, good story line. I'm really enjoying it.

The best thing about it is the reply value of it. They've said it has 3 different endings and there are lots of different paths that you can't take throughout the story. Good stuff.

[Druid]

I want this game!!! That is all.

[Sable Phoenix]

Is this another BioWare Star Wars title? Because KOTOR was one of the best computer RPGs I ever played.

[8 Ball]

Is this another BioWare Star Wars title? Because KOTOR was one of the best computer RPGs I ever played.

It is by Bioware, but this game is why they didn't have the time to do KOTOR II

[Sable Phoenix]

Wait, this is the title that's all about wushu-style superpowered martial arts back in like... ancient China or something, right?

[Tarkenchi]

Wait, this is the title that's all about wushu-style superpowered martial arts back in like... ancient China or something, right?

Yessir, it is. I've played the OXM demo for it and I have to say its great!

[Randomus]

I require this game.

[Tarkenchi]

It just got here, and im going on 12 minutes with my JOYGASM


56 inch television. Check.
Jade empire. Check.
Chamber pot. Check.
High resolution AV cables. Check.
Food. No check.
Xbox. Check.
Joygasm. Check.

Woooo :D

[coldcut]

It's pretty cool, but so far I'm not getting the Homer's-massage-chair effect that I got from KOTR. The Star Wars games were great because the characters were so good. I'm not getting that here.

I also think the action sequences lack diversity, which the reviewers seem to disagree with, so maybe I'm doing something wrong.

[Noble]

I tend to agree with you on that Cold Cut. I don't feel as sucked in as I did for KOTR. I feel compelled to play the game, but not really enmeshed into the story.

[coldcut]

Well, after playing it all the way through, I'm a bit dissappointed with it. None of the usual reviewers even touched on some of the most annoying issues, and I'm pretty easy going as far as these things go.

First off, the combat system pretty much sucked. I think it was supposed to be a more action oriented version of the one used in KOTR, but it ended up being too simplistic and just plain boring. You essentially have one attack. If you hit your attack button three times you get a 'combo', which means that something slightly fancy happens. Doesn't seem to have much effect on damage, and actually seems to leave you more exposed than if you'd done three attacks in a row. You can tie this together with your magic and support attacks, but it's rarely worth it. If the fight's supposed to be hard, the enemies are simply invulnerable or extremely resistant to your support styles, and the time it takes to switch back means that it's just easier to rely on your best damage attack. The big final battle with the big evil guy at the end involved me stabbing him with the same spear attack for five minutes until he fell over from a fatal stab to the groin. This is how all your enemies die if you choose the staff/spear weapon at the beginning: castration.

Visually, the combat system didn't fit the genre. These are supposed to be kung fu masters, men and women who have trained for so long and so hard that they surpass normal human boundaries. But what it ends up looking like is a bunch of people flailing around until they happen to hit something. And they all only have one or two moves. I mean, if they'd added just two or three additional animations, it might have been palatable, but as it was, it looked like the original Mortal Kombat, but with less moves.

Also, the controls seemed sticky, kind of slow. It was even odds whether you were going to roll forward into and enemy or jump over him, which is really a problem in some fights. Block didn't work unless you gave it a whole lot of time to setup. So it was usually just easier to jump out of the way and attack instead.

As a final insult, if you got near a wall, the camera was prone to doing some funky things where you couldn't see the enemy.

The story just didn't suck you in either. The plot was alright, I suppose, but the characterization just wasn't that good.

Part of this was, again, the combat system. Your party doesn't really fight alongside you. One of your party accompanies you and does its own AI attack thing, or meditates off to the side giving you some minor abilities. But even when a character is fighting with you, they're not really fighting with you. They're off on their own somewhere, and you can sort of hear some grunts and crashing off screen. It didn't really seem to matter whether they were there or not, however. So your team is more like a cheerleading squad. You help some of them with their problems, sort of, sometimes. But it feels forced. They don't change in level like teammates in KOTR, or any other RPG where you have an entourage. So there's really not much of a sense of attachment.

Second off, they're just not very good characters. Nothing really happens with most of them. They all seem like they're along for the ride and you meet up with them every now and then because you need to use their airplane. One girl has some sort of ability to talk to ghosts that doesn't ever really come into play, despite the fact that a good chunk of the early game involves her complaining about how different it makes her. One girl doesn't seem all that upset or even affected by some fairly stunning revelations about her father. There are a lot of things that seem alright upon a token glance but when you start really looking, they just sort of fall apart.

As a final note, you never feel that much connection to your character. You don't get the chance to do much in the way of personalization for one thing. My shirtless dude was shirtless the whole way through, including on a wind swept snowy mountain. Investing in alternate styles seemed a bit pointless. There never seemed to be that much difference in real effect on the game. You got some crystal power up dealies here and there, but I never felt like they were making a giant difference. They added on to the base stats for the most part, and only gave minor % increases.

And the main character himself just wasn't very well defined. People periodically ask you throughout the course of the game just why you were so dedicated to saving the empire, rescuing so and so, defeating all the evil guys, etc. And you never have that great of an answer. Most other RPGs, there's something pushing you, some sort of motivating force. Here, there's really nothing. And it doesn't help that throughout most of the game you feel like you're playing the endgame. Most RPGs have some fairly frivolous but fun sidetracking where you get a feel for your character and the game world itself, even if there is something larger at stake. This sort of thing is crucial to pacing, because if the storyline is always at a high tempo, it feels monotonous. I was expecting a couple different villages to save until I got to the main city, but there's really just two or three main areas. Oddly enough, there's a map with a little arrow where you get to choose the destination of your vessel of conveyance. But there's only two locations until the very end, where a third gets added. Why have a map? There's no reason for it except in getting people's hopes unneccesarily raised.

In summary, this game just made me want to play Knights of the Republic again. And maybe it's the shadow of KOTR falling over this game. It's not a bad game, neccesarily, but it's far from good. And this sounds like a bad review, but I did play the thing all the way through and I did have some moments of jubilation, mostly from defeating difficult bosses. But it feels incomplete. I hate to say that following KOTR II, which actually was incomplete, but this has some of the same feeling. It's more polished, and there's no abrubt changes that leave you wondering what happened, but there is the feeling that maybe the devs here tried for more than they could handle, and had to settle for something lesser.

[Randomus]

Well, that sucks. Won't be plunking me cash down for that one, then.