Jade Empire (1 Viewer)

[Chris Bardon]

I'm surprised that there's not a Jade Empire thread going yet-is anyone else playing it? There have been a few mixed reviews so far, and I think that the reason a few people may have been a little disappointed is that the game is far less stat and equipment heavy than other RPGs. The game is really more akin to Fable than KOTOR. Really enjoying it though-it's definitely worth a look.

It's amazing how much a little polish can do to a game as well. I noticed that a lot of the things I didn't like about KOTOR2 were technical glitches like the delays between switching menu pages, some long load times, and slowdown that could have been fixed with a little more time.

 

[Dave Sabo]

I'm playing and loving it... I think the story is good, it sucked me in, and I care more about the story and overall game experience lately, than I care about fighting and such.
But... the fighting is very cool also. I also enjoy that it's different, it's not your typical elf and dwarf setting, or futuristic... it's its own world.

I don't miss equipment upgrades either. There's enough upgrading to be done with styles and stat items you collect and purchase.

I've got some 12-13 hours into the game at this point, and I'd say this is on par with the original KOTOR, I wouldn't compare them more as they are each, in their own right, awesome games... just different styles... but all good

So far I have experienced only 1 instance of what I'd call a glitch or bug, the game was stuttering insanely, reloading the same area did nothing... but then I found out simply running out of the area and returning correcting the issue... so it wasn't a biggie.

 

[Christopher_P]

I'm only a few hours in but its a lot of fun I like it! I don't miss the gear upgrading and the like I do enough of that when I play MMORPG's

Down side to it is my thompson drive xbox is chewing it up and spitting it out. Locks up every once and a while on me and it doesn't seem I am the only thompson drive owner with problems with it from other online forums. This and Ghost Recon (1) seem to be the games I have that my thompson drive really doesn't seem to like.

 

[Chris Bardon]

Getting a little further into this game (just got to the Imperial City), and I've noticed one thing that could have really been improved on. I just picked up a second martial style (well, third if you count Drunken Master) and I've noticed that it's not really clear how one martial style is any better than another. i.e.-would it be better to collect many styles and stay balanced, or to master one style completely? Legendary Strike does seem to do more damage than Leaping Tiger, but that might just be my imagination. What would have been nice is either more numbers to show how different styles compare (base stats that you can modify with upgrades), or better still, giving particular martial styles different strangths and weaknesses (e.g. style X is particularly effective against armed opponents, or against style Y). There might be more of this later in the game, but so far this is the only major complaint I've got.

 

[Matt C]

Well, I just finished the game last night (on the open palm side). There were many good points to the game, and I have to say I enjoyed it quite a bit. My first-gen Xbox definitely didn't like the game too much, but once it managed to get the area loaded (after much crunching and loud read-error sounds coming from the drive), the game ran very smoothly, and I never encountered a single glitch in the game! I only had a couple of small complaints: I couldn't change the outfit of the character, and I was somewhat tired of looking at the same thing the whole game. Also, that there were almost too many fighting styles to choose from, in that you don't get enough upgrade points through the game. In my case, I started upgrading my available styles at the beginning of the game, only to get advanced styles later that I would have much preferred to use, but I had already invested a lot of points into the original styles! This alone has convinced me to play again, (not to mention alternate storylines), but led to a somewhat disappointing experience in terms of the real-time fighting.

These are really minor complaints though, and I really enjoyed the story itself, so I highly recommend that everyone at least rents it and tries it out!

-Matt C

As a side note, I was really disappointed with the limited edition bonus disc content. The exclusive character idea was great, and game demos are ok... But they didn't make it a hybrid disc, so I was forced to watch the "making of" documentary through the xbox (with a lower quality connection, because my component connection is used by my DVD player). And then I realized it didn't matter, because the making of video (by G4 video game telelvision) was of terrible quality! Talk about MPEG blocking! I felt like I was watching low-res streaming video off the 'net! Really, I can't see any reason for this to have been allowed. And compared to the limited edition disc for Halo 2, the amount of content for Jade Empire's disc was pathetic. Halo 2 had many more docs than I ever expected; Jade Empire's extras disc fell quite short of my expectations.

 

[David Ely]

I had fun for the first half of the game, but it got old during the last half. Nothing terribly challenging, but the story kept it entertaining the whole way through.

I do have one piece of major praise for the game. It's the first game of its kind where I actually WANTED to take the 'good' path. In other games (i.e. KOTOR, FABLE, etc.), I'd always make sure my character became the biggest asshole around. I just couldn't bring myself to do it here.

 

[Chris Bardon]

I played through KOTOR twice, but never made it back to Fable or KOTOR 2 for the second pass. Jade empire might just make it though-it seems like the path is different enough to make it interesting to go through as a super-badass. We'll see what happens after finishing the game though...

Matt-I was also a little unimpressed with the "LE" content. I haven't checked out the doc yet, but the extra character wasn't anything really special-especially since you can customize any character you want when you start. In other words, it's more of a new skin than a new character. Still, the game is really well done, so it doesn't make sense to complain about the extras, does it?

 

[Dave Sabo]

 

[Matt C]

Chris,

I agree completely. The game itself is what is most important, and I enjoyed Jade's story quite a lot. And since I didn't have to actually pay a higher price for the limited edition (same with Halo 2), I'm not complaining too hard. Although, for the record, I'd be willing to pay an extra $5-10 or so for a limited ed. of a game where the extras disc had some real meat to it, as long as I still had the choice of going for a regular edition instead!

Dave- You are lucky that your first-gen Xbox doesn't suffer with read errors! Halo2 has become practically unplayable from errors with it trying to load a map, KOTOR, which has always been a problem title for my box, barely pushes through, the newest Splinter Cell was rather unplayable for me :frowning: , and even Burnout 3, which was my fastest loader, stutters now! Funny, if I remember correctly, Full Spectrum Warrior was one title that didn't give my system any problems when I rented it a while ago And my friends wonder why I hope that Xbox 360 is backwards compatible... Ohhh well

-Matt C

 

[Chris Bardon]

Just for the record, I've got a first gen Xbox as well (bought about 3 weeks after launch) and have had no problems with it so far, except for controller buttons not responding well after too much Tony Hawk 3 and 4. Not sure whether this is atypical or not, but I'd expect that any piece of console hardware that I buy should still work for a long time. Both my original NES consoles still work, as do my SNES and N64. The only questionalble one-my Ps1...

 

[Chris Bardon]

I looked into the martial style thing a little more, and found a post on the bioware forums that might explain things. Apparently all the styles are meant to be "balanced" in that one style doesn't completely dominate the others. Some are faster but do less damage, while others are slower and stronger.

Would it really have hurt to put more information in there? It almost feels like they wanted to "dumb down" the game, since you know there has to be a bunch of stats behind the scenes. I'm probably just going to try sticking with my Legendary strike, unless for some reason I get to the point where I have upgrade points to spare.