Jade Empire Special Edition (Rhino Demon Exclusive Content)
by Take 2
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Category: Video Games
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Product Summary
Brand: Take 2Release Date: 2007-02-26
Platform: Windows XP
Publisher: Take 2
Product features:
- An incredible, engaging story that makes you the noble hero... or the treacherous villain!
- A wealth of fascinating characters to interact with.
- Beautiful, mysterious lands to explore, discover, and save... or conquer.
- A rich blend of role-playing and exciting real-time combat.
- Enhanced PC game features, including: increased customization, new monsters and enemies, new fighting styles, improved combat AI and new world map interface.
Video Game Reviews of Jade Empire Special Edition (Rhino Demon Exclusive Content)
Customer Review: Not recommended
Summary: 3 Stars
Jade Empire is a game that impresses at first. It presents lots of dialogue, fine graphics, and an interesting, different setting. As the game goes on, however, its problems begin to surface.
The dialogue quickly becomes an issue. Now, mind you, I'm not one to be put down by dialogue - bear in mind I'm an "old school" RPG fan - but after a while you realize that a lot of the dialogue is either redundant or just empty. Characters will almost every time use two or three lines to say something they could've easily said in one line. The seemingly never ending dialogue trees get old real quick. You'll soon notice that it really doesn't matter what you say, except for being "good" or "evil". As it's often the case, Bioware didn't put much of an effort into the "evil" storyline, and evil actions feel illogical or even counter-productive.
The interface has a very, very annoying issue: even though it's a traditional mouse and WASD, you can't look up or down. When you move the mouse up and down, your viewpoint just goes up or down a bit, but you keep looking straight forward. This might not be an issue for many, but to me it's a hideous gameplay breaker. It makes me feel stranded, as if I can't move freely. It's very annoying, it kills immersion, and it never goes away.
Character development is very simple - apparently intentionally - and there are no weapons or armor to buy. For RPG lovers like myself, that just means there's less things to do, and you feel less rewarded since there's not much you can do with the huge amounts of gold that you'll get. You can buy gems that upgrade your base stats or abilities, but that's pretty much it.
Another game breaker is how Bioware manages the group of characters. You can only have one NPC with the main character at a time. The others just hang at some point in the city or town. When you think of the classic 4-character group RPG's, or even Baldur's Gate and its 6-character groups, it makes Jade Empire, a game released a decade later, feel somewhat empty and very lazy.
The settings are graphically very interesting, even if the graphics aren't exaclty cutting edge, and the chinese mythology thing is a welcome change from your usual medieval Europe-inspired fantasy settings. Most open spaces, however, feel just like a series of corridors bordered by untouchable trees and stones. Again, Bioware manages to move a few steps back from decades old games that already featured open worlds, and its own masterpiece, Baldur's Gate. Incidentally, there's no day and night cycle and time doesn't seem to pass when you're in the same scenario.
I think what they tried to do with combat could have been very interesting. Once you really understand how it works, it gets old. Even if you're facing 10 enemies at a time, all martial styles are focused exclusively on duels. This means you pick one at a time. Then it's just hit, run, hit, run, ad infinitum.
Overall, Jade Empire is an alright game, but too often it feels like it's lacking something. There's no character development to be had, no weapons or armor to aim for, and the game world doesn't feel alive at all. The game is very short for an RPG, something like 30 hours with all the sidequests. I did have fun with it, but not for long. I can't recommend it.
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