Jade Empire: Special Edition

This is definitely a good game, and one of the three, main reasons I joined GOG.com, the other two being KOTOR I & II. But this is by no means a masterpiece; it is unique, sure, but it is mostly that uniqueness that accounts for it being called a masterpiece. There is a lot of wasted potential in this game. Too bad they never released a sequel that shoud have addressed some of its flaws. I first played the game on the original Xbox, and man were the load times atrocious. This PC version eliminates the problem, and, if anything, loads the next areas (almost) too quickly. An annoying thing, despite the GOG fix that consists in setting its core usage to 1 (Task Manager > Affinity), is that before you are even given the time to block your enemy's attack after he's done talking to you, you almost immediately get hit, as a consequence of this. That's right, the enemy manages to almost always hit you first, which, at higher difficulties, could give you some trouble, and among the reasons I think Skyrim sucks. I should also talk about some of the ugly textures present in the game; they have a very unclean, dirty look, and feel choppyblocky. This is what I disliked in the Xbox version, and that's what made me mention load times at the very beginning; I never understood what the hell the game was supposed to load all the time. Another issue is that in this version, the controls have been changed somewhat, and definitely not for the better. If I recall correctly, the Xbox version allowed you to turn the camera around your character with the right stick, and all movement was handled by the left stick. Not so much in this version. I played with the Xbox360 controller, and moving sideways (<-- or -->) places your character in some fighting stance, albeit always moving, but slowly; annoying, and not something I was able to get used to till the very end of the game, but maybe not even then. All in all a good game that will give you about 19-20 hours of fun, if played on Easy.

After completing the DA:I storyline, I felt something was missing from my RPG experience. I really wanted to experience a good old school-style RPG like KOTOR I and II as I did in the past. So with a bit of research I've found this gem where I sunked 45 hrs. Jade Empire is a great old school RPG with asian theme. Basically it is set in fantasy China. As an apprentice you embark on a journey, fighting, making new friends, engaging in interesting dialogues etc. The strongest aspect of a game is dialogue and its options I'd say. There are good, evil and neutral choices. You can follow the way of the Closed Fist (evil) or Open Palm (good) wich are two philosophies. Those have an impact on the story. For me combat was a little bit cluncky, also character building but you get used to it. What kept me playing the game was the storyline. I will definitely replay it in the future. :)

I wish oh i so wish i could call this game a succeeded masterpiece but I cant. Tried to play through it on 3 seperate saves only to have the game bug up all three times at the same part around 90% through the game. The game is good, Gameplay is solid though a bit clunky sometimes, the world is nice and your companions come alive. Once again a Bioware masterpiece that deliveres IF you can finish it withut the bugs breaking your game

I'd rank it three stars but feel it's good enough for four. The game is enjoyable/fun and the story good enough, but I don't feel like there's... sufficient reason to switch between martial arts styles for instance. And the morality just feels like good and evil, even if some of the evil morality just has a libertarian bent, Evil is mostly just "philosophical" cruelty without much to gain from it. I never finished the game, partly because trying to engage in martial arts, if you want to do so with much perfection, requires a lot of attention.

I was so looking forward to playing this masterpiece but, unfortunately it crashes at the end of the bandit fight. Looks like I'll have to get the Xbox version.