Jade Empire: Special Edition

As said a bit everywhere, tTaspects, but some negative ones too. The positive one is for sure the universe. The samurai/martial arts universe, and the east mythology, is attracting. The combats/characters mechanism reflects smartly some cliché about this universe, which makes it fun. The characters and dialog are interesting, the quests are well written. The graphic engine (the same as Knight of the Old Republic (KOTOR) is ok and the design is colourful. We're not at the level of Okami (on Wii) but it's still quite nice. So, what's wrong then... The biggest negative point is the scenario of the main quest. If you have a small video game culture, you'll know since the first paragraph how it's going to end. If you add to this the fact that the whole game is VERY linear, you end up with very nice character and quest dynamic but you can't get caught by the plot. Sad. The other negative points is the character-building that is a bit too simple, which makes every character look the same in the end. In short, nice universe and some good ideas in the fights, but poor scenario and character building.

The story is fantastic. If you're primarily playing for the story you will definitely be delighted. The combat, however, is somewhat lackluster. The 'rock paper scissors' model they attempted falls flat and gets incredibly boring after you've done it 3000 times. There are areas where monsters respawn over and over and all you want to do is pull your hair out and wish for a 'sneak' button. It was really really nice not to have an inventory to worry about and it worked out well. I've asked myself a hundred times why I'm finding rat spit and ogre dung instead of just coin, and why the bandit mercenaries that have robbed thousands of gold only have 12 silver a piece on them. That's all eliminated in this game and believe me, you will NOT miss it. Overall, my only disappointment was the repetitive and boring combat. Everything else, voice acting, inventory, story, quests, side quests, leveling mechanism, it all worked well. If they did a sequel, I'd only like better combat and a little more complexity in the statistic system. Everything else is five stars.

I sure enjoyed this one and would recommend to all BioWare fans and Kung-Fu lovers out there. If not the story then the battle system is what sets this apart from the rest BioWare games and i mean that in a good way. Not that theres anything wrong with their other titles, its just that Jade Empire is unique in its own way and deserves your attention even years later after its original release, I honestly think its underrated. Only flaw that comes to my mind is that sometimes, battles are more tedious rather than challenging so think twice before cranking up that difficulty setting all the way to the max, like i did -.- Sometimes i had to do around 50 or even more full attacks to kill certain bosses, but other than that the game was really appealing. Oh and, great job GoG team, i had 0 problems with this game ;)

I'd never heard of Jade Empire until a few months ago when I noticed it on the GoG store. As a massive fan of most Bioware games, I immediately added it to my wishlist and went on to pick it up during the next sale, the game is after all, over 10 years old and a $20 AUD price tag seemed steep especially on my budget. I was horrified by my initial boot of the game, with an almost constant stuttering and a horrendous frame rate, it was barely playable. I was close to returning the game, but I persevered and found a few guides to fixing the performance of the game. After some edits to the .ini and some forceful setting applications via my GPU software, I reduced the performance issues only slightly. Any time my character moves the animation is stuttered and the frame rate drops significantly if I move the camera even at the slightest speed. I feel somewhat nauseous when I play the game at length. After all that work, I refused to go quietly. I continued past a painfully jarring opening sequence, the combat takes some getting used to, especially with the issues I was having. But after a while, I finally felt it was worth it. This game is amazing, the world is beautiful despite the age, not to mention strange and interesting. No game has felt as imaginative since my first time with Morrowind. After getting used to the performance issues, I soon become engrossed in the combat. I try to imagine a version of this game where my character can fly between enemies and perform punches and kicks without stuttered animations and a decent frame rate, but even without that the combat is the most refreshing I have experienced in years. It's a contender for the best combat in any RPG I have ever played. It has all the usual Bioware charm and a fantastically written story. The characters are engaging and the plot itself is extremely well executed. My only lament is that I could not experience what is surely a masterpiece at its full glory, I ask the GoG gods to please right these wrongs.

The visuals, the direction, and the narrative made me feel like I was playing a martial arts epic. Not a cheesy one either, a really, *really* good one. Unfortunately it was painfully short. It begged for about twice as much material. I didn't find it had any replay value either. Would have been five stars otherwise.