Jade Empire: Special Edition

Terrible game, avoid it. Possibly buy it as a gift to your enemies. Bad: - horrendous unresponsive controls - bad annoying camera - long unsinkable cutscenes and dialogs before every boss fight - tedious boss fights - bad game balancing between player abilities - undocumented or poorly documented features and player abilities - bad game design of enemies and bosses - bad UI design - bad game design in general - general lack of polish and a bad port Mediocre: - characters Good: - story and setting

This is, in my opinion, one of the best RPG's ever made. It has a beautiful art style in inventive and original settings, interesting and extensive characters and dialogue and one of the best and most diverse fighting systems in any Role Playing Game. The different starting characters available at the beginning and different fighting styles that you can develop as you go through the game can give you very different experiences as you play through so you will want to play it from start to finish more than once even if you do do know they story. For me the story is one of the most original I have experienced in the last decade or so and it is one of the only games which gave me genuine shock and delight when an unexpected twist came out of the blue and just when I thought the game was about to end, it didn't. This is one of the games on GOG that really does deserve 5 stars with no reservations whatsoever in my mind. It is similar in many ways to KOTOR but with an original and different story and setting and in my opinion is the better of the two. If you have never played it before do yourself a favour and don't miss one of the best games of the last decade.

Good story and a good combat system on the console, but it is a very poor import to PC. I'm a veteran of many fighing games like Oni and Metal Gear, but I still find the combat moves lightning fast but the keybaord acts slowly for things like switching weapons/styles. It takes hours of practice to learn how to hit the right keys on the board without having to look down at the keyboard - you look down for a second, you;re dead. The POV does not show what is behind you, so you'll be constanlty backing into things and getting pinned; even worse, when you back against something, the character moves off the screen so you can't see which way to move or block to get free. The boundaries are not marked so you're also frequently being pinned against invisible walls. Combat is very, very difficult. It is masterable, but it takes many hours of frustrating practice to get it down. Also, the tutorial sucks so read the manual through before you get in combat. Better yet, get on the Internet and watch a tutorial because the manual does not cover a lot of things. Overall, I can't complain when the game sucks when it costs less than five dollars. Buy this game only it you're too poor for a better one.

Wonderful characters in an imaginative world (even by Bioware's standards) framing a story that feels humblingly epic instead of just telling you how epic it is. It could even top Knights of the Old Republic if it wasn't Bioware's first shot at real-time action combat. The sometimes monotonous and easily exploitable combat doesn't keep this from being among my favorites

Jade Empire is a true gem that stands out from Bioware's usual D&D Catalogue. A beautiful RPG sent in the Orient and Martial Arts based combat. An excellent story with unexpected plot twists and engaging characters. In terms of replayability JD offers quite a bit especially those looking for a challenge. Jade Empire along with other Bioware games is a great addition to RPG fans and for me personally it holds a special place in my collection. You won't be disappointed.