Jade Empire: Special Edition

Heyyo, This is another impressive RPG by the powerhouse developers from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. BioWare gets the balance of combat, storyline and customization perfectly as this game entices you to just play "a little more" and then next thing you know? It's 2AM lol. :P

I knew that eventually I will end up playing this game. I remember the hype back in 2004 and 2005 after the first KotOR game and how Jade Empire will disclassify Obsidian's KotOR 2. How original and deep gaming experience Bioware is crafting just for us, gamers. It will be the journey of our lives. It was blatantly clear that it's just another "old-gen" console button masher, like hundreds and hundreds before it and the developer is not going to bring anything new on the table. A standard wuxia setting, absolutely unimaginative art design and awfully executed, restricted visuals (it looks worse than the first KotOR in a bad, incompetent sort of way). Finally, I got it for free on Origin. Well, not free if you look at my souls being sold for having an Origin account, but anyways. Holy crap this game is BAD. It's not even about production values that are and were poor, even for a Bioware game (I think the last top production qualities - not gameplay - from Bioware was seen in Mass Effect 2). I think this might be the WORST wuxia game - no, not a game - the worst wuxia product in history. It's that bad. It has the most generic plot and characters I've ever seen (well, maybe except Bethesda's Moira). Dialogues are absolute dog shit. Choose between "Please stop talking to me like I'm someone special, teehee" and "Yeah, that's right modafuka, I was meant to do Great Things. Remember that". Wow. And that's only the beginning. One of the sluggiest, boring, autism-inducing beginning I've ever seen in my life, including the Oblivion's prison escape. How about the combat? It's the worst console TPP "old-gen" ever created. No, really. Go play it. Enjoy being closed by invisible walls at every fight (that begin with UNSKIPABLE cut-scenes of trash mobs jumping at you - not even in a cool way like in DMC) and boring, input-lag filled mashing until everyone drops dead. Occasionally you will be stuck in the invisible walls' corner and die. Also, minigames. Christ.

Even if it is a console port, this is one of the best games I've ever played. A great and unexpected story, a setting far removed from traditional Western RPGs, awesome combat system etc My only gripe with it was that the menus were fugly and looked out of sorts (like they forgot about this aspect of the port) and that, despite being a long game, there were only like 3 locations to skip between with the ship. Knights of the Old Republic had 7 planets or something like that. Kind of made the ship a bit redundant, beyond the repetitive top down shooting games. Still, a must have for everyone

Lovely

Stunning Setting, deep characters, smooth (although somewhat simple) Gameplay, wonderfully executed philosophy and the best Story-twist I have ever seen. Even if you are not a "Fan" of eastern Style or Kung Fu, for that alone it is worth playing. IF you are a Fan: why haven`t you played it already? If it was deeper gameplaywise and regarding character developement I would name it Best RPG ever. The way it is its "Only" Top 3 material.