This game has perfect potential for a remaster! (unlikely to happen, sadly) Overall it's like a worse Dragon Age Origins, with its own special flavour. I enjoyed myself, but I suspect that was heavily based on my knowledge and love of wuxia movies. (if only they went for some of the more gonzo aspects of Wuxia!) The story structure and companion design is typical Bioware, to a fault. I found the NPCs to be quite uninteresting and the romance very tacked on. If you've played any BioRPGs, you'll recognize the template immediately. DAO especially is exactly this, but far better. The story itself wasn't super surprising or deep, it worked fine for what it was meant to do. The visuals are "charming". I really enjoyed what they achieved with the limited technology, the game certainly delivers on "fake China" in spades. Unfortunately the level design is cramped and doesn't fit terribly well with this style of RPG, the backtracking somehow feels more tedious if it's from this camera angle and the restricted spaces can make combat quite frustrating. Speaking of combat, it's a mixed bag. At times it feels real nice, you're jumping around and dispatching hordes of enemies with swift punch and kick combos, or elemental waves and so on. Unfortunately the various styles, despite there being so many, don't feel as unique or useful. I hoped leveling up would change the combo structure, or add new abilities. But because there are so many styles, the higher levels just increase stats. They're also clearly unbalanced, I was very much overpowered in the second half of the game and the only challenge I faced were the various glitches and unintentionally frustrating obstacles and bad design. Speaking of frustration - the game uses a out-of-combat save system, but also saves at certain points. I wish there was a more frequent and consistent system of checkpoints instead. At some places the game saves when you expect it to and in many (super frustrating) places it doesn't - forcing you to fight long multi sequenced battles with many cutscenes inbetween over and over and over. The very first battle on the beach is incredibly frustrating - you're still learning the system and you have to finish all the stages in one go. The shmup sequences were interesting and unexpected, but also not quite polished and therefore not quite enjoyable by themselves. In summary: Jade Empire is still pretty interesting and worth playing - if only for the reason it's oneof its kind. 3/5, +1 if you're a Wuxia fan. Be prepared for occassional bad design, repetition and frustration. Fortunately it's not a long game, you can enjoy it in a few afternoons.
OK, to the reviewer who thinks the positive reviews are fishy, since the game just came out: The game has been on Steam for a while now. I have currently 126 hours played of it.(and I played the alpha before that) We know what we're talking about. And consider this, I bought the game for the third time now (plus two copies I got for my friends) - I want to support the devs THAT much. This game does many things in new ways which feel alien at first, but are very rewarding and entertaining when you get used to them. It's not perfect, certainly, there are aspects which need to be worked on, or those that are controversially designed and won't be for everyone. But I feel these devs deserve my support for attempting to make a game like this. It's already so much fun and it does so many things I like - I can't help but hope they have the means to continue for a long time.
After the rather disappointing third Dragon Age game, I was extremely sceptical of Witcher 3 and only bought a heavily discounted version. Boy was I wrong! Enough has been written about its virtues and flaws, so I'll note merely my impressions of it. For the entire 120 hours I was entertained by the gameplay, the visuals (of course) look beautiful and it's one of the few games to have actually moved me deeply. The inevitable enhanced version will be something to look forward to, for sure.
I understand the appeal of this game. And I regret I didn't get to play it back in the day. Now it's just a bit too frustrating in places, bad design getting in the way of enjoyability. + the humour is really specific and I don't really get it. Still, most of the time it's a fun shooter with interesting features.
