Feel really horrible giving this review only two stars as so much of it is just amazing. But however much praise is rightly lavished on the great visuals and the wonderful platforming elements, the fact is that the camera and combat are abysmal. For reasons known only to the developers of the PC port, the directional controls are wedded to the camera - and the camera has a mind of its own. In practice this means accidentally sending the prince off the side of disappearing bridges when you press forward but the camera switches to a profile view of the prince at the last minute; or repeatedly running up rather than along a wall in a time-limited obstacle segment; or just the old favourite of suddenly finding your view obscured by a pillar when surrounded by three or four enemies. The combat is boring and repetitive, none of the enemies are particularly imaginative or fun to fight but in certain sections the same lumbering monsters will keep spawning for an interminable length of time. Plus, the camera decides to add another string to its bow of horror by auto selecting enemies to attack. It's necessary to finish enemies as they lie on the ground or else they will rise up to fight again, but the camera will often insist you switch focus to another standing enemy right when you're ready to strike. This makes the already horrible fights last even longer. In short, large parts of the game are very fun, definitely. However, when this game is bad it is horrific. Too horrific to make up for the lovely bits, unfortunately. Given the popularity and age of the game I'm a bit shocked that at least the camera issues haven't been fixed in all this time.
First the positives: - Really great story. Nothing really to surprise if you're used to Bioware plotlines but really elegant overarching plot and interesting characters that are worth exploring. - Imaginative combat (that is also a negative but we'll get to that). The idea of utilising complmentary styles that serve different purposes - one to slow down the enemy, another to attack, another to attack at range and also limited "bullet time" to thin the herd or escape sticky spots. In theory, it should add up to varied, fun combat. - Lovely worldbuilding. Most of the sidequests are interesting to do and add to the atmosphere of the world. - John Cleese Negatives: - Too many enemies are immune to magic and support styles meaning you're basically dodging and button mashing weapon and martial styles. It would have been much better to make some styles work more effectively than others against certain enemies instead of limiting the styles so badly that 30% of the fights are quite boring. - The game is far too easy. I'm not very good at most games as I started late and don't have the reflexes of native gamers, but I had almost no problems on Grandmaster difficulty, mashing my way through most of the game. In fact, planning my attacks carefuly was less effective that just running in with weapon style and crushing everything. - The camera is absolutely apalling - The few difficult fights are just hard by virtue of enemy numbers or over-healthed single enemies. There's only one boss fight that was really, really fun where you had to switch styles constantly as the enemy had shifting immunties but that was over way too quickly. - There is one style that is so freaking powerful it destroys the game unless you deliberately nerf yourself. I didn't upgrade this style all game but it was still more powerful than my fully upgraded styles and simply hammered enemies at the end. Jade Empire is great fun but it should be so much better, The bones of a truly great game are there.
