Jade Empire in depth analysis

[SuicideBunny]

JE doesn't pretend anything.

yes it does. it constantly pretends to be mature and about gray choices. that the open palm and closed fist or whatever they were called are not simply blatantly good vs evil, and that the reasoning behind choices is important, while all of that is a big honking pile of bullshit and all the choices are simple good vs evil ones without any depth whatsoever, where your (character's) reasoning doesn't matter in the slightest.

 

[Volourn]

JE is better than the KOTORs, both NWN OCs, SOU, and BG1.

 

[bat_boro]

No, it's not.
I guess it could have been, but it's not.


The biggest disappointment that I found in Jade Empire was, in fact, the setting. It was supposed to feel like some kind of eastern japanese fantasy tale, but in the end it felt bland and uninspired western kind of fantasy. WTF?

I played a little game called Prince of Qin some time ago, it was from a Chinese developer and really got the setting right. Now that's what I call a good eastern tale. JE? It looked promising and it could have been good, but no. That'll hopefully change in the sequel, but if you go too eastern you'll eventually turn away the western audience soo... guess not

 

[doctor_kaz]

The game isn't that short if you listen to all of the dialog and do all of the side quests. The thing about a Bioware RPG nowadays is you can spend at least an extra 10-15 hours just listening to conversations if you don't speed through them. Fighting sytem is okay but what really carries it is the kickass motion-capturing. So it's kinda like the combat in The Witcher in that respect. Not a bad game, but certainly not worth the hype that it got on its release either. The PC version of the game is significantly harder than the X-Box version, although it's still not hard.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

(regarding the British explorer insulting the ignorance of all the chinese philosophers)

Which is the most memorable and worthwhile moment in the whole game. After that, you don't really need to play the game because there's nothing as cool in it anymore.

 

[buccaroobonzai]

No, it's not.
I guess it could have been, but it's not.


The biggest disappointment that I found in Jade Empire was, in fact, the setting. It was supposed to feel like some kind of eastern japanese fantasy tale, but in the end it felt bland and uninspired western kind of fantasy. WTF?

I played a little game called Prince of Qin some time ago, it was from a Chinese developer and really got the setting right. Now that's what I call a good eastern tale. JE? It looked promising and it could have been good, but no. That'll hopefully change in the sequel, but if you go too eastern you'll eventually turn away the western audience soo... guess not

Anyone play Prince of Qin? Does it have a storyline, linear or not, any sidequests, any dialog, is it all grinding, any stealth gameplay...

Speaking of far eastern flavored RPGs, how is The Genie's Curse, any RPG value to it at all?

 

[bat_boro]

Anyone play Prince of Qin? Does it have a storyline, linear or not, any sidequests, any dialog, is it all grinding, any stealth gameplay...

I've played it, but as I said it was long, long ago. I remember I liked it, though.
As to your question - it has a storyline, and somehow rather interesting, also. It's fairly unlinear in that that you can go wherever you want most of the time, but the quests are very linear and don't offer different options for solutions. As far as I remember there isn't a whole lot of c&c eigher. There's dialog, although the voice acting is terrible (good thing it's very rare) and there's no stealth gameplay.

Oh, one thing a didn't like was the level scaling. It's not as bad as in Oblivion, but it is bad nonetheless