Jade Empire is better than whatever shit you're playing

[anvi]

Seems like a pretty shallow argument! I mean Fallout 4 is just an open world game with shooting and looting, it has been done a million times. Most people say NV is better than it. ME3 and DAI same thing more or less. But Jade Empire is unique. And there is very little better than it in terms of combat if what you like is a more tactical type of combat and not witcher 3 / DMC / etc thing. Which for me is shit. I don't want to be flying all over the screen, I want to do some meaningful moves and spells while balancing resources and stuff.. What other options are there for that?!

Yeah? And where in JE you found this tactical combat and resource balancing?

I can't believe this question, is this what people think of the game? Because what I am playing is the opposite of that.

 

[anvi]

Sitting through Bioware's fucking awful kung fu fan fiction between shit awful combat encounters is not my idea of a good time.

This game sucks and blows simultaneously.

It is better than most martial arts movies. And if you don't like it you can skip it. Learn 2 speedhack. I use it 99% of the time I'm gaming.

 

[Farewell into the night]

Spoiler

I'm in the chapter 2 right now. Just finnished questing in the teahouse. I went with fire attack, tho, just like Gao, but I'm playing good character.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Seems like a pretty shallow argument! I mean Fallout 4 is just an open world game with shooting and looting, it has been done a million times. Most people say NV is better than it. ME3 and DAI same thing more or less. But Jade Empire is unique. And there is very little better than it in terms of combat if what you like is a more tactical type of combat and not witcher 3 / DMC / etc thing. Which for me is shit. I don't want to be flying all over the screen, I want to do some meaningful moves and spells while balancing resources and stuff.. What other options are there for that?!

Yeah? And where in JE you found this tactical combat and resource balancing?

I can't believe this question, is this what people think of the game? Because what I am playing is the opposite of that.

Maybe you just suck at games and struggle with one of the most simplistic combat systems in action rpgs?

This is a possibility you should seriously consider.

 

[anvi]

Spoiler

I'm in the chapter 2 right now. Just finnished questing in the teahouse. I went with fire attack, tho, just like Gao, but I'm playing good character.

Nice! Are you using SpeedHack? It makes all the running around soooo much better for me. And I skip cutscenes and stuff that I don't want to watch. I bind it to my mouse. I am glad to be in CH3, I didn't know there were so many chapters. I'm looking forward to the later bits... My memory of that is what made me want to play again.

Seems like a pretty shallow argument! I mean Fallout 4 is just an open world game with shooting and looting, it has been done a million times. Most people say NV is better than it. ME3 and DAI same thing more or less. But Jade Empire is unique. And there is very little better than it in terms of combat if what you like is a more tactical type of combat and not witcher 3 / DMC / etc thing. Which for me is shit. I don't want to be flying all over the screen, I want to do some meaningful moves and spells while balancing resources and stuff.. What other options are there for that?!

Yeah? And where in JE you found this tactical combat and resource balancing?

I can't believe this question, is this what people think of the game? Because what I am playing is the opposite of that.

Maybe you just suck at games and struggle with one of the most simplistic combat systems in action rpgs?

This is a possibility you should seriously consider.

I'm not talking about it being hard! It is way too easy now if anything, but I think it gets better later. I am talking about resource management. I have 3 bars, red blue yellow, and all are interconnected. I get in a big fight and my Red (health) gets rekt by just 2 punches seeing as upgrade points didn't go on health. But my Blue (Chi/mana) is huge and at any time I can hold shift to heal myself with the blue bar. And if you run out of mana, so you gotta switch to another form that does almost 0 damage, but drains mana with attacks. Recover blue and then you can heal red again and keep fighting. But you can only survive this dancing around if you are not getting beat up too much, so sometimes you gotta use the yellow bar to boost your attacks and kill one enemy quickly. And to recover yellow you have to trigger the right power ups. So you are balancing 3 bars just to survive which requires 3 or 4 forms.

And if I get in trouble in big fights, I have to use the Toad Demon form which removes effects from me and helps me tank for a while. But that uses the yellow bar which got no points either so it is a last resort. So it is a balancing act to play as the mage. But later it gets very strong.

 

[Reinhardt]

Or you can just smash chink faces with your fists. Why even bother.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Maybe you just suck at games and struggle with one of the most simplistic combat systems in action rpgs?

This is a possibility you should seriously consider.

I'm not talking about it being hard! It is way too easy now if anything, but I think it gets better later. I am talking about resource management. I have 3 bars, red blue yellow, and all are interconnected. I get in a big fight and my Red (health) gets rekt by just 2 punches seeing as upgrade points didn't go on health. But my Blue (Chi/mana) is huge and at any time I can hold shift to heal myself with the blue bar. And if you run out of mana, so you gotta switch to another form that does almost 0 damage, but drains mana with attacks. Recover blue and then you can heal red again and keep fighting. But you can only survive this dancing around if you are not getting beat up too much, so sometimes you gotta use the yellow bar to boost your attacks and kill one enemy quickly. And to recover yellow you have to trigger the right power ups. So you are balancing 3 bars just to survive which requires 3 or 4 forms.

And if I get in trouble in big fights, I have to use the Toad Demon form which removes effects from me and helps me tank for a while. But that uses the yellow bar which got no points either so it is a last resort. So it is a balancing act to play as the mage. But later it gets very strong.

The problem is you don't really have to do these gymnastics because, as you said, the game is too easy. The only difficulty you face might be the effect of your misallocation of stat points. And even then, the whole management consists only of "replenishing red bar with a blue bar by pressing shift".

There is no real resource management because there is no real inventory or abilities with a limited number of uses. You don't deplete actual, finite resources. Just three colorful bars that you can easily replenish WITHOUT LEAVING COMBAT.

Real resource management is: you enter a location with finite resources and know you will be unable to replenish them until you leave for a safe place. So you have to fight x amount of fights trying to be as economic with your special attacks and items as possible because you might need them before reaching safety.

 

[Farewell into the night]

Are you using SpeedHack?

No, I'm fine for now with pure vanilla gameplay. I remember using speedhack through this underwater scuba suit mission in KotOR, tho. As for now JE speed is OK for me.

 

[anvi]

Yeah most people don't care, I like to whiz through all the running about and talking.

Maybe you just suck at games and struggle with one of the most simplistic combat systems in action rpgs?

This is a possibility you should seriously consider.

I'm not talking about it being hard! It is way too easy now if anything, but I think it gets better later. I am talking about resource management. I have 3 bars, red blue yellow, and all are interconnected. I get in a big fight and my Red (health) gets rekt by just 2 punches seeing as upgrade points didn't go on health. But my Blue (Chi/mana) is huge and at any time I can hold shift to heal myself with the blue bar. And if you run out of mana, so you gotta switch to another form that does almost 0 damage, but drains mana with attacks. Recover blue and then you can heal red again and keep fighting. But you can only survive this dancing around if you are not getting beat up too much, so sometimes you gotta use the yellow bar to boost your attacks and kill one enemy quickly. And to recover yellow you have to trigger the right power ups. So you are balancing 3 bars just to survive which requires 3 or 4 forms.

And if I get in trouble in big fights, I have to use the Toad Demon form which removes effects from me and helps me tank for a while. But that uses the yellow bar which got no points either so it is a last resort. So it is a balancing act to play as the mage. But later it gets very strong.

The problem is you don't really have to do these gymnastics because, as you said, the game is too easy. The only difficulty you face might be the effect of your misallocation of stat points. And even then, the whole management consists only of "replenishing red bar with a blue bar by pressing shift".

There is no real resource management because there is no real inventory or abilities with a limited number of uses. You don't deplete actual, finite resources. Just three colorful bars that you can easily replenish WITHOUT LEAVING COMBAT.

Real resource management is: you enter a location with finite resources and know you will be unable to replenish them until you leave for a safe place. So you have to fight x amount of fights trying to be as economic with your special attacks and items as possible because you might need them before reaching safety.

You could just play on higher difficulty. And it isn't misallocation of points, it is a mage build, one that gives the best combat. Balancing 3 resources is still more than most games since the 90s. And you can't just press shift and heal without using the same mana that is your only way to do damage. Also there are a lot of times when you fight without being able to replenish. There are not many spirit fonts and in big fights you can't afford to be wasting time on recovering your mana! So you have to balance it out and only heal in emergencies. And that's in CH2 out of 7.

 

[Nutria]

Sitting through Bioware's fucking awful kung fu fan fiction between shit awful combat encounters is not my idea of a good time.

Like Mass Effect 1, their idea at the time was to create a new IP that they owned and could build off of since they were disappointed with their experience licensing D&D and Star Wars. So there was a hell of a lot of exposition meant to set up potential for sequels. But then they did a 180 and sold out to EA so all that ended up being pointless.

 

[anvi]

Sitting through Bioware's fucking awful kung fu fan fiction between shit awful combat encounters is not my idea of a good time.

Like Mass Effect 1, their idea at the time was to create a new IP that they owned and could build off of since they were disappointed with their experience licensing D&D and Star Wars. So there was a hell of a lot of exposition meant to set up potential for sequels. But then they did a 180 and sold out to EA so all that ended up being pointless.

I think the same problem is reflected in the gameplay too. They have way too much stuff in this game and most people won't see any of it.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Also BioWare is just kind of shit at action gameplay, and they decided to make an action game. Jade Empire has some nice choices you get to make, maybe some of the more memorable ones I can think of in a BioWare game. But the combat is pretty terrible, and the only reason it never got called out for it's awkward stiff combat to any degree it should have was because it was a RPG, (and nobody really expects real-time RPG combat to be good for some reason, especially back then) although the combat is such a big part of it it really should have. Gameplaywise it reminds me of those Naruto fighting games with 3D movement...only a really bad, clumsy, stiff version, without any of the fluent animation or spectacle that makes a fight in one of those games look nice and kind of fun to play.

Jade Empire is kind of like this weird little showcase where BioWare displays what they're best and worst at at the same time.

They did however get called out for those shooting sections, which is like the worst scrolling shooter game I've ever played in my life. Remember a few reviews back when it came out talking about how you can thankfully just skip them, which at least showed a little self awareness on BioWare's part. Guess they couldn't just pull them altogether given they kind of hyped them up during development. Thinking about it now, I think maybe BioWare was thinking of this game as some kind of ultimate action showcase all wrapped up in a role playing game; like you've got this awesome action combat system, and these cool shooter sections...but then they just both just kind of turned out to be terrible.

The game's look for its fantasy China is also pretty lame looking. It doesn't really look like they looked at any Chinese art, from like any paints from Journey to the West, or any of the fantasy films or shows that would've came out of China and Hong Kong. It feels like a fantasy China half remembered by westerners who kind of remember seeing some old Chinese painting that had a floating rock with a tree on it, and like some kind of really large statue or something. It's also a very bland looking game. Given the subject it's kind of a shame they didn't do it cel shaded, and pull from something like Zhao Hongben or Alakazam the Great. Could have had some nice looking cartoony looking thing like Wind Walker from a few years before, or something like that Ōkami game that'd come almost exactly a year later.

 

[kreight]

No its not.

 

[anvi]

I disagree with all of that. Especially the combat, it is really good with mage. It might be a more ironman type of approach but it is fun and the mechanics are all good. I think there is a bunch of bandwagoning going on. The game gets far more interesting later on and I suspected the slow start means most people didn't see what it can do. It is 3d Street Fighter but better. And the presentation and graphics are far better than people say too, at least in the GoG version. Proof:



The low quality pic of the rainbows over a river someone posted earlier to make their dumbass point, was also misrepresenting it. This is the same place when you return after it being fire bombed and everyone killed.

[/URL]

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

The combat? The combat is 3D Street Fighter...but better? You think Jade Empire's stiff jank combat system is better than a Street Fighter game? I guess if you're equating it to Street Fighter 1 which is also janky and stiff I can kind of see your point.

The 3D action kung fu combat in this is garbage. It does some things good, but the combat system, which kind of seems like the whole big idea behind the game, is fucking terrible. This game is six years after the first Power Stone game, it comes out the year after Def Jam Fight for NY, it comes out the same year as Urban Reign. The Dynasty Warriors games of the time have a deeper and better feeling combat system than this does.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

All I can say is Bioware at least tried to do something different with Jade Empire, and it at least was finished vs. their more recent releases.

I guess.

They did cut a whole lot of the. In the demo version they showed off you had village hub area base. There was some dark world you'd have to go in and out of. And your followers could be sent of to other lands to do missions for you, and you'd need to make sure you picked the person with the right temperament for the job.



Incidentally, given what I said before, and watching the start of that video to see if it was the right one, the person narrating it says the goal was to make Jade Empire look like a Chineses painting brought to life. Which now just kind of seems funny give this would come a year after Jade Empire.



One of these two games looks more like these paintings than the other.

And it ain't Jade Empire.

 

[gurugeorge]

I had a lot of fun with it at the time.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I don't totally hate it. Or at least I didn't at the time. Although I have no wish to ever play it again. They tried something kind of new and failed, or at least they failed at the new things they were trying with it. I kind of couldn't care less if modern BioWare ever returned to Jade Empire, but if you asked me like ten years ago, given some of the games that've come since Jade Empire that pull off things they were going for...I'd of said I was interested in a new Jade Empire. Like if in 2010 BioWare announced they were making a new Jade Empire, they were handling the writing side of things, and the RPG system, but like development and the combat system were being done by CyberConnect2 I would've been interested in how that turned out. It almost seems weird BioWare and EA haven't ever just gotten one of those smaller Japanese studios like CyberConnect2, Eighting, or Dimps that can do action to handle another Jade Empire while they're doing whatever.

 

[Ismaul]

if modern BioWare ever returned to Jade Empire

That could never happen. "Adventures in Stereotypical Asia" just doesn't pass these days, especially with their fans.

 

[anvi]

The combat? The combat is 3D Street Fighter...but better? You think Jade Empire's stiff jank combat system is better than a Street Fighter game? I guess if you're equating it to Street Fighter 1 which is also janky and stiff I can kind of see your point.

The 3D action kung fu combat in this is garbage. It does some things good, but the combat system, which kind of seems like the whole big idea behind the game, is fucking terrible. This game is six years after the first Power Stone game, it comes out the year after Def Jam Fight for NY, it comes out the same year as Urban Reign. The Dynasty Warriors games of the time have a deeper and better feeling combat system than this does.

Fake news. Especially about shitty Dynasty Warriors! That is just button bashing crap! What decisions have you gotta make?

 

[raesha]

That could never happen. "Adventures in Stereotypical Asia" just doesn't pass these days, especially with their fans.

Mostly because Bioware these days isn't a developer of the calibre necessary to do it well to the degree necessary to dodge cultural controversy.

E.g the recent Ghost Of Thushima, made by a US developer, was so well received for it's take on Japan in Japan, that it has Japanese game directors expressing amazement in public that such a game wasn't made by the Japanese themselves. Similar thing happened when Kung Fu Panda came out in China, Chinese audiences absolutely loved it's take on a fictional ancient china.

 

[Tigranes]

I think there is a bunch of bandwagoning going on.

Oh wow, everyone in this room disagrees with me in a variety of different ways with a lot of counterarguments. Nobody agrees with me! THIS MUST BE BANDWAGONING! I ALONE KNOW THE TRUTH! MOON LANDING WAS FA-

 

[anvi]

I think there is a bunch of bandwagoning going on.

Oh wow, everyone in this room disagrees with me in a variety of different ways with a lot of counterarguments. Nobody agrees with me! THIS MUST BE BANDWAGONING! I ALONE KNOW THE TRUTH! MOON LANDING WAS FA-

Plenty agreed, and the rest of you have no idea what you are talking about! If you could justify your point of view you wouldn't be typing that crap.

 

[Bigg Boss]

I liked Jade Empire when it came out but I did not have a PC and the Xbox was my gaming device. It is what it is.

 

[Ismaul]

That could never happen. "Adventures in Stereotypical Asia" just doesn't pass these days, especially with their fans.

Mostly because Bioware these days isn't a developer of the calibre necessary to do it well to the degree necessary to dodge cultural controversy.

E.g the recent Ghost Of Thushima, made by a US developer, was so well received for it's take on Japan in Japan, that it has Japanese game directors expressing amazement in public that such a game wasn't made by the Japanese themselves. Similar thing happened when Kung Fu Panda came out in China, Chinese audiences absolutely loved it's take on a fictional ancient china.

I'm not sure there's any "degree necessary to dodge cultural controversy". You can't dodge homing missiles.

Also, outrage doesn't depend on how people of a culture view how they are represented in a game. SJWs don't care about minorities' perceptions, they'll find something to be outraged about even if the people are fine with how they and their culture is presented in-game. Hell, they'll call non-outraged minorities race-traitors before considering there's nothing to be outraged about.