Jade Empire

[Strazos]

Did I miss something, or were there no romance angles at all?

Romances are in there. You can read about them elsewhere, I'm sure, but in brief there are hetero and homo options, and if you play your cards right, you can even end the game with a woman on each arm.

Can I still do that if I'm using a female character, and have a lesbian three-way?

Heh, I just hope you're not including that 7-year-old shapeshifting girl, because that would be creepy.

[Rasix]

Did I miss something, or were there no romance angles at all?

Romances are in there. You can read about them elsewhere, I'm sure, but in brief there are hetero and homo options, and if you play your cards right, you can even end the game with a woman on each arm.

Yah, I read about that in the forums.  Kind of mad I missed it.  I think I played it too nice and "quiet badass" like.  Still, I should have had a chance with Dawn Star 

Going to have to give it another whirl.  Perhaps with a giant bruiser this time. The monk was fairly balanced but was more finese then power.   BTW, in case you feel like responding again Storm, are there any new weapons you can pick up fairly early in the game?  The spade and longsword don't do much for me.   In my game I didn't pick up any new weapons until at least the Imperial City arena.

[Sky]

Sky, if you hate the Xbox and all games that are on the Xbox, stay out of Xbox related threads.

I do, for the most part. I'm just lurking for clues about a pc port ;)

Can't a guy make a fucking joke any more? I PUT A FUCKING SMILY THING ON IT. Holy shit.

[Strazos]

Use the green for your sarcastic banter, it will help.

[Yoru]

Meganecro!

This is out on Steam today, and I believe also in traditional boxes.

Anyone have a field report? I've been strongly considering picking it up, but you know PC games and bugs...

[schild]

Did they add "Fun" to the combat system?

[Strazos]

Box says they added additional combat styles and shit.

I found the game to be perfectly enjoyable, so I'm not sure they patched in Schild-flavored Fun.

[stray]

It's not "Schild flavored" Straz. The combat is the biggest gripe of pretty much anyone who didn't like the game. Hell, the very idea of Bioware making a kung fu game was pretty much funny from the start. And trying to do it for a console crowd, no less.

There are dozens of no name, boneheaded hack n slash/beat em ups that were more enjoyable than this, and the only way you could possibly like it is to never have played any other game that has done it right. i.e. You live under a rock.

[EDIT] Just speaking about the combat. I'm not damning other elements.

[Tebonas]

Ah, since I find fighting games boring I should be ok with Jade Empire then, because I don't know better?

Sweet!

I always imagined combat in Jade Empire like Kotor. Way too easy to be of any consequence anyway (I played the first time as a melee Jedi but didn't even use special attack modes like Flurry for the first 80 percent of the game).

[stray]

Ah, since I find fighting games boring I should be ok with Jade Empire then, because I don't know better?

I'm not even talking fighting games. Just beat-em-ups. Many arpgs are more evolved than this too though.

Crappy targeting, unresponsive blocking, not much need for mixing up your attacks/combos, etc., etc. Pretty much the standard things most people don't want in their games. Especially ones with martial arts in them.

[edit]

I'll just say that, like every other Bioware game, it's one that has to win you over on a completely different level besides combat. Nothing new here.

I couldn't make that jump this time though.

Also, I think it's fair to hold them up to beat-em-up/hack n slash and arpg standards....Since that's pretty much what they were trying to go for this time around.

[Sky]

I live under a rock.

[Yegolev]

It actually is a lot like KOTOR combat except simpler and without pewpewpew.  I don't care if they doubled the number of combat styles.  Giving me two tubs of unflavored yogurt isn't going to make it taste better.  I'm also taking a "stop publishing bullshit on Steam" position; if I want retreaded crap then I will just fire up GameTap.

One other thing that bothered me about it, and I don't have a good solution to it, was the voice acting.  The game was like a bland dub.  I do realize that Mandarin + subtitles = stupid, but I still didn't care for the voice work.  I just didn't buy Brian Doyle-Murray as a Chinese ringmaster.

Oh, and the light-side/dark-side mechanic was watery and dumb.

[Alkiera]

I picked this up yesterday.  Only played a little last night, game took forever to install.  More devs need to figure out how to store data in one big file isntead of 12,000,000 little ones.

It's fairly pretty.  Getting used to the combat is gonna take a bit, it's been too long since I played anything with a real-time combat system.

--
Alkiera

[sinij]

Do they have it on PC? Does it work better than KOTOR2? Does it *really* work? Is it possible to play it without getting involved with Steaming POS?

[stray]

1) Just came out.

2) Not sure what you mean.

3) Not sure what you mean.

4) You can get it in a box, yes.

[Sky]

Jade Empire was not developed by Obsidian, so it's not (or at least 'shouldn't be') broken like KotOR2 is. Team Gizka is moving right along, though. I hope to see them release this year.

[Trippy]

4) You can get it in a box, yes.

Getting it in a box does not necessarily mean that Steam is not involved. You can buy Half-Life 2 in a box too...

[stray]

Well, that's interesting. Have they done that with other third party games? I just figured it was like a D2D deal, and not so closely knit.

[Alkiera]

4) You can get it in a box, yes.

Getting it in a box does not necessarily mean that Steam is not involved. You can buy Half-Life 2 in a box too...

I can confirm that if you buy a box, there is no Steam involved.  I installed last night.  Come to think of it, there was no 'key' at all, tho it does demand the disc stay in the drive.  Prolly some SecuRom stuff on it or some such.

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Alkiera

[NiX]

Is this playable with a mouse and keyboard or is a joystick suggested?

[Alkiera]

Is this playable with a mouse and keyboard or is a joystick suggested?

They seem to have gone to some effort to make it usable with mouse/keyboard.  WASD movement, #s select styles, mouse buttons do normal attack, power attack, and area attack, blocking is done with spacebar.

They also claim to support gamepads, I haven't hooked mine up yet though.  I need to get a powered USB hub so I don't have to crawl under my desk to plug stuff in, as the front ports on my machine are only sorta functional.

--
Alkiera

[Rasix]

Is this playable with a mouse and keyboard or is a joystick suggested?

I'd use a gamepad.  You'd end up clicking too damn much with a mouse.

[stray]

Tell from what I played on a gamepad, I would think the game might even be better on a m+kb. Especially for targeting.

i.e. Jade Empire was probably better off starting on a PC to begin with.

Of course, I'm just speaking out of my ass. Could be way off.

[Alkiera]

There is no click-to-target.  You activate things by facing them and clicking the 'attack' mouse button.  Targetting in combat lets you cycle through targets with 'tab' and 'q'.

The default difficulty is 'Master', and I had some difficulty.  Then again, I've not gotten to play a whole lot... WoW calls me to play it when I get home, more than Jade Empire at the moment.  It'll be good for me, it's been too long since I played an action game.

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Alkiera

[stray]

Well, that isn't any different than the gamepad then (you used the triggers to target there).

Wouldn't call it an action game. It's just typical, clumsy Bioware stuff without pause.

[Alkiera]

It's more actiony that most of what I've been playing lately, which is EQ/WoW/TitanQuest.  I generally prefer to let my character (or more accurately, their stats) do the thinking about combat.  It's certainly more actiony than, say, NWN or KotOR.

--
Alkiera

[Rasix]

Combat is best likened to Fable. 

[Yoru]

Combat is best likened to Fable. 

Do you hear that, Ras? DO YOU?

Baby Jesus is crying right now, and it's all your fault.

[schild]

Combat in Fable is nothing like combat in Jade Empire.

Jade Empire can only be likened to Pit Fighter, but with more movement. It's that bad.

Edit: Honestly, I don't even know how people played this with God of War out.

[Sky]

pee ess too

[schild]

Buy a fucking PS2 then. Don't settle for mediocrity for nonsense reasons.

[HaemishM]

I live under a rock.

As do I. I enjoyed the combat, much better than say Marvel Ultimate Alliance. The one thing it suffered from was the "optimal path." Once you got one set of combos, not much else mattered. I think I hit it around hour 20 or so. The only other complaint I had was the hordes of enemies to slow you down style of level design.

The game wasn't fantastic, but it was no stinker either.

EDIT: And yes, the combat DID play a bit like Fable. I liked Fable too.

[Yegolev]

There was a lot more homosexuality in Fable.  I mean that in multiple ways.

[Sky]

The one thing it suffered from was the "optimal path." Once you got one set of combos, not much else mattered. I think I hit it around hour 20 or so.

This never bothers me. If something is zomgoverpowered, I might pull it out when low on health in a boss battle. Otherwise, I like playing around with different abilities for fun, trying new combinations, etc. One thing I don't care for with MUA, it's restricted the amount and diversity of powers some, streamlined ftl. I liked playing with Toad in Spit mode and then respeccing to Tongue mode later for a change of pace. Toad was a must-have in XML2 imo...Got SoW? ;)

[Yegolev]

The problem, if I might elaborate, with Jade Empire is that you don't really have enough points to go whoring around the various martial styles, not if you want to be any good at one of them.  Pretty much what happened on my play was I stuck with Thousand Cuts all the way to the end.  I used the thing that turned people to stone quite a bit, but generally I just straight-up beat their asses.