04-27-2005, 10:46 PM
I wasn't expecting a whole lot going into Jade Empire - I'm not a huge fan of console RPGs in general (minus the Phantasy Star I-IV, Chrono Trigger, early FF's, etc.) and I was a bit skeptical of the no-pausing combat system. I suppose that saying "I wasn't expecting a whole lot" is a bit of a lie since it was coming from Bioware. To rephrase, "I was expecting it to be a good game, but not necessarily my cup of tea." JE surpassed my expectations (which were high for a normal game, but low for a Bioware game) but didn't blow them out of the water... my original issues I thought I would have turned out to be minor, but there were other issues that detracted from the overall experience that were unanticipated.
First, let's get the good stuff out of the way. The graphics are above-average (but no Splinter Cell) but the art direction in this game is simply amazing. I often found myself taking time to just stand and look around - the environments are just *that* good. Every single area was imaginative and distinct and was a pleasure to run through cracking skulls. The music is also outstanding and I loved it. Very reminiscent of Hero or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I loved it when the Chinese-drum heavy piece would fire up during a battle.
The various styles gained throughout the game (whether martial, weapon, magical, support, or transformation) all succeed at feeling unique and creating different and interesting effects... for the most part (I'll get to my gripes with martial and weapon styles later). Your characters "Focus" ability (think: bullet time for martial arts) was cool and very useful, but also quite unbalancing (once again, I'll address this more later).
The game length was acceptable - I clocked in at just over 34 hours to complete the game (and I did everything). It made me nervous at first when I heard that some people had completed it in under 15 hours on their first run through, but these people must have just blasted through the game and skipped all the side quests to boot. I have also read of people taking 45+ hours to beat it, but I have no idea what these people are doing that is taking so long... maybe leaving their Xbox on all the time? Who knows. That ~35 hours of gameplay consisted of me doing every single quest, just wandering around some of the extra sweet environments, going back to previous towns and seeing if dialogue changed, talking to almost everyone multiple times, etc.
The story was well done, it was probably my favorite of all the Bioware RPGs to date. Someone spoiled the end bad guy for me though, so one of the major plot twists in the game was completely expected for me, which was kinda of a bummer. Bio did a good job of dropping some subtle hints along the way though, so I suppose people could get at least an inkling of what is going to happen without someone spoiling it for them beforehand. The followers were also excellent and the best of any Bio game I have played. Never has a more motley assortment of heroes been put together, I assure you. The dialogue between your followers is pretty limited though, they are almost always addressing you and rarely bring up issues with each other, which was disappointing. Until the last 2 chapters, I got the feeling like my followers were invisible to each other or something.
Finally, JE has a good "alignment" system on paper: The Way of the Open Palm vs. The Way of the Closed Fist. It's sort of a order/chaos relationship, although not quite that simple, and there's room to be good or evil within either theoretically. In practice though, it tends to boil down to good vs. evil. There are very few actual opportunities to be evil within Open Palm (in harmony with your environment) or good within Closed Fist (strength is the ultimate virtue) which shouldn't be the case, according to the way the alignments are explained anyway. But that's fine. They tried to do something more innovative and original and had a modicum of success.
Now, unfortunately, it is time to discuss my gripes with the game.
The length of the game itself is good, but the time distribution itself is out of whack. Out of the ~35 hours spent in the 7 chapters of the game, I spent just shy of 26 of it in just chapters 2 and 3. Chapters 2 and 3 are the equivalent of chapter 2 in BG2 - you can power through it if you want, but there's a ton of area to explore and lots of quests to do if you want to. Granted, the much less time spent in the other chapters is semi-justifiable based on the story, but it would have been nice for the time distribution to be more spread out. (This was also one of my same gripes against BG2)
The martial and weapon styles (and to a lesser extent, all the styles in the game) just don't get the job done in my opinion. They succeed in "feeling" differently (whether jumping 10 feet in the air with Leaping Tiger, or backhanding people with White Demon, or even the gentle swaying of Spirit Thief), but in essence they're all the same really. Every style has strong attack (X) which breaks blocks, normal attack (A), an area attack (A+X) which knocks enemies back but does no damage (with two exceptions I believe: Storm Dragon and Spirit Thief), and one combo (A A A). And that's it. This is supposed to be an action RPG and there's one friggin combo in the entire game which all the styles just share. Very, very lame and a big disappointment. Combat is pretty formulaic once you get down A, A, A, roll, X to break block, A+X if surrounded, A, A, A... repeat ad infinitum. And it's the same for all the styles. The only real difference between the styles is look and a slight difference in rate of attack. I presume slower styles do more damage, but I honestly have no idea since Bio has elected to remove almost every single number they possibly could from the game - only XP and your basic stats are graced with the honor of being given a number. This also annoyed me since I'm a numbers person and yet had no idea how much damage I was doing or taking except in relative to my own health bar or my enemies.
There are also a couple balance issues with the game. A certain Transformation Style is extremely overpowered. The final boss was giving me trouble, so I morphed into my maxed out overpowered form and wiped the floor with him, whereas before my maxed out magic, martial, and weapon styles weren't terribly effective. Harmonic combos, Bio's attempt at creating a form of synergy (I guess) between magic/support and martial styles are just horribly overpowered. A single extremely easy to perform harmonic combo is a one-shot kill on 90% of the enemies in the game (the other 10% are just flat out immune to any harmonic combos at all, which seems to be a very band-aid fix to me to just throw immunities down). Needless to say, the combat is this game is pretty easy. The hardest enemies are ones that use Spirit Thief and Paralyzing Palm and are immune to harmonic combos. But they're rare and the "trick" to fighting them is mostly just slogging through them and accepting the fact that you're going to be stunned or drained a bit along the way.
Speaking of the combat system, blocking is useless. It is almost always more effecient to just roll or jump out of the way. There was only *one* time I used blocking a lot, and that was against an enemy with a ton of HP and a slow power attack. So I would just block until he'd charge is power attack up, jump over him, and hit him a few times in the back. It took a while of just chipping away for him to go down too. Another oddity of the combat system is "Chi Strike" mode (Chi is like mana or magical aptitude I suppose). The tradeoff is supposed to be that extra damage is added to your attacks in exchange for Chi. But there's never any reason for Chi Strike not to be on for the most part since the drain is pretty minor and the extra damage is quite nice. I think I spent probably 95% of my combat time in Chi Strike mode. Focus mode is also pretty silly. 1 on 1, I could kill any enemy in the game, except a couple bosses, before Focus mode ran out. In fact, most *groups* of enemies I could take down before my Focus was spent. Do't get me wrong, it was impressive the first couple times I took down a gang of bad guys without taking a scratch and before most of them had even turned around completely, but it kinda trivialized a lot of the combat.
You have three stats in the game - Body (HP), Spirit (Chi), and Mind (Focus). Unfortunately, the Body stats is absolutely useless. More HP is pointless when you can avoid damage altogether using Focus or heal yourself and add more damage to your attacks with Chi. I honestly cannot possibly think of a situation in the game where I would rather have more Body than Spirit and Mind (which I raised evenly).
Despite the fact that you have a party of followers, you're only allowed to have one accompanying you at a time. I hate when games do this. It feels ridiculously forced, makes no sense with the story (until the last couple chapters which your character makes a "umm, you 5 stay here and watch this while you come with me" offhand comment before running off to kill more people). For 80% of the game they don't even attempt to justify why only one person is coming around with you and all the rest are just chilling at the camp (and then of course magically run forward, say any lines that are needed for story purposes, and then high-tail it back to the camp) and in the other 20% it feels very artificial. I know game companies do this for the sake of balance or gameplay mechanics, but I feel as though band-aid fixes shouldn't be used to cover up things disliked in the gameplay if that is what is truly wrong. Plus, I prefer having larger parties. It also doesn't help that the one companion you bring along is almost always more useful in support mode recovering your chi or focus or health, than fighting along side you since they tended to get their butt kicked.
JE uses the same "focus on the face of the talker" dialogue system that KotOR used and it suffers from the same flaws. Occasionally (seemingly randomly) the camera will zoom in on the ground or the wrong person speaking, and it can be annoying and confusing. It's rare though, so it's not a huge problem.
Finally - my last gripe - what is supposed to be one of the surprises in the story is painfully obvious since the end on chapter 1... and your character doesn't learn the truth until the end of chapter 6. I was pulling out my hair with my character's seeming inability to put 2 and 2 together. It is seriously forehead-slapping obvious and I don't know how else to articulate how stupid it was without spoiling it :)
Looking back, I realize that my rather long complaint section may give the wrong impression about my feelings towards the game. It is a genuinely good and enjoyable game, and I'm going to play through it a 2nd time - this whirl as Closed Fist (I played as Open Palm for my first run) on the highest difficulty (my first run was on normal). I loved the music, I loved the art in the game, and I enjoyed the story. Oh yeah, and the 1942-esque mini-game was absolutely sweet. 1942 was awesome BTW and sucked more quarters than it should have from me as a young lad. With a better combat system (different combos for each style, harmonic combos producing different effects and not being one-hit kills, etc.), allowing your whole party to accompany you at once (and adjusting battles upwards to compensate), and a bit more polish, JE would have been absolutely phenomenal. Instead it's "only" darn good.
First, let's get the good stuff out of the way. The graphics are above-average (but no Splinter Cell) but the art direction in this game is simply amazing. I often found myself taking time to just stand and look around - the environments are just *that* good. Every single area was imaginative and distinct and was a pleasure to run through cracking skulls. The music is also outstanding and I loved it. Very reminiscent of Hero or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I loved it when the Chinese-drum heavy piece would fire up during a battle.
The various styles gained throughout the game (whether martial, weapon, magical, support, or transformation) all succeed at feeling unique and creating different and interesting effects... for the most part (I'll get to my gripes with martial and weapon styles later). Your characters "Focus" ability (think: bullet time for martial arts) was cool and very useful, but also quite unbalancing (once again, I'll address this more later).
The game length was acceptable - I clocked in at just over 34 hours to complete the game (and I did everything). It made me nervous at first when I heard that some people had completed it in under 15 hours on their first run through, but these people must have just blasted through the game and skipped all the side quests to boot. I have also read of people taking 45+ hours to beat it, but I have no idea what these people are doing that is taking so long... maybe leaving their Xbox on all the time? Who knows. That ~35 hours of gameplay consisted of me doing every single quest, just wandering around some of the extra sweet environments, going back to previous towns and seeing if dialogue changed, talking to almost everyone multiple times, etc.
The story was well done, it was probably my favorite of all the Bioware RPGs to date. Someone spoiled the end bad guy for me though, so one of the major plot twists in the game was completely expected for me, which was kinda of a bummer. Bio did a good job of dropping some subtle hints along the way though, so I suppose people could get at least an inkling of what is going to happen without someone spoiling it for them beforehand. The followers were also excellent and the best of any Bio game I have played. Never has a more motley assortment of heroes been put together, I assure you. The dialogue between your followers is pretty limited though, they are almost always addressing you and rarely bring up issues with each other, which was disappointing. Until the last 2 chapters, I got the feeling like my followers were invisible to each other or something.
Finally, JE has a good "alignment" system on paper: The Way of the Open Palm vs. The Way of the Closed Fist. It's sort of a order/chaos relationship, although not quite that simple, and there's room to be good or evil within either theoretically. In practice though, it tends to boil down to good vs. evil. There are very few actual opportunities to be evil within Open Palm (in harmony with your environment) or good within Closed Fist (strength is the ultimate virtue) which shouldn't be the case, according to the way the alignments are explained anyway. But that's fine. They tried to do something more innovative and original and had a modicum of success.
Now, unfortunately, it is time to discuss my gripes with the game.
The length of the game itself is good, but the time distribution itself is out of whack. Out of the ~35 hours spent in the 7 chapters of the game, I spent just shy of 26 of it in just chapters 2 and 3. Chapters 2 and 3 are the equivalent of chapter 2 in BG2 - you can power through it if you want, but there's a ton of area to explore and lots of quests to do if you want to. Granted, the much less time spent in the other chapters is semi-justifiable based on the story, but it would have been nice for the time distribution to be more spread out. (This was also one of my same gripes against BG2)
The martial and weapon styles (and to a lesser extent, all the styles in the game) just don't get the job done in my opinion. They succeed in "feeling" differently (whether jumping 10 feet in the air with Leaping Tiger, or backhanding people with White Demon, or even the gentle swaying of Spirit Thief), but in essence they're all the same really. Every style has strong attack (X) which breaks blocks, normal attack (A), an area attack (A+X) which knocks enemies back but does no damage (with two exceptions I believe: Storm Dragon and Spirit Thief), and one combo (A A A). And that's it. This is supposed to be an action RPG and there's one friggin combo in the entire game which all the styles just share. Very, very lame and a big disappointment. Combat is pretty formulaic once you get down A, A, A, roll, X to break block, A+X if surrounded, A, A, A... repeat ad infinitum. And it's the same for all the styles. The only real difference between the styles is look and a slight difference in rate of attack. I presume slower styles do more damage, but I honestly have no idea since Bio has elected to remove almost every single number they possibly could from the game - only XP and your basic stats are graced with the honor of being given a number. This also annoyed me since I'm a numbers person and yet had no idea how much damage I was doing or taking except in relative to my own health bar or my enemies.
There are also a couple balance issues with the game. A certain Transformation Style is extremely overpowered. The final boss was giving me trouble, so I morphed into my maxed out overpowered form and wiped the floor with him, whereas before my maxed out magic, martial, and weapon styles weren't terribly effective. Harmonic combos, Bio's attempt at creating a form of synergy (I guess) between magic/support and martial styles are just horribly overpowered. A single extremely easy to perform harmonic combo is a one-shot kill on 90% of the enemies in the game (the other 10% are just flat out immune to any harmonic combos at all, which seems to be a very band-aid fix to me to just throw immunities down). Needless to say, the combat is this game is pretty easy. The hardest enemies are ones that use Spirit Thief and Paralyzing Palm and are immune to harmonic combos. But they're rare and the "trick" to fighting them is mostly just slogging through them and accepting the fact that you're going to be stunned or drained a bit along the way.
Speaking of the combat system, blocking is useless. It is almost always more effecient to just roll or jump out of the way. There was only *one* time I used blocking a lot, and that was against an enemy with a ton of HP and a slow power attack. So I would just block until he'd charge is power attack up, jump over him, and hit him a few times in the back. It took a while of just chipping away for him to go down too. Another oddity of the combat system is "Chi Strike" mode (Chi is like mana or magical aptitude I suppose). The tradeoff is supposed to be that extra damage is added to your attacks in exchange for Chi. But there's never any reason for Chi Strike not to be on for the most part since the drain is pretty minor and the extra damage is quite nice. I think I spent probably 95% of my combat time in Chi Strike mode. Focus mode is also pretty silly. 1 on 1, I could kill any enemy in the game, except a couple bosses, before Focus mode ran out. In fact, most *groups* of enemies I could take down before my Focus was spent. Do't get me wrong, it was impressive the first couple times I took down a gang of bad guys without taking a scratch and before most of them had even turned around completely, but it kinda trivialized a lot of the combat.
You have three stats in the game - Body (HP), Spirit (Chi), and Mind (Focus). Unfortunately, the Body stats is absolutely useless. More HP is pointless when you can avoid damage altogether using Focus or heal yourself and add more damage to your attacks with Chi. I honestly cannot possibly think of a situation in the game where I would rather have more Body than Spirit and Mind (which I raised evenly).
Despite the fact that you have a party of followers, you're only allowed to have one accompanying you at a time. I hate when games do this. It feels ridiculously forced, makes no sense with the story (until the last couple chapters which your character makes a "umm, you 5 stay here and watch this while you come with me" offhand comment before running off to kill more people). For 80% of the game they don't even attempt to justify why only one person is coming around with you and all the rest are just chilling at the camp (and then of course magically run forward, say any lines that are needed for story purposes, and then high-tail it back to the camp) and in the other 20% it feels very artificial. I know game companies do this for the sake of balance or gameplay mechanics, but I feel as though band-aid fixes shouldn't be used to cover up things disliked in the gameplay if that is what is truly wrong. Plus, I prefer having larger parties. It also doesn't help that the one companion you bring along is almost always more useful in support mode recovering your chi or focus or health, than fighting along side you since they tended to get their butt kicked.
JE uses the same "focus on the face of the talker" dialogue system that KotOR used and it suffers from the same flaws. Occasionally (seemingly randomly) the camera will zoom in on the ground or the wrong person speaking, and it can be annoying and confusing. It's rare though, so it's not a huge problem.
Finally - my last gripe - what is supposed to be one of the surprises in the story is painfully obvious since the end on chapter 1... and your character doesn't learn the truth until the end of chapter 6. I was pulling out my hair with my character's seeming inability to put 2 and 2 together. It is seriously forehead-slapping obvious and I don't know how else to articulate how stupid it was without spoiling it :)
Looking back, I realize that my rather long complaint section may give the wrong impression about my feelings towards the game. It is a genuinely good and enjoyable game, and I'm going to play through it a 2nd time - this whirl as Closed Fist (I played as Open Palm for my first run) on the highest difficulty (my first run was on normal). I loved the music, I loved the art in the game, and I enjoyed the story. Oh yeah, and the 1942-esque mini-game was absolutely sweet. 1942 was awesome BTW and sucked more quarters than it should have from me as a young lad. With a better combat system (different combos for each style, harmonic combos producing different effects and not being one-hit kills, etc.), allowing your whole party to accompany you at once (and adjusting battles upwards to compensate), and a bit more polish, JE would have been absolutely phenomenal. Instead it's "only" darn good.
--Mith
I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
Jack London
I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
Jack London