The Drunken Lizard Pub

Who here has played Jade Empire? What's your opinion of it? Good game? Lame? Interesting? Boring? Worth playing?

i will have to say worth playing intersting and good because in my opinion it's a very very very good game

Played it on the Xbox. I thought it was extremeeeely good. It was very good..but it was rather short with (for me) no replay value. But the first play was a lot of fun.

All I can add here is use a controller - I tried it on the PC and didn't care for the keyboard/mouse control. Same for me with Fable.

llew silverhand wrote:All I can add here is use a controller - I tried it on the PC and didn't care for the keyboard/mouse control. Same for me with Fable.

This is the case for me with most games, even FPS games. Maybe it's working with computers all day but more often than not a controller feels more "natural" than a Key/Mouse.

Hmm... I think I'll probably give it a try . . . after I'm done with Planescape. Thanks, all.

As for controllers: I've never felt the desire, much less the need, to buy one, since I've always considered the mouse and keyboard to be quite sufficient. Maybe I'm mistaken? Macdude or Silverhand: what do you think? Completely necessary? Is life without a controller no life at all?

Heh. As both a console gamer and a PC gamer, I can tell you that the Mouse/Keyboad reigns supreme... depending on the game.

As Jade Empire is a real-time, martial-arts-action-oriented RPG, I can see the need for a controller.

I forsee a potential issue... Jade Empire doesn't support the Intel GMA950. It might still run... *shrug*

CrazyBernie wrote:I forsee a potential issue... Jade Empire doesn't support the Intel GMA950. It might still run... *shrug*

Hmm... I'll have to check that out, then. Thanks for the warning. I was assuming any BioWare games from NWN2 back would run on my system.

I'd say, if your system can run the game, try it with keyboard/mouse, but bear in mind that you might end up needing to pick up a controller in order to better enjoy the game.

Evnissyen wrote:

CrazyBernie wrote:I forsee a potential issue... Jade Empire doesn't support the Intel GMA950. It might still run... *shrug*

Hmm... I'll have to check that out, then. Thanks for the warning. I was assuming any BioWare games from NWN2 back would run on my system.

While that's a fair assumption, the reality unfortunately is quite different. The problem is that often the original developer of a game is not responsible for porting the engine to other systems. In the case of Jade Empire, a different company brought the game from the Xbox to the PC, and yet another brought the game to the Mac.

The silly part is that Jade Empire was an Original Xbox title... so the "system requirements" shouldn't be anywhere as high as they are. I suppose it's possible that the game is taking advantage of some shader features that the intel graphics isn't rated to handle.

So, been playing Jade Empire for almost the entire day (yes, I FINALLY got it... off GOG)... I just can't stop. Seriously, I'd say this game is in close contention with Mask of the Betrayer for best-written BioWare game I've played — maybe the best. (Yes, I said BioWare, so no attacking me on the grounds of Planescape.) It truly is exceptionally written. Plus, it's really fun.

Evnissyen wrote:So, been playing Jade Empire for almost the entire day (yes, I FINALLY got it... off GOG)... I just can't stop. Seriously, I'd say this game is in close contention with Mask of the Betrayer for best-written BioWare game I've played — maybe the best. (Yes, I said BioWare, so no attacking me on the grounds of Planescape.) It truly is exceptionally written. Plus, it's really fun.

Mask of the Betrayer is not a BioWare game, it's an Obsidian Entertainment game (thus the great writing because Chris Avellone and George Ziets). It's often considered the best written RPG since Planescape: Torment (which, not coincidentally, had Chris Avellone as the lead designer).

As for Jade Empire, I LOVE the game. The gameplay could stand to be better, but the setting is fantastic and the writing is solid. I'm so sick of pseudo medieval European settings. There are so many great possible settings out there, why do developers and publishers keep going back to the setting that's been outrageously played out? So many cool setting to choose from: Modern, ancient India, ancient South America, or, like Jade Empire, ancient far east.

sirdilznik wrote:Mask of the Betrayer is not a BioWare game, it's an Obsidian Entertainment game (thus the great writing because Chris Avellone and George Ziets). It's often considered the best written RPG since Planescape: Torment (which, not coincidentally, had Chris Avellone as the lead designer).

Okay, my mistake. At any rate, I've now decided without a doubt that MotB is still the better-written game of the two, if we still want to compare them, though the writing of Jade Empire really is quite good.

sirdilznik wrote:

Evnissyen wrote:So, been playing Jade Empire for almost the entire day (yes, I FINALLY got it... off GOG)... I just can't stop. Seriously, I'd say this game is in close contention with Mask of the Betrayer for best-written BioWare game I've played — maybe the best. (Yes, I said BioWare, so no attacking me on the grounds of Planescape.) It truly is exceptionally written. Plus, it's really fun.

Mask of the Betrayer is not a BioWare game, it's an Obsidian Entertainment game (thus the great writing because Chris Avellone and George Ziets). It's often considered the best written RPG since Planescape: Torment (which, not coincidentally, had Chris Avellone as the lead designer).

As for Jade Empire, I LOVE the game. The gameplay could stand to be better, but the setting is fantastic and the writing is solid. I'm so sick of pseudo medieval European settings. There are so many great possible settings out there, why do developers and publishers keep going back to the setting that's been outrageously played out? So many cool setting to choose from: Modern, ancient India, ancient South America, or, like Jade Empire, ancient far east.

I love the usual settings but im with you sir. Even with all the westerns out there, theres only a small handful(2 i can think of, GUN and Red dead Redemtion WHICH NEEDS A PC RELEASE BUT thats another rant) of them but the good ones are fan freakin tastic, where the bad ones, just SUCK or fail at trying to introduce something new(looking at you Call of Juarez, hated the shooting in that).

If it can be done with fps games, why not rpgs?!?

The only thing slightly annoying are the mini-games... at first it was charming and all, you know, in a cute, retro way and everything, but now I'm kind of getting a little more over it and finding myself going for 'disengage/evade' more often.

I guess mini-games are difficult, though. I know they're meant to offer player relief, an occasional break and all that... but it seems to me it's hard to do mini-games that both mesh well with the game and also are fun.

There's one character in the group that just annoys me. Guess. No, it's not him. I actually like him.

Actually, two. The other's female, and she was intriguing as hell at first, but now that she's in the group she's just annoying, and though she should be a font of info, it turns out she's just not.