Jade Empire - To buy or not to buy

[Azalin]

I might keep going. The aesthetic is really nice and I hear it's a shorter RPG.

I can't remember how many hours it took me to finish it by it might be Bioware's shortest game

 

[Average Manatee]

At some point you'll say to yourself "Great, after this major turning point we're halfway through the game and things could be really cool from now on".

Then you'll fight through a handful of combat-only areas and an hour and a half later the game is over.

 

[Ovg]

You have to remember to take the tiger style as your starting one, because this way you'll get through inane combat faster.

I do however, love the setting and how they put quite a few legends in it. Cannibal Inn for example...

 

[Correct_Carlo]

Tiger Style is overpowered to the point of being kind of imbalanced, just because it's the only fighting style that automatically advances/moves forward on the enemy. I remember when I played I invested in some other style, maxed it out, then discovered mid game that a non-leveled up Tiger Style is better than most (if not all) the other styles fully upgraded.

But, yeah, you should definitely take Tiger Style regardless, as combat can get tedious without it (especially the Arena battles).

 

[Turisas]

Has anyone played extensively with Jade Empire in Style? Or any other mods? It sounds like the mod adds a lot of stuff, but when it comes to mods, that's not necessarily a good thing (like the Flame Armor in the pictures o_O)

This mod started out as a compilation of all those other mods that add new styles to Jade Empire. Eventually I figured out how to add styles myself and added a few more. All in all there's around 40 styles now. 50 if you count weapon upgrades as well. Quite a lot of styles have been modified. Some have been re-balanced. To others I've added new effects. And some have been re-purposed entirely. But I didn't stop at adding and modding styles either. There are new gem armors, new techniques, new merchants, brand new concepts like specializations...
I can say without the slightest bit of exaggeration, that this is the largest mod for Jade Empire out there. In fact: It is many times larger than all other mods combined and that is not just because it *contains* so many other mods. The last time I checked the codebase totaled to 25,000 lines. In other words: This mod is a complete overhaul.

 

[Ovg]

Why would anyone want to play jade empire for the fights is beyond me. Button mashing combat with no challenge is no fun after all.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Well, it's not for the fights, really. They're just trying to make those less boring, so that they can properly enjoy the original story, deep characters and an imaginative setting all brought to life by a writer behind such masterpieces as NWN, KotOR and Mass Effect 2. And who wouldn't, really?

 

[DalekFlay]

I'm primarily using the bo, since my hand attacks were always not reaching the enemy due to my own lack of ability to judge distance in this game I guess. The bo pops moles from a comfortable distance. Only issue is the stupid undead somehow can only be hit by a hand, not wood.

 

[Average Manatee]

Tiger Style is overpowered to the point of being kind of imbalanced, just because it's the only fighting style that automatically advances/moves forward on the enemy. I remember when I played I invested in some other style, maxed it out, then discovered mid game that a non-leveled up Tiger Style is better than most (if not all) the other styles fully upgraded.

But, yeah, you should definitely take Tiger Style regardless, as combat can get tedious without it (especially the Arena battles).

Can't say I remember any specific martial style being much better than the others. Easiest way to win is to do the harmonic combos, which instantly kill any non-boss character and forces a drop of a chi/focus powerup so you can get back to using the much more imbalanced weapons and transformations and thingies. Waiting for the slow as hell regeneration from followers or the chi-stealing style is for chumps.

Why would anyone want to play jade empire for the fights is beyond me. Button mashing combat with no challenge is no fun after all.

It's hardly button mashing and it can be a bit challenging on the hardest difficulty level. I wouldn't play it just for the fights but they are good for what it is.

I'm primarily using the bo, since my hand attacks were always not reaching the enemy due to my own lack of ability to judge distance in this game I guess. The bo pops moles from a comfortable distance. Only issue is the stupid undead somehow can only be hit by a hand, not wood.

If you haven't figured this out by now, you can turn off the lock-on mode and move like 2x faster. Makes getting in close to enemies very easy. And if that's not enough, you can pop in to bullettime focus mode just long enough to run 2 steps in and hit with your first attack, stunlocking them for the rest of your combo

 

[Azrael the cat]

I'll give it this: at least it doesn't follow the 'go to 3 places, get 3 mcguffins' format. The city is decent enough, and they put it 2/3 into the game like BG so it feels like an incline when you reach it, instead of making it the starting area and having everything else suck in comparison. It's also their only game that I think would have been better if they just made it action-adventure with upgrades instead of crpg system - a Street Fighter style combat system would work and integrate better than their attempt to convert that kind of game into a crpg system.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

Can't say I remember any specific martial style being much better than the others. Easiest way to win is to do the harmonic combos, which instantly kill any non-boss character and forces a drop of a chi/focus powerup so you can get back to using the much more imbalanced weapons and transformations and thingies. Waiting for the slow as hell regeneration from followers or the chi-stealing style is for chumps.

Nah, tiger style is definitely the best. Like I said, it automatically advances towards the enemy by a step with every move, so you can just spam the common attack over and over and the enemies don't have time to react. Even if they block, they will unblock eventually and then they are toast. None of the other starting styles have that "moving forward by a step with every hit" component so they are much easier to counter than tiger style. The other styles do require strategy to get by (especially on hard), but tiger style is so overpowered that it really does turn the game into a mindless button masher.

 

[Average Manatee]

Can't say I remember any specific martial style being much better than the others. Easiest way to win is to do the harmonic combos, which instantly kill any non-boss character and forces a drop of a chi/focus powerup so you can get back to using the much more imbalanced weapons and transformations and thingies. Waiting for the slow as hell regeneration from followers or the chi-stealing style is for chumps.

Nah, tiger style is definitely the best. Like I said, it automatically advances towards the enemy by a step with every move, so you can just spam the common attack over and over and the enemies don't have time to react. Even if they block, they will unblock eventually and then they are toast. None of the other starting styles have that "moving forward by a step with every hit" component so they are much easier to counter than tiger style. The other styles do require strategy to get by (especially on hard), but tiger style is so overpowered that it really does turn the game into a mindless button masher.

You must either be playing an entirely different game or playing on a much easier difficulty. Enemies would never randomly lower their guard and let you hit them, if you keep spamming M1 against them they will time their counterattack to interrupt you. Just loaded up a game to test and after blocking one full salvo an enemy took off half my health. Then I tried it again and they took off the other half. This was with full upgrades on tiger.

Even if it did work, martial styles have such horrible damage that you would be a fool to use it. Pull out a sword and do 3x as much damage.

 

[DalekFlay]

He might play the Xbox version. From what I read the PC version adjusted the AI so they block and counterattack a lot more.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

Nah, I played on the PC on the absolute hardest difficulty (I play everything on the hardest difficulty). It's been 3 years since I played it, though, so things could be a bit fuzzy, but I remember having a hell of a terrible time until I switched to tiger style half way through the game....because of tiger style's natural, advancing, aggro.

I won't belabor the point, though, as, like I said, it's been three years.....so I'd probably have to reinstall the game and play again to prove anything.

 

[Jvegi]

I don't remember this being the case either. I played this game twice, and yeah, battles could get tedious, but on the other hand, you could make your own fun with all this jumping and changing styles all the time, even if it wasn't necessary. I enjoyed it, I really did.

Perhaps, just as it is the case with Kotor, the visuals and unusual context make battles more enjoyable then they would be in a classic setting. Of course this trick doesn't work on everybody, which explains why so many people here fucking hate Kotor.

 

[Ovg]

Well, it's not for the fights, really. They're just trying to make those less boring, so that they can properly enjoy the original story, deep characters and an imaginative setting all brought to life by a writer behind such masterpieces as NWN, KotOR and Mass Effect 2. And who wouldn't, really?

I never said the writing was good, yet objectively a huge pile of shit is worse than a small pile of shit.

And there aren't that many settings that use far eastern mythology in 'rpg' games.

 

[Jasede]

Forgettable; had a few decent bits.