Finished up Jade Empire the other night…  Good game, thoroughly enjoyed myself.  It got a bit repetitive towards the end…  Some sections where I really did not want to fight yet another ghost/assassin/golem.  The final showdown was kind of disappointing, I was expecting quite a bit more…  But it was really pretty decent.

I’ve been playing more Jade Empire…  Finally made it to the palace and confronted the Emperor.

Turns out the Emperor is now a god - he’s stolen the Water Dragon’s power for his own and he’s obscenely powerful.  There was a fairly tough battle sequence…  Had to kill wave after wave of henchmen, then take on the Emperor himself.  That was honestly the first fight that really gave me trouble.  I just barely managed to kill him.

So I defeated the evil God Emperor and rescued my beloved Master Li - generally this is where most games would call it done and start rolling the credits.  And, if you consider how short games are these days, I wouldn’t have been terribly surprised if that had been the end of it.  Actually, I was a little surprised that it wasn’t the end.

In typical computer RPG fashion there’s a horrific betrayal - my beloved Master Li uses some secret technique to kill me pretty much instantly and take the Water Dragon’s power for his own.

Most games pretty much end when you die.  Sure, you’d wind up reloading from a save and trying to survive…but the game is generally over when the main character dies.  Not Jade Empire though - I’m now a ghost.  I had to battle my way through the spirit realm to find what’s left of the Water Dragon, who then took me to Dirge to restore the temple there, so that she can return me to life, so that I can go after Master Li and try to reclaim the Water Dragon’s power.

That’s right - I’m dead and the story is just getting started.

Had my first program crash on the new computer yesterday…  I can’t really blame the hardware, it was obviously a software issue and only took down the one program, but it was annoying none the less.

I was playing Jade Empire again…  I’ve made it to the Imperial City and I’m running around trying to infiltrate the Lotus Assassins.  I’d just gone through a fairly annoying section in the Necropolis…  Ghosts kept appearing around every corner.  I’d beat them down, take a few steps, and have to kill them again.  Got very annoying when I just wanted to make it from one place to another.  I finished up in the Necropolis, went back to turn in some quests, and then headed towards the Black Panther School.  That’s when the game crashed to desktop and lost all my progress since my last manual save - dropped me back to before I’d done the Necropolis.

I’m a little surprised that I lost so much progress…  I constantly see the game automatically saving, it seems like there should have been some auto-saves between the Necropolis and the crash…  But there isn’t.  So I have to do the Necropolis over again, and I’m not too happy about that.

I’m starting to get rather annoyed with the combat system.  It isn’t really the combat system that’s the problem, but the weird little transition from normal movement into combat mode.  You can often see enemies up ahead of you, but you aren’t allowed to attack them until you’re in combat mode…something which you cannot apparently initiate yourself.  When you get close enough the enemies notice you and you go into combat mode automatically.  There’s a momentary delay as the camera position changes…you lock onto an enemy…health bars appear…  And when you defeat them there’s a little animation of your character doing some kind of bow/centering exercise/meditation thing.  It isn’t much, just a few seconds here and there.  But when you’re getting jumped by monsters every 10 minutes it starts to get pretty annoying.

I’m getting very curious about the storyline…  The emperor himself is starting to sound like little more than a puppet.  The leader of the Lotus Assassins, Death’s Hand, doesn’t sound like he’s entirely human.  There’s something going on with the Water Dragon…  She’s dead, and the Emperor has stolen her power, but she’s still clinging to some kind of life somewhere.  There’s ghosts rising up left and right, and they just won’t stay down after you kill them.

Outwardly the Jade Empire appears to be thriving and healthy…  There’s plenty of merchants, actors, scholars, socialites, guards…all going about their daily routine.  They’ll mutter and complain about rumors of ghosts and how the Lotus Assassins are getting more obtrusive…  But things seem to be working the way they should, at least at first glance.  But there’s something wrong under the surface.

Despite all the hints and clues that have been dropped so far, I really have no idea what that “wrongness” might be.  I assume it has something to do with the Emperor killing the Water Dragon…but it seems to be more than that.  It seems that the Water Dragon thing might just be one more symptom of a greater problem.  A lot of mystery seems to be centered on Death’s Hand and his Lotus Assassins…and I really have to wonder just who or what he is, and what they’re up to.

Once again BioWare has woven a storyline that I’m absolutely hooked on.

I’ve always enjoyed BioWare’s games.  They manage to combine a good storyline and interesting characters with gameplay that is genuinely fun and doesn’t get in your way.  There was a lot of press surrounding Jade Empire when it was originally in development…  But then the focus seemed to shift from PC to console, and the PC version got delayed…  And the press died off as the game got later…  And when it finally came out I wasn’t even able to run it on my computer.

So, now that I’ve got a new computer I re-installed it and gave it another try.

It’s got the same brightly-lit visuals that I’ve come to associate with “next-gen” titles…  But they work relatively well in JE.  The setting is already fantastic and strange, you fight demons and ghosts, so the visuals don’t need to be terribly realistic.  The characters look good and move well - which is important considering the realtime nature of the combat.  But I’m honestly not all that amazed with the visuals.  I’m not sure why it needed such a beefy system just to run.

I’m enjoying the realtime martial arts combat…  It’s a nice change from the usual turn-based stuff you see in RPGs, but it takes some getting used to.  Game stats still affect the combat by varying your damage and the speed of your attack…which meshes a bit oddly with the button-mashing nature of the combat system…  There’s a sense of urgency, a feeling that you need to pound the buttons as fast as you can to throw out the punches and kicks, but often the game stats won’t allow your character to respond as quickly as you hit the keys.  It’s odd at first, but I’m getting used to it.

Amazingly enough, I thoroughly enjoyed the first mini-game I ran into, actually wish it had lasted longer.  Mini-games seem to cling to computer RPGs like some kind of lamprey, sucking the life out of them.  They’re usually annoying puzzle games, or strange little sports, or card games…races are popular…  The actual substance of the mini-game usually varies from one title to the next, but none of them really have anything to do with the rest of the game, and they’re almost always poorly executed.  The first one in JE was actually a lot of fun.  It played like one of the old-school top-down shooters, like Xevious or 1942.

The storyline so far is fairly predictable…  Your character is the last of their kind, has some mysterious past, a great destiny, etc.  You miraculously wind up out of town when your village gets obliterated and you head off for revenge.  There’s lots of talk about emperors and gods and assassins and whatnot…  But so far none of that really has much impact on the gameplay.

There’s lots of talk about the two philosophies in this game - the way of the open palm and the way of the closed fist…  They’re presented as being all kind of deep and complex with far-reaching ramifications…  But so far it all seems to boil down to simply being good and helping folks out or being evil and helping yourself out.  It always seems impossible for game developers to give us real philosophical or moral dilemmas…  But maybe it wouldn’t be a very enjoyable game if you had to ponder your actions that deeply.

The game was obviously designed for a console and then ported to the PC after the fact…  The controls would be better suited to a gamepad than a keyboard and mouse.  The GUI is very simple, with several different scrollable menus and separate screens - again oriented towards a gamepad instead of a mouse.  It still plays quite well, but it takes a little getting used to.

So far I’m enjoying myself, which makes me somewhat worried.  There was tons of press surrounding this game originally, but then it all vanished almost overnight.  Usually that’s because a game winds up sucking horribly…  But I haven’t seen any evidence of this yet.