Reviews etc.
Ahem. I was supposed to be writing reviews of "stuff what I played on Origin Access". Here we go:
Jade Empire (Bioware/2K Games, 2007)
Jade Empire is the game that Bioware made in between Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. I don't just mean that chronologically (although it was), but also in the way that so many of the mechanics are clearly intermediate steps which Bioware were refining their ideas of what it meant to make an action RPG, and as they continued learning these were further improved in the Mass Effect trilogy (Andromeda is a weirdly retrograde step wherein they forgot some of the lessons they'd learned making the earlier games). It's the gaming equivalent of a transitional fossil. Somebody should really preserve it in amber.
Absent that, what we do have is it being in EA's Origin Access Vault, so I gave it a go recently. It's fun, if fairly short by RPG standards. I don't know enough about Chinese history and mythology to comment on whether the setting is fantasy Imperial China (and what part of its four thousand years of history, for that matter) or a Western stereotype thereof, but at least it is trying to look like it's Imperial China as well as having the names. Anyway, the basic conceit is that we're a gifted student of martial arts about to come of age, and, well, in traditional RPG manner our home village is burned down and our master goes missing, and the rest of the game represents both our literal and spiritual journey of discovery into WTAF just happened. The combat somewhat reminds me of Jedi Academy though it isn't quite so polished; it's got the same sort of almost-fighting-game style of close-in melee combat - and much like Jedi Academy, you've got more or less four fighting styles, fast/balanced/strong/magic. My character used the fast style and I spent the game mostly doing hit-and-run via acrobatics; it seemed to work pretty well - and it was fun. Not as much fun as Mass Effect is, but much more fun than the slow-paced combat of KotOR. It's certainly not perfectly executed - there's a whole ton of extremely annoying enemies with homing ranged attacks which primarily make you wonder why on earth Bioware thought they would be fun to include in a Martial Arts game, but combat is overall enjoyable. But, y'know, it's like Bioware are slowly beginning to figure out how to make an action game. We do still have the bizarre inexplicable arcade minigames between different mission areas - this time it's a top-down shoot-em-up for basically no reason - though it's not that bad a game although somewhat limited. I like shmups, though, which I'm not sure the average RPG player does...
The plot is..."clever", but also asks for quite a lot in terms of suspension of disbelief, inasmuch as the primary antagonist's plan seems to more or less rely on the player having quicksave and quickload buttons, and I'm fairly sure the same overall goal could have been accomplished with significantly less risk. Also, for a supposedly brilliant strategist he doesn't exactly spend much time thinking about actions his enemies might theoretically take outside of his plan. The characters, sadly, are almost entirely flat. It's a pity, because the overall setting - an Empire where the Mandate of Heaven is genuinely a thing, and the Emperor has definitely lost it - is pretty cool. But nobody in that setting is interesting enough to really allow us to explore it. The comparison with Mass Effect is instructive here. Almost all of ME1's characters are cliches in some form or another - the warrior with the soul of a poet, the rogue lawman who's a crack marksman, the broken-down and bitter old soldier, etc etc - but those clichés actually impart some depth to the characters (except Alenko, which is why everybody leaves him behind on Virmire...) because they evoke the ideas which have been more fully developed in other forms of art. The sort of clichés we have here more evoke fairy tales (yes, we have a Princess who sneaks out to right her father's wrongs...) than anything with any real heft behind them. Bioware were certainly learning on the mechanics and worldbuilding side of things, but not so much about writing characters yet.
But it's a fairly short game, and very atmospheric, so it's fun enough to play for the length of the actual plot if you don't spend absolutely ages doing sidequests. I think I put about 20 hours into it, which is reasonable enough when you're getting it as part of a subscription service that costs £20/year.
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Jade Empire (Bioware/2K Games, 2007)
Jade Empire is the game that Bioware made in between Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. I don't just mean that chronologically (although it was), but also in the way that so many of the mechanics are clearly intermediate steps which Bioware were refining their ideas of what it meant to make an action RPG, and as they continued learning these were further improved in the Mass Effect trilogy (Andromeda is a weirdly retrograde step wherein they forgot some of the lessons they'd learned making the earlier games). It's the gaming equivalent of a transitional fossil. Somebody should really preserve it in amber.
Absent that, what we do have is it being in EA's Origin Access Vault, so I gave it a go recently. It's fun, if fairly short by RPG standards. I don't know enough about Chinese history and mythology to comment on whether the setting is fantasy Imperial China (and what part of its four thousand years of history, for that matter) or a Western stereotype thereof, but at least it is trying to look like it's Imperial China as well as having the names. Anyway, the basic conceit is that we're a gifted student of martial arts about to come of age, and, well, in traditional RPG manner our home village is burned down and our master goes missing, and the rest of the game represents both our literal and spiritual journey of discovery into WTAF just happened. The combat somewhat reminds me of Jedi Academy though it isn't quite so polished; it's got the same sort of almost-fighting-game style of close-in melee combat - and much like Jedi Academy, you've got more or less four fighting styles, fast/balanced/strong/magic. My character used the fast style and I spent the game mostly doing hit-and-run via acrobatics; it seemed to work pretty well - and it was fun. Not as much fun as Mass Effect is, but much more fun than the slow-paced combat of KotOR. It's certainly not perfectly executed - there's a whole ton of extremely annoying enemies with homing ranged attacks which primarily make you wonder why on earth Bioware thought they would be fun to include in a Martial Arts game, but combat is overall enjoyable. But, y'know, it's like Bioware are slowly beginning to figure out how to make an action game. We do still have the bizarre inexplicable arcade minigames between different mission areas - this time it's a top-down shoot-em-up for basically no reason - though it's not that bad a game although somewhat limited. I like shmups, though, which I'm not sure the average RPG player does...
The plot is..."clever", but also asks for quite a lot in terms of suspension of disbelief, inasmuch as the primary antagonist's plan seems to more or less rely on the player having quicksave and quickload buttons, and I'm fairly sure the same overall goal could have been accomplished with significantly less risk. Also, for a supposedly brilliant strategist he doesn't exactly spend much time thinking about actions his enemies might theoretically take outside of his plan. The characters, sadly, are almost entirely flat. It's a pity, because the overall setting - an Empire where the Mandate of Heaven is genuinely a thing, and the Emperor has definitely lost it - is pretty cool. But nobody in that setting is interesting enough to really allow us to explore it. The comparison with Mass Effect is instructive here. Almost all of ME1's characters are cliches in some form or another - the warrior with the soul of a poet, the rogue lawman who's a crack marksman, the broken-down and bitter old soldier, etc etc - but those clichés actually impart some depth to the characters (except Alenko, which is why everybody leaves him behind on Virmire...) because they evoke the ideas which have been more fully developed in other forms of art. The sort of clichés we have here more evoke fairy tales (yes, we have a Princess who sneaks out to right her father's wrongs...) than anything with any real heft behind them. Bioware were certainly learning on the mechanics and worldbuilding side of things, but not so much about writing characters yet.
But it's a fairly short game, and very atmospheric, so it's fun enough to play for the length of the actual plot if you don't spend absolutely ages doing sidequests. I think I put about 20 hours into it, which is reasonable enough when you're getting it as part of a subscription service that costs £20/year.
This entry was originally posted at https://ilanin.dreamwidth.org/8636.html. Please comment there using OpenID.