Jade Empire Reviews

Two new online reviews have popped up for BioWare's Jade Empire, both of which offer a favorable perspective. The first is at BellaOnline with an overall score of 5/5:
There is a main plot line, and numerous side plots. Sure, if you have a walkthrough, you can zip through the game in only 15 or so hours. That's true for pretty much any game. The joy of an RPG is to take your time, explore, talk to people. It's the difference between fast-forwarding through a DVD to see the end, vs actually sitting back and enjoying the entire ride. Compared to how much money you pay for a 1.5 hr movie, you're getting an incredible bargain here!

And the second is at Quandary with an overall score of 4/5:
When it comes to role-playing games, the most important aspects of these for me are the quality and diversity of the quests, the depth of the dialogue, and some undescribable combination of how good the story is, and how manageable is the combat. So how does Jade Empire fare here? Not too badly as it turns out. The quests are fun, and there are not too many annoying ones of the fetch-this-for-me variety. The puzzles weren't too challenging though, and I suspect that this again is an artefact of the game not being made for the PC. The story was excellent, worthy of making a film thereof, actually. There are many opportunities for dialogue throughout the game, and you can even avoid some battles with the successful application of your conversation skills. But don't expect another Fallout or Planescape: Torment in this respect. There is little depth or branching dialogue here that depends on your conversation choices or skills.