Jade Empire Reviews
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It would be very easy to gloss over these concerns and simply be swept away by Jade Empire. It's a truly beautiful game, which presents a lovingly crafted and genuinely fascinating world, a host of fantastic characters and a great sense of freedom in terms of your actions in what is mostly a very polished package, and I'd happily recommend it to any Xbox owner. However, in trying to strike a balance between action and stat-based combat, Bioware seem to have fallen between two stools. Action fans will find the combat too simple, while RPG fans will find the inability to customise their character to any major degree frustrating. As a hugely enjoyable new game from one of the world's most talented developers, it deserves a place in any collection, but it falls sadly short of the status of all-time classic which some seem to want to confer upon it.
And the second is at Slashdot with an overall score of 9/10:
Jade Empire, then, is a complicated game. It's a long story (I'm well over 30 hours into it and no where near done), well written, with impressive graphics and memorable characters. The only two real complaints I can lay at the game's feet are occasional slowdowns during combat, and (as with all Xbox Bioware games) sometimes abominably long load times between map areas. Neither of these minor technical hurdles was annoying enough for me to become frustrated by my play experience. Jade Empire is a new high water line for console RPG titles, and in my opinion is Bioware's best work to date. If you enjoy an engaging story, have gotten into Bioware titles in the past, or have a love of well crafted martial arts tales don't let Jade Empire pass you by.
