The GWJ CRPG Club - Game 3: Jade Empire (Over)

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For more information on the GWJ CRPG Club, go here.

Jade Empire is the GWJ CRPG's Club's third winner! As a third-person action fantasy RPG, Jade Empire will be our first non-isometric RPG. Length-wise, it's more in the range of our first game, Dragonfall, where over 50% of players attempting the game made it all the way to the end.

Officially, there are two main versions of the game. The original Jade Empire, released for the XBOX in April 2005, is still available on as an option for XBOX One and 360 users. Jade Empire Special Edition, released in February 2007, is an upgraded version for Windows. Either version works great for this group.

We'll be playing this game until December 30, 2018. This thread is for friendly discussion as we play through the game. Share your reflections, successes, defeats, tactics, wishes, impressions, and whatever here! The more conversation the better, so post away.

For BIG spoilers, please use the spoiler tag. (No! I am your father!) Tactics, strategies, general story progression likely won't need them.

Anyone and everyone is welcome to participate, and can start at any time, so join the fun! One quick favor: If you decide to play, make a post here along the lines of "I'm in!" to let us know. If you start and finish the game before the end, you'll level up your GWJ CRPG Membership.

Helpful Links
Steam ($14.99)
GOG ($14.99)
XBox One Enhanced/XBOX 360 ($9.99)
iOS Port ($9.99)
How Long to Beat (15-34 hours)
Wikipedia Page
Wiki
Achievement Guide: No Achievements Available
Metacritic (81 metascore, 8.2 user score)
Walkthru
Pyxistyx's "Failed to Find Steam" Fix
Another "Failed to Find Steam" Fix
Fixing Performance Issues
Jade Empire in Style Mod
Steam Forums (good for troubleshooting)

Members Playing
pyxistyx (completed)
Freyja (completed)
Redherring (completed)
Eleima (completed)
Clumber (completed)
ubrakto (completed)
*Legion* (completed)
Cronox (completed)
Godzilla Blitz (completed)
benign1 (completed)
Sorbicol (completed)
fuzzyslug (completed)
imbiginjapan (completed)
merphle (completed)
Skraut (completed)
AUs_TBirD (completed)
Dwango (completed)

WizKid
Deref_Op
jdzappa
gewy
MathGoddess
SillyRabbit
SpaceDog
kinderspiel
Hardek
kergguz
steinkrug
tundra
Pinkerton
mrlogical
Alien Love Gardener
Chesterfield
silentsod
blackanchor

Oh yeah. Haven't played this in AGES.

There are a handful of small mods available for the game but nothing massively remarkable, except for a small fix for gay romances (in the original game, it would fade to black before certain characters kissed while it wouldn't for straight couples!).

There's one bigger mod which adds new features to the combat mechanics but it would probably be advisable to play through in it's default form first if you're new to the game.

other than that, there's a disappointing lack of mod support for the game, but out of the box the Steam edition is hi-res anyway, so it's not a massive problem.

This was the first BioWare RPG I ever played, on the PC when that version initially came out.

For those playing on PC, I've heard rumblings over the years that it can be tricky to get working on modern OS's, so keep an eye on the Steam forum for the game for potential fixes.

Cool, this has long been “the BioWare game I missed.”

I tried playing Jade Empire once, but gave up really fast. Which was weird considering it is a Bioware game, and I eat up everything they make, even when it is less than good.

I'm in.

I'm in and ready to dust off my XBOX for this. This felt like one of the BioWare games that went by pretty quickly once you got started.

Tagging this thread so I can follow along with the conversation. I'm out for the game itself: one of the things that I want to accomplish this year is to work down my backlog, and I've got a few games in progress on the backlog (PoE, SMT IV, and Guacamelee!, plus I just treated myself to Hollow Knight. So I'll finish up PoE for the other thread and see you guys for the next one.

beanman101283 wrote:

This was the first BioWare RPG I ever played, on the PC when that version initially came out.

For those playing on PC, I've heard rumblings over the years that it can be tricky to get working on modern OS's, so keep an eye on the Steam forum for the game for potential fixes.

FWIW i booted it up a couple of days ago to test and had one problem (A "steam not found error" )
There are a couple of fixes mentioned in the forums but this is the one that worked for me (I think)

1. Create a blank file named "SystemInformation.xml" in the "data" directory of Jade Empire (\steamapps\common\Jade Empire\data). You can do this using notepad.

2. Run steam as administrator.

3. Run Jade Empire.

Pretty sure that worked for me, but I tried a couple of different things at the time.

Aside from that, I didn't have any problems booting and playing the game.

Nice. I’ve owned this for a long long time and never played it.

Also iOS port is available, I might try this along with Steam and see which I like best.

Just a quick heads up to make a clear post that you're "in" if you intend to play. I pieced together some guesses based on what people have posted so far, but if you don't see your name in the first post, drop something clear here.

Redherring, pyxi, beanman - Thanks for the information and link ideas! I've added your stuff to the first post for easy reference.

Deref_Op wrote:

I'm in and ready to dust off my XBOX for this. This felt like one of the BioWare games that went by pretty quickly once you got started.

Welcome welcome! Glad to have you with us.
______

And I'm in as well. I bought the game last night just in case, and am installing now. I will be traveling the first 1/3 of July and still have a good chunk of PoE left, so I expect it'll be a bit before I get up to speed here, but I'm definitely in. I'm also a bit glad that this is a relatively short RPG. My "playing" list is getting a bit long at the moment.

I'm in, but not until I get through PoE.

In, obvs

Count me in.

Nice! Quick question - do I need to play as a martial arts character or do they have Asian inspired scholar/magic users? The reason I’m asking is my Pillars character was a fighting monk so I’m a little tired of unarmed combat.

Finally, I have a copy on EA Origin and will report back on how easy it is to get running on that platform.

I'm in.

For folks with EA Origin accounts, it's worth checking to see if you have it already. I seem to recall that a few years back, for a short while, they made this available for free. (I need to check my account when I get home to see if I claimed it. Pretty sure I did.)

I'm in. Not sure if I'll be playing the Limited Edition (Xbox) or Special Edition (PC). Only every started up the Xbox version, and I don't think I made it past the tutorial. I remember being quite pleased with the voice actor choice for Sir Roderick-etc-etc-etc.

If I play the gog.com PC version, is that also automatically hi-res?

EDIT: This was the game I was most hoping would win in the vote

I'll get to it once I finish PoE

I’m in. Question is whether I can resist starting before finishing POE.

I had the "Fail to Find Steam" error, and didn't realize that Pyxistyx's fix was for the same problem.

I used this to fix it, worked great:
"Make sure your you have a copy of 'Steam.dll' in your JadeEmpire install folder. You can find the steam.dll in your main steam install folder, for example C:\Steam. Just right click on it and copy. Go to your Jade Empire folder and right click, paste. While you're in the JE folder, make sure you also have 'steam_app_id.txt' in there as well."

From this thread: Fix Fail to Find Steam

While it's not anything I would have picked up on my own, installing now, so count me in as well.

I'm in.

In like Flynn.

I might try Closed Fist this time around.
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Aw, who am I kidding? Of course, I'll be going Open Palm.

I'm in, but planning to finish PoE first.

Got it to run and working on figuring out controller in game.

I'm in.

I'll most likely be playing the Xbox version, on a CRT television, like it's 2005.

I have not bailed on Pillars of Eternity. Not yet. I need a change of pace. Time away didn't do it. Bite sized progress didn't do it. So, time to change it up. Sprinkle some variety. Let's Karate! I think?

MathGoddess wrote:

Got it to run and working on figuring out controller in game.

Oh, a controller could be a good idea. I'd be curious to hear if it works easily. I'll probably do likewise if it does.

RnRClown wrote:

I'm in.

I'll most likely be playing the Xbox version, on a CRT television, like it's 2005.

Ha! Most awesome.

I don't know about "easily". But it does work. I just have to figure out what buttons do what to fight. (And how to exit once I've saved...couldn't figure that one out today.)

I'm in.

I played through on the xbox back when it first came out but don't remember much so it should be fun to revisit.

Count me in

Eleima wrote:

In like Flynn.

I might try Closed Fist this time around.
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Aw, who am I kidding? Of course, I'll be going Open Palm.

I tried that before but your character ends up SUCH a mean jerk right from the first conversation onwards, it was hard to maintain :O

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