Jade Empire.

Jaz said:

It certainly does. Happened to me once, too...

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Makes sense, since I didn't think I had put more than 10 hours into it.

It didn't happen to me this time around (yet), but my outrageous time might have to do with sonny commenting everything all the time ('No! Make this man go away! I want the woman! Pleeeeeease! - Can I play with the bees*, mommy? Pleeeease')

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*the Flying minigame, he's good at it, and he's only three...

That might have something to do with it, hehe. Also, I play all games fairly straight forward, meaning I jump directly from quest to quest, solving everything as fast as possible. I have completed all sidequests though, except the final part of a questline called Lord Lao's Furnace. I am currently doing a "Jade Master" game, which is a new mode on PC where you start the game over with a character that has completed it, with full skills and everything. So far it hasn't been very challenging, but definetly harder than playing it regularly - enemies are a whole lot tougher, even the AI seems better.

Finished the game, all subquests. Took me a few days. Loved the game and sad that there wont be a rpg of that quality for awhile.

"('No! Make this man go away! I want the woman! Pleeeeeease! - Can I play with the bees*, mommy? Pleeeease')"

JemyM said:

Finished the game, all subquests. Took me a few days. Loved the game and sad that there wont be a rpg of that quality for awhile.

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It doesn't look like 2007 is going to be a strong year for single player crpg's. Bioshock and Hellgate London seem to be getting most of the hype, and both of them look to be more action-adventure than rpg.

Some great looking first person shooters and RTS games coming out though.

Two Worlds, The Witcher and so on are coming as well. It might still turn out to be a decent year.

That shoot-em up sequence is the only fun part of the game. Hope dragon age is a lot better.

I just found out that the German Jade Empire for PC is cut. Most blood and gore has been removed. Result: The XBox version was rated "16", the PC version is still rated "16". Well done, Bioware!
So much for this game.

JDR13 said:

It doesn't look like 2007 is going to be a strong year for single player crpg's. Bioshock and Hellgate London seem to be getting most of the hype, and both of them look to be more action-adventure than rpg.

Some great looking first person shooters and RTS games coming out though.

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I made a list here of some more titles to look out for

I would put Sacred 2 & Silverfall into Action-RPGs as well, from what I've read about them this far. And of course Titan Quest. And HellgateLondon.

Agree . It should also be safe to delete Bioshock and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. They are straight shooters (RPG elements were stripped from S.T.A.L.K.E.R a looong time ago and the folks from Irrational seem to be very keen on avoiding the 'R' word as much as possible when they are talking about Bioshock... they seem to emphasize it's an FPS every chance they get). Also, Drakensang has been pushed back to Q1/2008 a couple of months ago or so.

Moriendor said:

Agree . It should also be safe to delete Bioshock and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. They are straight shooters (RPG elements were stripped from S.T.A.L.K.E.R a looong time ago and the folks from Irrational seem to be very keen on avoiding the 'R' word as much as possible when they are talking about Bioshock... they seem to emphasize it's an FPS every chance they get). Also, Drakensang has been pushed back to Q1/2008 a couple of months ago or so.

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Even without RPG statistics, both looks very much like roleplaying games to me. Bioshock focuses heavily on moral choices and personal decisions. In Stalker you buy/trade/upgrade/exchange weapons, run quests and use dialogue between people you meet so even without statistics it still looks alot like a RPG.

Although I moved the whole thing here

Sadly, the list is somewhat small and nothing really stands out. The "Action RPG & Cross-Genré" catagory looks to be the strongest.

Of all the games listed, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has me the most interested by far.

JDR13 said:

Sadly, the list is somewhat small and nothing really stands out. The "Action RPG & Cross-Genré" catagory looks to be the strongest.
Of all the games listed, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has me the most interested by far.

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You are correct. And if I somehow stated that 2007 would be a strong year for RPG, I will have to pull back that statement.

It seems Russia pwnz though, at least four of the games I look forward to were made in Russia, three of them have no established releate date in Europe/US.

Not the time for Dragons may suck, but I wouldnt mind checking it out.

Gorath said:

I just found out that the German Jade Empire for PC is cut. Most blood and gore has been removed. Result: The XBox version was rated "16", the PC version is still rated "16". Well done, Bioware!
So much for this game.

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Please note that this was not Bioware's decision to do so. To cut blood & gore out of the German PC version (of JE: SE) has been decided by the German publisher, not Bioware. If you read the official Bioware forums dealing with JE: SE(for pc), you will see that Bioware does not agree with this decision, but in order to get the games out in say Germany (and other parts of the world), sometimes compromises must be reached.

I don't understand why you would say that the Xbox and PC version are rated
16+ as this is a PEGI rating, and Germany has its own rating system in which the USK rates the game. And their ratings typically has as 12+ and 15+ mark on them.

If you would like to have the uncut game, you could download it digitally from the Bioware store.

JDR13 said:

Of all the games listed, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has me the most interested by far.

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I have it pre-ordered ... but still have reservations. Oh well, after all this time I couldn't *not* get it

Maylander said:

Great game, although too short. A run through it takes roughly 14-16 hours even with all sidequests.

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*sprays lukewarm tea all over the screen*

*Cough* *cough* What?!? I know I'm not exactly fast but I just finished the game last night and the timer said just over 40 hours of gaming. If I subtract a few hours of idle time of leaving the game on while eating and such and another few hours for not being Bruce Lee and therefore taking my time in some of the fights, it still took me at least twice as long to complete the game.

Heck, all the dialogs alone take about 15 hours so I simply can't fathom how you could complete the game that fast without skipping all the sidequests or at the very least by rushing through the dialog.

Oh well, each to his own I guess but I just don't get it why anyone would want to rush through a game like Jade Empire (or any other RPG for that matter)

Anyway, Jade Empire is far better than I had feared (you know, with it being a console port and all). Sure, the flyer minigames feels just as out of place as the pod racing and turret mini games did in KOTOR but the detail in the animation of the different martial arts styles was damn impressive (I'm a bit of a nut about Hong Kong martial arts movies). The Viper style was like Jackie Chan in "Snake in Eagle's shadow" and even the magic styles looked like they had been taken straight out of a movie like "Chinese Ghost Story" or a similar high fantasy wire-fu flick

The costumes also look pretty authentic, at least according to the movie style with the weird hats and impossible long beards and eyebrows :lol:

A very enjoyable game in my opinion :lol:

I do not get the people who claim Jade Empire is "too short". I did not clock it but Jade Empire took almost as much time as KOTOR for me. I did all the subquests (including all minigames and the entire Lord Lao subquest) and I believe I spent 3-4 whole days in the game which is also the time it took me to finish KOTOR. There are some MASSIVE optional quests in the game. In fact, most areas in the game are optional. If you just push the main quest you easily give up more than 50% of the game, and I do not think I exaggerate if I say that over 70% of the quests are optional. I believe it took me over a day to finish everything in the city and I could have finish the city in less than an hour if I dumped all optional areas.

JemyM said:

I could have finish the city in less than an hour if I dumped all optional areas.

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Wow ... I never thought about it that way ... but then I'm funny about considering side-quests as optional. In other words ... I don't