Jade Empire

Finally played through this game after years of it sitting in my Steam library. Native widescreen support, but it can be a pain getting it to run properly on a modern OS.

I think I've played too many cheap Asian F2P MMORPGs to really appreciate the setting, but it was unique for a triple A game (from the early 2000s).

The style switching ended up being more interesting than I thought it was going to be, but it still felt a little shallow. I would have liked to be able to purchase more than just weapons for my character. The ability to customize party members and to buy gear would have been nice.

The game is super linear. It's close between this game and Dragon Age 2 (another game I like) for smallest game world in a BioWare title, and unlike KOTOR, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age, you don't really have any say in where you go next. It's straight from Two Rivers to Tien's Landing to Imperial City. The latter part of the game (Dirge and Imperial Palace) offers no real side quests or exploration opportunities.

The party members all kind of sucked. They weren't that memorable or interesting, and it was hard to get to know them when you could only have one other party member with you at a time. It made cross-party member chats in the camps very odd considering most of the party does literally nothing the entire game.

Overall, I enjoyed the game. It's a game that needs to be played by anyone who enjoyed the KOTOR games, but it might be my least favorite BioWare title (outside of Inquisition and Andromeda).