Jade Empire™: Special Edition

What it needs most: 1) freeze action from the Mac version that lets you halt everything, look around, and select your enemies 2) camera control that lets you look around sometimes—like at the floating palace that you otherwise can’t even see above the capital 3) setting for manual-only enemy switching. 4) some easier way to switch between all fighting styles than remapping the quick switcher Pros: - it works on iPhone and iPad! - clever addition of Cloud Save to allow transfer between devices - I’m able to play fairly well with the touch controls, both regular and advanced Cons: - it often gets into a choppy state after sleeping that can only be fixed by doing the “iOS force quit” and relaunching - all touch controls in advanced mode only work VERY LOW down. I wasn’t able to heal until I happened to do it near the bottom of the screen. - not having the things I previously listed as “needing most” make the gameplay less enjoyable and less in control - if the cloud saving could be automatic without too much trouble, that would keep us from getting stranded on a device that doesn’t have the latest save(s) on it

Hello the Jade empire: special edition, okay I owned this game for the Xbox way back when. Anyone who doubts this is the game STOP. This is it! I like the touch screen controls, at first I was concerned but ounce I began playing the controls are very much like the OG controls from the xbox. The graphics are somehow look better on the iPhone and the sound, combat, it’s all great. With that said, walking around I found was a little bit of a challenge. You walk straight just fine, but walking and turning can be a bit sticky. But that’s the only problem so far I found. All dialogue box’s are nice and big you can easily scroll through and choose the answer you want. The game isn’t super hard, but it isn’t easy ether. And the fact I haven’t seen one ad is super cool too. For $10 I mean may sound like a lot but but in the day they charged $50+ so you’re getting the whole game for $10. That’s a great deal. The Jade empire is a true masterpiece.

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Originally I loved this game, but as you play you start to find things that really are so irritating. First off while fighting, your target moves CONSTANTLY, it’s such a pain as you fight an enemy and almost kill him and then it automatically changes your target. Or even better is when it is constantly changing your opponent and you are fighting round and round in circles. You can’t control like on a gaming console which is what you have to expect when using touch screen devices instead of buttons on a controller, but they should have realized this when programming the game. It’s like they just tried to throw this in the market as fast as possible and didn’t even think to fix certain game play aspects. I know the Star Wars: Knights of the old republic had aspects of that game that made it transition easier to a touch screen experience but some of those options should have been brought in to this, or just a whole other outcome... I’m furious because it just makes the game intolerable... no wonder it had such a low rating on the google play store... should be the same here.

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This game seems really cool content-wise, but it is not compatible with my phone. Whenever I try to load a quick save after leaving and reentering the app, the game crashes and I have to return to an earlier save. I’ve contacted Aspyr support and they just told me to turn my phone off and on again (doesn’t help) and then contact Apple support. In addition, the camera makes it really difficult to see what’s going on; the low close angle means I have no idea what’s going on behind me, whether there are enemies or barriers there, etc. The controls are mushy: there’s a half-second lag between input and execution which makes it feel like I’m shouting commands at my character instead of being her. In combat, there is no way to switch what target I’m focusing on. I have to fight the target the game selected for me across the field instead of the one in front of me about to stab me. I hope BioWare plans to fix these issues, but if not I am gonna need a refund because I can’t deal with losing my save file and crashing every time I exit the app.

First, to correct a previous reviewer's comment: the iOS version does support the "area attack" through a MFI game controller. You just have to hit both power attack and quick attack buttons together. This was definitely confusing since it's not listed in the controller diagram in the game menu. Area attack is vital since it pushes clumps of enemies away. Besides that this is a classic Bioware RPG. The combat is definitely real-time relative to say KotOR but is basically positioning and rock-paper-scissors. It does get pretty awkward on touch which is why I bought a steelseries Bluetooth controller which has worked well so far in a day of play. The voice acting is generally very good. The plot and humor are rather cliched but nevertheless fun.