I first picked up Jade Empire with the intention of playing it during my Twitch broadcasts on the old channel and review it afterwards, but after just one night in which I forgot to turn on the mic while playing (happens more often than I’d care to admit), I abandoned it. When I decided to push harder on the YouTube content, as part of the LawfulGeek rebrand for Twitch and the revamp of the YouTube channel, I decided to continue this playthrough. Continue reading Let’s Play – Jade Empire – Complete
Carry on my wayward son, there’ll be peace when you are gone. Lay your weary head to rest, don’t you cry no more…
Someday I’ll turn these articles into awesome highlight videos with that song playing in the background, similar to Supernatural season finales. But as my editing skills more than suck, I’ll just write it all down.
A couple of weeks ago I resumed the Let’s Play of Jade Empire I’d started months ago. I picked the game up right where I left it, after the destruction of the Two Rivers School, hot on the trail for Master Li and Death’s Hand, the Emperor’s main enforcer and the leader of the Lotus Assassins. First I hit Tien’s Landing and took care of a lover’s quarrel between a man and an old friend, then went on to get our passage to the Imperial Capital. This I did by cleansing a forest from corruption, meeting a minor Deity and her Elephant-man bodyguard, beating down an entire Pirate clan and fighting our way through hundreds of spirits and assassins. You know, the usual stuff.
At the Capital, there were lots of things to do, but only did the Black Leopard school, finding a surprisingly charismatic and not totally demented evil teacher in there. If you see the video, you’ll notice my surprise when that happens, as just then I was commenting on how all evil guys in this game were totally predictable.
This week you’ll see more of the Imperial Capital, including a cameo from a certain very famous member of Monty Python. It’ll be a blast.
I’ve had a few things I’ve liked so far, and others I’m not a fan of, and you can consider The Road so Far a mini-review that I’ll build on over the course of this Let’s Play:
Good:
It looks beautiful, even for its time. The settlements have tons of details, particularly the Imperial City with its gardens and fountains, and the waterways coursing along the streets. I love how ghosts look, how you can see through them, the ‘veins’ in them.
It has an interesting cosmology that combines primordial spirits, the balance of the universe and the Chinese Pantheon, The Celestial Bureaucracy aka Tai Di.
The over-the-top names for everyone, from Sagacious Zu to Sun Li The Glorious Strategist. It reminds me a lot Legend of the Five Rings.
Bad:
The women in this game have no self-respect, no self-esteem and no self-anything. They all instantly fawn over a pretty word. Dawn Star is the worst, she has no notion of self-worth beyond what you tell her and she even says so. It’s painful to say the least.
I know that writing cryptic characters is difficult, but there is a very definite line between cryptic and obtuse. Most major characters in Jade Empire are just obtuse, refusing to give any information. It’s not even thinly veiled, or with any misdirection. It’s fairly obvious what they mean if you just pay attention.
There are dozens of martial arts styles…and most of them are useless. From the transformations—that don’t make much sense—to the couple dozen hidden styles and scroll-fetch-quest ones, you’ll probably ignore most of them and just upgrade the core two skills: Leaping Tiger and your weapon of choice.
Combat is a constant catch-up thing. Every combo pushes your opponents out of your reach, breaking up your rhythm and the flow of battle and forcing you to get close to them again.
A follow-up, combat is shallow. You can beat every enemy by just mashing buttons. Dodging is almost pointless and I only use it to get behind enemies, not that it has any effect on them, they turn around immediately.
As the Let’s Play continues, I’m sure I’ll think of more good and bad things about it, or change my mind about a few of them.
If you haven’t seen any episodes, check out the videos on this post and don’t forget to keep an eye out for The Mental Attic’s YouTube channel, for new episodes at 9:30am GMT, Mondays to Fridays!
A couple of weeks ago I spoke about the issues in Mass Effect 3’s storytelling, primarily how bad its characterisation was. I’ve been playing the game since Extra Life in November. I went through the first game on a Renegade playthrough and then got as far as I could in the second one before the charity event ended. I picked it up again when I launched the LawfulGeek channel and decided to complete the trilogy with my renegade FemShep, the one I lovingly call Darth FemShep.
I remember one of the issues people had with the endings was that the three doors didn’t exactly work for both “alignments.” Some said control didn’t work with a Paragon character, or that Synthesis didn’t work with a Renegade. Continue reading Aligned Narrative – The Mass Effect 3 Endings
Last week we kicked off a new era of content on YouTube. We went back to Jade Empire, to continue my Open Palm playthrough, acting as yet another gullible, innocent sap to get enough points for the game’s “Light Side.” It’s a pretty fun game. The first episode was a longer one, cut directly from a Twitch broadcast, and with no commentary since I forgot to turn on the mic…I do that sometimes. Continue reading New YouTube Stuff Incoming!!
A year or so ago I opened my first channel on Twitch, and like most of my accounts online I called it KKutlesa, my name and surname. Not the most creative I know, but it didn’t matter to me. I didn’t need to hide my name behind an alias, nor did I have any idea about building a brand. It was just a channel to have fun with once in a while. Continue reading Rise of the Lawful Geek
Last week my dear friend Timlah spoke of the amazing community we found and keep building with blogging and how the act itself helps us come closer to our goals, to build something greater. Recently I’ve found another outlet for my projects, another community to build, one that is sometimes pickier and even hostile compared to the blogosphere.
Of course, I’m talking about broadcasting and livestreams. As you may know, because I’ve mentioned it a few times, I’m now broadcasting Monday to Friday under my LawfulGeek tag, though still very much a part of The Mental Attic.
I had streamed in the past, on and off for about a year or so, but much like the site, I decided to make a bigger push this year, especially with Extra Life on the horizon. I’ve been slowly building up the viewership and follower-base hoping that’ll lead to more donations. But on the way, I’ve discovered how much I enjoy broadcasting and meeting new people in the audience. I’ve had nights where I couldn’t stop laughing when Timlah decided to act as a DJ for my channel and just put on the weirdest songs out there.
But if you’re going to stream, if you’re going to open yourself up to broadcasting, there are things to be aware of, things to consider before you make the leap—or after, if you follow my lead. Continue reading The Casting Perspective
If you follow my nightly broadcasts, you might have noticed a few things. The first it’s that it’s no longer called the Nightcast. Now it’s LawfulGeek. That’s the name I’ve decided on for Twitch streams. For now, I’m still streaming to the KKutlesa account, because I need the current viewer-base for the Extra Life stream coming in a couple of months. But soon after I will be moving permanently to that channel, because Twitch doesn’t allow name changes (they claim it’s because of their databases, but as someone who works with them for a living, I can tell you that is nonsense!). Continue reading The LawfulGeek Update!
