I bought JE the day it came out. Played it some, but I stopped in the Imperial City. Blame WoW. Some spoilers ahead.
Anyway, picked it back up again with the news that a PC port was incoming, started a new game. It dragged for a while. Very few of the followers were endearing to me and the pacing was tedious early on. Too many load screens, too many NPCs that just rehashed what the guy next to him just told you and too much running around.
The game picked up a lot once I hit the city (I would guess arrival at the city is roughly the game's halfway point) and from then until the end, it was a great ride. The debate with the Outlander was cool, playing as your followers (especially Black Whirlwind in Dirge) during combat was also neat. The Lotus Assassin area had perfect pacing, in contrast Tien's Landing really could have been improved if they had made it more compact and/or filled in more of the area with meaningful NPCs/content.
Overall the characters were weaker than I expected, when they could have (should have) been a strength. I cared more about the character's in KOTOR and I expected JE to improve on that. I ended up liking Black Whirlwind a lot, and Kang. Ho was ok too, but just as comic relief. Dawn Star and Sky sucked, which is too bad because Sky at least, his backstory, had a lot of potential. Zu, they should have delved deeper into his backstory from the beginning. He turned out fairly interesting, but by then he was done for. Wild Flower was a cool concept, but fell flat. Silk Fox felt like a cliche, the headstrong female mixed with the condescending noble. The Abott had sweet support powers but zero personality, not helped by the short amount of time you have access to him.
Combat was a mixed bag. Too many styles. The later transform/magic/weapon styles are definite upgrades, but not so much if you have a maxed out skill already. Its hard to dump a weapon skill you have sunk 50+ style points into. I will say that Tang's Vengeance just owned if only for the occasional decapitation. The fight mechanics overall were a let down. Not RPG/tactical enough, but also not actiony-enough, in the sense where the player is awarded for skill and reaction time. A clumsy hybrid. Blocking sucked, useful only against the occasional homing ranged attack (cheese to begin with) and jumping/dodging/rolling was way too powerful. Strong attacks were underpowered, not much incentive to use them IMO, better to just hug the enemy and wait for his guard to drop and then unload with normal hits.
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