Jade Empire: crazy slowdown craziness

[vherub]

So after putting a couple hours in and getting slight slowdown occasionally when several enemies are onscreen at once, I get to the ruins (where you fight the rat demons duing the Great Dam quest) and the slowdown is unbelievable. The game is literally hacking and wheezing as it stutters. And not just in combat, which becomes like playing Live with maximum lag, but just walking around or during talking/cutscenes.
Once you leave the Ruins, the game returns to normal, and if you go back it again stutters (both video and audio, mind you).
Basically it turns what would have been an enjoyable 20 minutes, into an hourlong headache.

I hadn't really heard people complaining about such horrofic slowdown, but have others encountered this and are there other such spots?

[WildWop]

So after putting a couple hours in and getting slight slowdown occasionally when several enemies are onscreen at once, I get to the ruins (where you fight the rat demons duing the Great Dam quest) and the slowdown is unbelievable. The game is literally hacking and wheezing as it stutters. And not just in combat, which becomes like playing Live with maximum lag, but just walking around or during talking/cutscenes.
Once you leave the Ruins, the game returns to normal, and if you go back it again stutters (both video and audio, mind you).
Basically it turns what would have been an enjoyable 20 minutes, into an hourlong headache.

I hadn't really heard people complaining about such horrofic slowdown, but have others encountered this and are there other such spots?

I don't think that it has anything to do with a specific point. It happened to me earlier than the rat demon area, and cleared itself up once the game loaded a new area. I think it's some kind of bug that happens while an area loads.

[Kaijufan]

I haven't had any major slow down yet for Jade Empire, but I'm not very far yet.

[vherub]

I did some further digging around the bioware jade empire forum, and some posters suggest it is a corruption with a save file and loading an earlier game would fix it.
My concern was really going forward if there might a lot of these spots, i don't like the idea it could happen at any time very much.

I also read with interest the post on how to get the new characte, which is downright silly and i dont recall the instruction manual having mentioned the process.

[rmoushon]

I made my way through the game with Lu and had little to no slowdown (but I still kind of got the impression it was there, especially with five-six characters on the screen). I retried it to try the other side of the fist with the monk character - slowdown at the rat demons and various other places past that. I did not play through to the end however.

[kill3r7]

The only problem I have had with the game is a bit of slowdown while the movies are playing. Like the cut scene with Master Li on the boat right of the bat. Sorry for the minor spoiler, other than that it's been pretty good.

[buffdrew84]

I beat the game today and the only time i had any slowdown was when i used the transformation styles. Could it have something to do with your drive (thompson?) Great game altogether though.