>>7
It was the fourteen-fifteen hundred page Moss Roberts translation. I read close to eleven hundred pages of it during my factory work breaks before I put it down for a change of pace. Never got around to finishing it, come to think of it.
Now that you've refreshed my memory, it did become better once the three of them had formed their own power blocs. Before that though, the fights were more or less about two guys getting it on in a rather nondescript way.
Whether that was because of the translation, I don't know. I have a vague memory of a Chinese poster saying that one English translation abridged most of the single battles, but I don't know who, and the memory is vague anyway.