Jade Empire

"One of the most impressive action RPGs to date"

The Intro:

Even though the original xbox is still looked down upon as a dead console I love it. I was extremely dissapointed when the Xbox360 was rushed into production because honestly the original xbox was just getting started. But enough about what the original xbox was, this is a review for one its greatest games of all time: Jade Empire. So without further ado let's jump straight into what this game really is!

The Story:

Jade Empire is a game that appeared just out of thin air when it came out and the only thing we knew, was that Bioware has been hiding it for a while, who were the amazing guys behind the Game of the Year award winning KOTOR (Knights of the Old Republic). With credentials from devoleping a game like that, we didn't care what kind of universe Bioware was taking us! Well for a game that had no previous mythos to flesh out a story, this game was amazing!

The story is a huge one that is so complex there's no single way to summerize it, but at the start of the game you are a young student of a small martial arts village far out in the country. You're master tells you that you will soon be ready to leave the village and seek out your destiny but soon conflicts within the school arise and you'll have to take it from there.

It's all heavily based off of eastern mythology and kung fu films. If anyone has seen Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon you'll know what I'm talking about. But Bioware has also given the game a very supernatural tone to it as well as you will be constantly involved in either fighting or saving ghosts and demons, who have for some reason stopped returning to the underworld. The worlds you explore even at some of the earlier parts of the game are simply breathtaking and even now they are still hard to top. You also make choices that influence the game and your character just like in KOTOR 1 and 2 which gives you more option in story dilogue and even cinamatics and endings.

The Gameplay:

Now this is my favorite part! The gameplay has been comepletly re-worked since KOTOR and now you have a fully real time action adventure combat system! How this works is that you have certian martial arts styles that you can either map to a hotspot on the D-pad or bring up the full menu by holding on of the directions down and you will have to use certain techniques to bring your foes down. There are three main attributtes that govern these techniques: Body, Mind and Spirit. Certain martial techniques are magical to which you can emulate a dragon or an evil horse and you can stomp on your enemies, where other times you can use a technique to throw fire or ice which require Spirit. Other techniques require you to use Mind such as weilding a weapon or entering a mode called "Focus" which allows you to slow time to vanguish your foes. Finally Body governs your health and your abilty to intimadate others in conversation. In combat you can block and move the left thumbstick to jump over enemies and suprise them and in the end the entire combat system is very deep and well balanced. Probably the best thing out of that is the ability to complete harmonic combos which kill enemies in certain ways that end very similar to fatalities in Mortal Kombat.

All of what I just mentioned is only the combat sytsem but there are several RPG elements to it as well, such as the conversations you'll go through in the game. There is a lot of upgrading in the game and you'll come across certain characters that will help you in your journey. You can improve your skills by obtaining gemstones to put in a special item known as the dragon amulet, which is also a main plot device in the game. As I said earlier, your choices affect the outcome of the game and that's no different in how it changes your character and how he/she will react in conversation or in using certain gems. The only difference between this morality and KOTOR's is that you never truly change any of your followers, they simply stay their own selves. Still they'll help you out and you can talk to them all the same but they way the work in combat is much more dynamic and to many, welcome. When I say that, the support characters will offer special abilities and support styles to either aid you or keep on the offensive. For example one character named "Henpecked Hou" will stay out of the fight during battle but throw you wine so you can fight as a drunken master, while someone like Black Whirlwind just wants to kill anything in sight with his two axes.

There are also dozens of distraction aside from the main quest if you ever just want to fool around. Just for fun Bioware added a 1947 style arcade shooter game for your flyer, and you can choose to ignore it or use it to gain more XP and boosts for your plane. You'll find plenty of oddjobs too if you like to max out your character and even on your second playthrough it will add up to 40 hrs. This game is excellent to take a week off from whatever obligations you want to ignore.

The Sound:

Simply amazing, and you're taking it from a guy who usually ignores this part in games. Just like the voice acting, the music in the game is superb and I really mean it. The soundtrack has every pulse and quality you'll find through some of the most classic kung fu movies ever made, mixed with loud asian demon drums to the subtle koto keyboard and flute.

As mentioned above, the voice acting is on par with movies and this is a Bioware trademark. There are over a 1000 npcs in this game and several are only there just to walk and talk without giving you any particular quest of any sort. Not just that but several have been taught to speak in a made up language called Tho Fan. You'll get to experience listening to a custom language that really gives another layer to th whole Jade Empire universe and each line of dialogue really convinces you that this place could be real.

The Graphics:

In my opinion the most beautiful original xbox game ever made, not only because the in game graphics themselves is amazing but because even with so much detial in the game the framrate almost always sustains a solid 60 frames per second. The environments have things fully devoloped floating in the background such as ghosts and celestial islands, while several interactable objects are scattered inside the physical map. When talking to other characters in the game, the npcs match their mouths to the words and tone of the voice actor while their whole body has the same effect. Even when selecting your choice for what to say in conversation, your character will have different facial emotions. For instance, if your trying to intimidate someone for more money or you just want them to back off your character will have a grimace on his/her face and try to look pissed. It's all very subtle and very open. Almost every thing has collision and some even have physics.

The Conclusion:

You'd have to be a flat out ideot not to at least check this game out, otherwise you're probably just another Jack Thompson out there. When I bought this game I paid $45.00 used but now you can grab it for only $5-10 bucks. If you're really cheap you can always use gamefly but if you do you'll never want to part ways with it. In the end this is to me one of the few perfect games out there because there is simply nothing wrong in the game. You'd really have to play the game to realize what I'm talking about again as this game is just too huge to describe but it definitley grabs your attention in seconds.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 09/17/08

Game Release: Jade Empire (Limited Edition) (US, 04/12/05)