"Jade Empire. A short but decent action RPG."

Game Play 7/10 To begin there is little character creation. You select from a group of pre-made characters. You have no influence on how your avatar will look. You do however have the option to select your characters starting abilities and you have minimal control over their starting attributes. There are three main attributes that affect your character. Body (increase health and charm), Spirit (increase chi, which increases magic energy), and Mind (increases your amount of focus). Focus also allows you to go into a "bullet time" mode which in theory is supposed to help you out of difficult situations. But since these rarely arise, this ability is basically useless.

Like KOTOR , Biowares previous semi RPG, your character can choose to be good or evil. Being neutral is not a valid option. Depending on your alignment you will have access to certain "gems" to equip on your character. Gems are Jade Empires equivalent to amour as they boost your primarily stats (i.e Gem of the warrior will give + to body) or special abilities (i.e a shield that will return some damage back to the attacker).

Combat takes place in real time. Your four d-pad buttons are mapped to certain fighting styles (either combat skills, weapon skills which drain focus, support skills which cause negative side effects on the enemy, transformations, or magic skills.) Combat is mostly a button mashing affair. Where you hit A,A,A and then roll away or jump behind the enemy and continue hitting A. There is an option to perform special moves called Harmonic Combo's. These special attacks result in the enemy exploding in an impressive display of blood, or breaking into shards of ice. The problem is that there is little incentive to use these combos besides the pretty visual effects. All enemies can be defeated easily with a combination of mashing the A button and dodging the enemy.

Graphics 10/10 I found this game to be very aesthetically pleasing. Environments were vibrant and full of life. The character animations were smooth, and the fighting was fun to watch. It was pleasing to watch your character hack away at somebody with a giant sword and then seamlessly change styles and break open an opponents face with your fists. In my opinion this is one of the best looking titles out on the Xbox to date.

Sound 7/10 While the voice acting was above average (though the made up Chinese language would sound more at home in the Star Wars Universe than in China) there was litte in the way of music. Battle music was barley noticeable and in certain situations while exploring i had to check to make sure my T.V was not on mute.

Story 8/10 The story plays out like Biowares previous Xbox RPG KOTOR, where at certain key moments in the plot you can choose what your avatar will say for you. This does help immerse you into the story which overall I found to be enjoyable. It is a standard plot of "you are the chosen one, go save the land" but i does it well.

Play Time/Replay 7.5/10 I found this game to be very short. I was able to beat this game over the course of a 2 day rental period. While there are side quest for the first few chapters they all disappear in the later chapters of the game rushing you towards the end. The relative ease of this game also does not increase its length. While there is the option to play it again as the opposite alignment of your first run through I had no desire to do this.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/18/05