"Bioware's best yet? At the very least, it comes close"

Bioware have certainly taken a pretty big gamble with the making of Jade Empire. Apart from the fact that they're abandoning the Knights of the Old Republic franchise (the first game of which was easily their best selling title to date, and to many their best) they're also basing it on Asian Mythology and creating a totally new universe (only their second to date, the other being the PC title ‘Shattered Steel'). But really, with their track record, I think it's about time they broke off and did something that could really challenge them. The gamble paid off basically, and we're left with what is possibly the best Xbox RPG to date, a game that deserves to be played through by every Xbox gamer at least once.

Jade Empire, as was previously mentioned, is a game set in a new intellectual property from Bioware that draws heavily from Asian Mythology and Wuxia (martial art fiction) Culture. They dug deep for this game, going back as far as ancient times to research the makings of a quality story and setting. The amount of love and sheer hard work that's gone into this title is evident in every minute you're in the world. Although the game has only been in development for 2 years, the world itself feels like it's been around since ancient times building itself up. There's races, politics and even a language called ‘Tho Fan' that was created by an Asian language specialist from scratch for the Jade Empire world. So many elements come together to make traversing the world a truly unique and dazzling experience.

Jade Empire basically follows the story of your protagonist, whom you pick a model for (out of six possible models and setups, or seven if you have the special edition) before either leaving his/her presets or choosing your own starting styles and stats before jumping in. The protagonist is training in Master Li's school (where he/she has been since infancy), which serves as a tutorial and starting point before bandits attack the island of Two Rivers and the tale begins in earnest. The early parts of the game aren't dull and don't have a sense of “Okay, lets get this out of the way so we can get to the real game” that many games tend to have. It actually sets up the story amazingly well and you get a nice chunk of combat experience throughout this early part.

Oh yes, combat. The game has it in spades, and its battle engine is one of the best I've personally ever seen in an action RPG. Styles are assigned to the d-pad, and fit under either the martial, magic, weapon, support or transformation categories. The system is deceptively simple, with A being the simple attack, X being the shield breaking power attack, B being the defend/evade button and Y being the focus button. Using focus will make everything but you slow down, allowing for much easier utilisation of power attacks and the like. You can also press the white button to heal (using Chi, the games magic point system) and the black button to augment your strikes with Chi power (using a small amount of Chi per hit, but adding damage). It all sounds simple, but it's surprisingly deep. Switching styles on the fly is something you'll need to become accustomed to, as different types of enemies are immune to different styles. For example, spirit enemies cannot be harmed by weapons and golems cannot be harmed by martial styles. You can do area attacks (A+X) to clear enemies away or access special moves depending on what style you're using. Doing the area attack with a magic or support style usually lets you do a ‘harmonic combo', which is where a stunning/status effect attack is followed up by a martial power strike for a one hit kill. Depending on what you use to setup these combos, different effects happen (support styles will usually just create a huge fountain of blood from the enemy, while fire will turn them to ash and so on). It's always fast, always furious and you'll always be learning new things that the system can do as you go on. On my second time through, using a different character type and different styles, I discovered things I never even knew existed from my first playthrough.

The game has a solid, if a little too simple, levelling up system. You gain exp from defeating enemies and reading scrolls/books and you level up once reaching a certain point. You get 3 stat points to add to your 3 stats however you want (body, for health; mind, for chi and spirit, for focus) and an amount of style points equal to what level you are (9 points at level 9 and so on). These style points can be added to one of the styles three attributes (which differs between styles) and become more and more expensive as you add more. This really helps you to define your character, as if you'd rather a fully martial character with small weapons backup or a mage with transformation skills or any other combination, you can do it. To touch on the styles quickly, there's about 20 overall and they're all worthy in different ways. The martial styles range from things like Thousand Cuts, which concentrates on speed and multiple hits to things like Tiger Claw, a wolverine-like claw style with plenty of acrobatics. Then you have magic and support, which inflict damage/status and strong status effects respectively. The transformations range from becoming a giant toad to a jade golem, and are truly awesome in size and power. Just watch that Chi bar when you're using them, as their power comes at a hefty price. The weapons are the most varied and probably some of the most fun. They range from long swords, to monk spades, to staffs, to double sabers, to axes and even a giant musket (which is awesome). You'll have a lot of fun just playing through to see what the different styles are like and how the character combinations you come up with work in battle. I went through with a long sword, ice magic, jade golem transformation and the musket as my mains the first time, while the second time I went for thousand cuts, monk spade and support styles. Both work equally well in different ways, and it's great to see how tactical and imaginative you can be with styles and harmonic combos.

If you're keen on graphics, Jade Empire will knock you into the dirt, and won't let you get back up until you submit to its might. As you can probably see from the screens, the game is simply beautiful. Character models are top notch, the environments are awe inspiring and the battle effects go from being cool to stunning and back to cool again. The frame rate is very solid and doesn't tend to drop much. The worry is with a game like this is that some of the vast amount of work put into the intellectual property to make it immersive might be lost in graphical translation. Luckily, with Jade Empire, this isn't the case and the graphics get full marks in all categories. The only problem I can really see is that there's not a heap of environments to explore, and you backtrack a little on occasion, but really that's just nitpicking. What we are offered is astounding, plain and simple.

The sound is awesome as well. The voice acting, for the most part, is very well done and adds to the game immensely (as weird as it may be seeing Asian characters speak with American/English accents). The music and sound effects are very Asian as you'd expect, with plenty of kung fu attack noises, clashing swords, pounding Chinese drums and zither strings complementing the world nicely.

Story wise, the game mostly succeeds due to quality writing and a few nice (if somewhat predictable) twists. While I'm not going to write much due to not wanting to spoil anything, I will say while it's not as great as much of Bioware's past work, it will keep you on your toes and wanting to find out what'll happen next. The character development is well implemented and interesting, and you find out a hell of a lot about the world itself by travelling through it and digging deep into its seedy underbelly. The story can also take different directions depending on how you use the morality system in the game. Similar to KOTOR's Light Side, Dark Side system, you can go either the Way of the Open Palm or the Way of the Closed Fist. While you might think it's a good and evil thing, it's not as clean cut as that. It's simply that Open Palm is helping people and about self sacrifice, while Closed Fist is about doing anything to get the job done, and that strength is the asset prized above all others. So if you're a Closed Fist follower, you're not evil per se, but you will get the opportunity to do inherently evil things at points.

The main downfall of the game is simply its length. It's utterly disappointing and a real shame that a world as incredible as this one isn't fully explored and utilised. It took me 17 hours to go through the first time, which was a quick run not doing too many sidequests and is still substantially longer than say, Fable, but is pretty disappointing in the grander scheme of things RPG wise. There's so much potential for the world to be used and a 40 hour game could easily have come out of it, but we really don't see that much and the empires outside of Jade are only alluded to (you see a man from the Far East in the imperial city of Jade, who is a simply awesome old school Englishman styled character, but that's about it). Tis a real shame, and I can only pray that the legends and lands of the world are further explored in a sequel.

What we do get though, is a damn fine slice of Action RPG with one of the best combat systems in recent times, and perhaps ever. The games really like having sex with a model, it's incredible and sexy as hell but you can bet your ass it's not going to last long due to it's certain qualities. That said, it's a title that no gamer should miss and is definitely up to the task of KOTOR's spot as best Xbox RPG. Definitely give it a rent if you're any sort of gamer, and buy it straight up if you're a Bioware junkie looking for a fix.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/23/06