Jade Empire Review

Another spectacular title from Bioware, the premise of Jade Empire is you're a warrior in a land similar to those with ninjas and samuaries.  Or in this case, you're studying at a monastery to kick some major ass.  And major ass kicking, you will do.  At its most basic, Jade Empire is an action role-playing game where you control one character- whom you choose at the beginning.  And ya, this game is like 5 years old but whatever.

You Character
You choose among a variety of starting characters with the biggest difference being their starting martial styles.  The sex doesn't matter, though it does influence romantic opportunities if you're so inclined.

Fighting
Fighting takes place in a third person view- very similar to Kingdom Hearts.  Your character will start off with a basic martial (hand-to-hand) skill and a support skill. While martial skills will damage enemies, support skills will aid in your fights such as slowing down enemies or draining chi (similar to mana).  There are a few other main fighting styles: Weapons, Magic, and Transformation (I think; I never used this one).  In fighting, it should be noted there are 3 main stats: Health, Chi, and Focus.  Health is self-explanatory, while Chi is your "mana" to use magic and heal while Focus is drawn from using weapons or using a focus attack where everyone else slows down dramatically- a very useful skill when you're in a bind.  I never used tranformation, and I'll get to why later on.

Overall, I found the fighting in Jade Empire very crisp and ranging from easy to challenging.  There are 3 difficulty levels, and by the end, I was fighting almost every battle on the hardest not because I'm a fighter master (if anything, I'm always too impatient in these games in run in BRAVEHEART!!!!), but rather it is very easy to cheese most of the bosses.  Most boss fights are mono-a-mono and by jumping in the air or rolling around (dodging), it is not hard to dodge your opponents attacks will getting off your own.  In almost every boss fight, you can simply jump behind, attack, roll out of way.  Rinse and repeat a few hundred times and you've beat all the one on one bosses.  That's not to say I didn't enjoy the fighting elements- rather, I highly enjoyed them and found the battles surrounded by 10 baddies the most fun and requiring me to really take my time and think.

Fighting was made "easier" in that there's a targeting system.  It's not like hack-n-slash RPGs where I can just button mash without really aiming and kill everyone with ease.  Rather, in Jade Empire, if I'm not aiming, hitting enemies can be hard.  As a result, Jade Empire will auto-lock on to enemies to make life easier.  Again, kind of like Kingdom Hearts.  However, this also draws out a major frustration: For some reason, my character likes to walk at half speed while in targeting mode.  While normally not a big deal, there are some enemies who fire magic missiles from afar and walking instead of running creates a harder fight than is necessary.  In these cases, dodging out off their missiles can also prove problematic.  Luckily, you can disengage targeting mode to run around at will and sneak up on magic users much easier.

That said, In regards to fighting, I consider Jade Empire nearly flawless.  My one wish is there was some kind of training mode.  While one is offered early in the game, your character will be attaining a number of different fighting styles throughout the game- I had at least 2 of every style by the end.  My issue is that you can really only level up 4 or 5 styles to their max and it can be difficult to see how a style would perform when leveled up.  I would love to see some kind of mode where I can test out various fighting style- especially the transformation modes which eat of Chi very quickly- or magic style's long attack mode which take a few seconds to pull off and can be hard to master when being attacked by 5 enemies at once.

One last piece about fighting is that in 90% of the battles, you'll have a companion to fight with.  You can choose your companion to fight in battles (who will almost aways die in prolonged fights with harder enemies) or have them assist.  In assist mode, they won't actively fight, but rather help by restoring one of your stats or giving you a bonus depending on the followers.  I always had my companion in fighting mode because I simply enjoy fighting with companions in these kind of games.  Looking back, however, some of the harder fights would have been much easier had I put my companion in assist mode to give me that little extra bonus, particularly when I can have my Chi or Health recharged to help me live in longer battles.

The Story & Good vs. Evil
Overall, the story was simply OK.  If you're played Knights of the Old Republic or Mass Effect, you already know Bioware's recipe of choosing from a couple of responses when talking to NPCs, which typically have a "good" (Open Fist in Jade Empire) or "bad" (Closed Fist) connotation.  While I love that Bioware's games have the good/evil elements- with Jade Empire being no different- Jade Empire's morality has the least influence on gameplay of the games I've played.  In KotOR, your alignment affected you much energy (or whatever the stat was) a great number of Jedi abilities took, while Mass Effect's morality choices opened up new dialogue trees.  With Jade Empire, though, the biggest effect I can tell is the choice between 2 different magic styles you get about 1/3 into the game.  Otherwise, it didn't really influence my character at all.  And with a possible SPOILER ALERT, the last 1/10 of the game is similar to other Bioware titles in that you can influence the outcome of the empire with decisions you make.  In this case, the ending decisions are very close to KotOR.  I have to admit, I love that element of games.  Seeing how my choices influence an entire Empire, imaginary world and all, just gives that much greater immersion and enjoyment out of the final product.

Graphics & Gameplay
While there was nothing special about the graphics, they also didn't take away from the game.  Your character looks the same throughout the game, as do you follower for the most part.  The enemies aren't also incredibly varied in their textures, though to be fair, that has never seemed been high on Bioware's to do list and doesn't bother me at all.  I'd say the one knock is a lot of the scenery was rather uninspiring.  Maybe it was due to being on the original XBOX instead of the 360, but nothing stood out.  SPOILER ALERT***Unless you made a choice at the very end of the game causing you to be remembered for all time with a 100 foot statues being built in my memory with everyone basically worshiping me.  That amused me and felt somewhat inspired.***

As I mentioned before, the gameplay was generally very good with responsive button mashing.  My one annoyance was my character walking half speed in targeting mode.  Also, the NPCs, particularly in one on one fights, are stupid.  It seems all higher difficulty levels do is make them a) have more hit points b) hit me harder and c) heal more.  Not a whole lot to do with their AI.

I should also mention there's a mini-game like Raiden- A side scrolling shoot em' up game (or in this case, a scrolling up game).  While the mini-games do offer experience, you can thankfully skip the missions, which are far from necessary to power up your character to beat on hard mode.

Final Thoughts
If you enjoy RPGs, particular real-time, action ones where you get to beat up enemies with a decent story line, this games for you.  Overall, a 9/10, with the -1 being for lack of usefulness for the good/evil spectrum.  Then again, I probably would dock a point if there wasn't a morality aspect of the game, but whatever.  A 9.5/10 it is then!!