Jade Empire Review

I'm a rabid Bioware fan. Knights of the Old Republic talked me out of a long, dark depression that might have ended in suicide otherwise, and Neverwinter Nights was reason for the break-up of one of my more serious relationships. I'm a huge fan of everything Bioware, and at one point, I considered getting their logo tattooed on my back. As you can well surmise, when I first heard about Jade Empire, I killed a man in sheer ecstasy of the bounty I was about to receive from those human deities in Canada. (He is *not* a fanboy. Repeat after me, he is *not*! -Ed)

Sweet and sour sauce!!

You want me, American boy, don't you?

Jade Empire is different from the other projects that Bioware has done, which is something for you to keep in mind. It follows many of the same trends of many Bioware games: there's a stat system, there's saving throws against things like traps based on your focus level, there's chat options that only work with certain stat levels. It's clearly a role-playing game. They even have the moral choices that made Knights of the Old Republic so interesting. Unlike all of that though, the combat is completely action based. You have to choose the style of attack you're going to use, and you have to swing your sword, dodge blows and what-have-you. It's up to you this time, not chance.

Speaking of which, combat is a lot of fun. I could not be happier with how it turned out. In fact, I often found myself wishing for more chances to get into fierce and nasty combat, a chance to fight fifty guys on my own. You get to pick different styles of combat, and learn them as time goes on. Different styles have different bonuses. Some use your focus or your chi, some don't, and enemies are immune to different types. You have to be versatile, and that varies combat a bit. Like when you're used to using a sword and suddenly find yourself fighting ghosts, which happen to be immune to weapons. It adds to the game in a big way.

And the different types you use grow with you. That's where most of your stats go. You don't get to pick up new feats with each level; you get to decide how you want your combat skills to change. If you like a style, you'll only get better with it, but on the same note, you don't want to invest too heavily in something if another enemy is going to be immune and you're going to be crippled in fighting it.

As far as character customization goes, you only get to choose your appearance from a set of base characters, and that's it. There's no inventory of clothes for you to wear. Of course, you get to choose from a total of six characters, all of which have specific pre-sets geared towards speed, balance, strength or magic, although you can change these yourself. There are three men and three women, and my only complaint is that I wanted to play a dude, and the only guy that looked at all cool was Furious Ming and he looks like he came out of Tekken. Character customization is totally gimped in this game. The stat system itself isn't too deep, there are only three stats to invest in, strength, spirit, and focus, and from there every social stat is determined. Because of this, having a bunch of clothes to wear wouldn't really change much for your character; make them look different, sure, but you couldn't really have a lot of stat changes, it's not big enough to be changed, and besides, all of the changes and upgrades are handled by the handy and dandy amulet.

You have an amulet and that's basically your entire inventory right there. You get to put gems in it, and those change your stats, so there's that, but that's it. No more. There's training, and that changes things, but there's no inventory. Just an amulet.

Only the French eat those!

Fried rice!!

Many of the gameplay mechanics changed for Bioware in this game. I guess I should state that you need to come in not expecting the same thing as before. Expect a great game, because that's what you're going to get, but this is a new direction for Bioware. They're experimenting here. I would love to see what Bioware would do with other genres, and what sort of fantastic adventures they would create (MDK 2? -Ed), but at the same time, I want them to stay with what they do best. A good RPG is a hard thing to come by, and yet Bioware still manages to explore within their specific field and find new and interesting things for the player to enjoy. This is an Xbox game, more so than any other title of theirs. You'd hate to play it on a keyboard, the gamepad really does make a difference, and the way that the mechanics have been changed, it's not meant for the elitist PC crowd.

From a technical standpoint, the game is brilliant. It looks wonderful, it sounds great, and I haven't had any issues with the camera. The programmers know what they're doing, and I wouldn't expect any less from them.

The voices seem a bit odd. There's another language spoken within the game, and translations are provided, but it really doesn't make sense. A character might say what sounds like one sentence, but the translation takes up a paragraph. I know that this changes things in the game, and does vary things up a bit during all of the cut scenes and the long talking, but it seems slightly tacked on. Like you wouldn't really need it. Also, most of the characters don't sound Asian, they sound white as virgin snow.