Jade Empire

Genre:	RPG
Developer:	BioWare
Publisher:	Microsoft
Release Date:	12 April 2005
Released On:	Xbox

Amazing Ben Describes the Plot in 10 Words or Less: 

Kung Fu everyone you see and ultimately discover your destiny.

Overview: 

Jade Empire is the latest title from the RPG Gods at BioWare, the same company behind the classics Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights.  Having conquered the D&D and Star Wars genres, this time BioWare has decided to branch out and try something new.  The result is Jade Empire, an ancient Chinese-themed RPG where you play as a badass kung fu master who seeks revenge, glory and people who need to be punched until they explode into many tiny particles.

Jade Empire takes place in a mythical land that very closely resembles Ming Dynasty China except that one out of every three people you meet can shoot magical fireballs out of their hands and the demon/spirit world is a lot more intertwined with the physical realm.  You start the game as the senior student at a martial arts school in the tiny town of Two Rivers, located on the outskirts of the massive Jade Empire.  Your master has informed you that it is now time for you to discover your destiny, and you set out from the confines of Two Rivers to do exactly that.  However, it may surprise you to find that there are many people out there that don't want you to fulfill that destiny.  Those people generally need to be destroyed by you.

This game was inspired greatly by Shaw Brothers-style kung fu and wuxia films, which makes it a pretty badass (not to mention original) setting for an Action RPG.  There are tons of clowns out there who think that their kung fu is better than yours, and you spend a pretty good part of the game proving to them that it isn't.  Unlike previous BioWare RPGs, all the combat in Jade Empire is done in real-time, Double Dragon-style.  You'll be face-kicking anything in sight and whatever lives to tell the tale will feel the cold steel of your longsword.  In fact, there are dozens of different martial arts styles for you to learn, ranging from standard kicking and punching or weapon styles to styles that paralyze or electrocute your enemies.  You can also learn a handful of magic and transformation styles, which allow you to do everything from shoot ice at people to morph into a flaming Horse Demon.  The Xbox is set up to allow you to easily switch these styles on the fly as well, so you can paralyze your opponent with a quick strike, switch styles and clobber him with a flurry of hard punches, switch styles again and backflip away to fry him from a distance with a huge fireball.  The fighting takes a while to get the hang of, but once you become familiar with it you can become an ass-kicker of the third degree pretty quickly.

Jade Empire also focuses a great deal on ancient Chinese mythology and the inner workings of the "Celestial Bureaucracy".  When I bought it, I wasn't expecting the mythology to be as central to the plot as it ends up being;  I just sort of figured it would be a pretty straightforward kung fu game on the order of Enter the Dragon or Fist of Legend.  Towards the end of the game I was actually just sort of hoping for some real people to fight since I was getting sick of all the ghosts, spirits and demons I had to face.  But I suppose that's a small complaint.

The story is excellent however.  It takes a little while to get going, but once it does you will be wrapped up in trying to solve the mystery and finish your quest.  As in KOTOR, you have an option of following both "Good" and "Evil" paths, and the decisions you make along your quest will influence your followers and help determine how the game ends.  It's typical BioWare fare, and it's awesome.

X-Tremeness Level: 

The scene from all those old kung fu movies where the camera zooms in to the eyes of the villain after he says something diabolical and violins in the background make that piercing suspense sound.

Overall Badassitude Score: 

Jade Empire is bad as hell.  You have dozens of different styles and techniques to beat the crap out of your enemies, who often die is awesomely horrible ways.  Dismantling a pack of Assassins with your longsword is made that much more gratifying by the fact that their heads pop off and spray blood everywhere when you finish them off.  You can also freeze enemies and then fracture them into tiny pieces or punch someone and have them explode like a giant water balloon... there's no end to it.

There are a number of badass supporting characters as well.  The main bad guy, a samurai known as Death's Hand, is easily one of the coolest villains in this generation of games.  Even some of your supporters are tough as hell, whether they be a grizzled anti-hero troubled by his checkered past or a brutish hulk with a pair of axes and a bad attitude.

          

SCORE:  5 out of a possible 5 Shaolin monks doing something wicked X-treme to the max.

Addictiveness: 

RATING:  Ramen noodles to an unemployed college student.

Once I managed to get the hang of fighting, I became hooked on this game.  The content is all original territory and the story is compelling, so you'll find yourself stuck to your Xbox until you've finally completed your quest.  The combat never gets old since there are so many styles to choose and different followers to go to battle with.  There's also a KICK ASS mini-game that plays like classic shooting games on the order of 1943 and Xevious.

Jade Empire is considerably shorter than Knights of the Old Republic, clocking in at about 20 hours on my first run though.  However there is a lot of replay value, and I've already restarted to try and see how much havoc I could wreak from the Dark Side.

Multiplayer Component: 

None.

Hot Andrea's Take: 

"See how my body's glowing like that?  Yeah.  A lot of people can't do that.  Oh you want some?  You want some of the glowing?  Yeah.  Your soul?  I'm gonna totally feast on it and floss with your spirit.  I read that somewhere.  But I'll do it."

Awesometer Score: 

+5

Jade Empire is a lot of fun.  However, I can't give this higher than a +5 because it's essentially stuck between being an action game and an RPG and it ends up falling just short at both.  On the RPG side, there is more dialogue than a Hamlet soliloquy in this game and more story than the entirety of the Once Upon in China series, but at the same time your character only has three attribute scores to level up and your inventory is limited to a handful of attribute-boosting gems and nothing else.  The action is good, but you also spend about half of your twenty hours of game time talking to people instead of beating the crap out of fools.

What I'm trying to say is that it's a good game and you will not be sorry if you purchase or rent it.  However, it's not in-depth enough to be a top-shelf RPG and it's not fast-paced enough to be a great action game.  It's sort of stuck in the middle.