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The Story
The game sets you in a dojo surrounding, and you are the young prodigy of a martial arts great Master Li. What escalates is your Master is kidnapped by the Black Lotus Assassins ran by the evil Death’s Hand. You then must go on a quest to rescue him leading you to the great city and presumed capitol of the world, “The Empire”.
The setting that Jade Empire is in is a bit hard to explain. I guess you could say that a lot of the game’s inspiration is ancient Chinese culture and folklore, but at the same time there are a bunch of crazy inventive machines in the title, (ala Wild Wild West). There are things like Dragonfly gliders, clay soul-powered soldiers, and other advancements you couldn’t imagine in the real ancient China. Without giving a lot away, the story is advanced by you doing a lot of talking with locales in cities, and objective characters. Along the way you pick up some followers who have there reasons in following you in your quest. They also have a story to tell and they give you a lot of insight in the world you are in. You will also come across people that need your help or might have a task for you to complete, some of them are evil, and some of them are bad. Depending on how you tackle the situation you might get a different outcome. The game definitely has its fair share of optional side-quests and chances are you will miss some your first time, and even your second time. In many instances, it is up to you to switch the story around a little bit; depending on how you approach a situation could also affect what items, weapons, or good/evil attitude you have. You feel like you have some sort of power over the universe helping common folks, or totally screwing them over depending on how you feel. In true Bioware fashion though, you will be 100% satisfied with the story along with it’s plot-twists and outcomes. This is what separates Bioware, or most American RPG games in general from your typical straight-path CG-video driven Japanese RPG and if you ask me, what really makes an RPG game in the first place.
Gameplay
Despite the game not really being spanned out into many locales, you still have to get around. You get around on afore mentioned Dragonfly glider/airplane contraptions. When you do this, you are sprung into a light-hearted mini-game that has a top-down view of the flyer and you must shoot your way through other flyers that are sent from the Black Lotus Assassins to shoot you down. Basically it takes on a old-school arcade shooter look that while not really that complicated is a good pause between the story and combat within the game. You also get around with a onscreen map that you can enlarge to get in more detail. It helps to map out your goals, objectives, were you have been and so on. You can also get around by press the Y button and triggering “focus mode” which basically washes everything around you in light grays and browns, then while moving forward letting you move faster through the environments. It uses up a little bit of your yellow “focus” meter, but not enough to really matter.
"The combat in Jade Empire is what really separates it from the likes of “KOTOR”."
The combat in Jade Empire is what really separates it from the likes of “KOTOR”. You usually will see your battles coming before they start, unless you are fighting one of the many ghost fights that are in the title, which become more frequent as you progress further into the game. The game gives you a chance to actually fight in real-time as opposed to the turn-based combat you may be used to in most RPGs. It seems appropriate though, especially since the majority of the story is surrounded by a way of life guided by Martial Arts, why not give the gamer the control and freedom to fight like a martial arts master? When approached with combat you have three bars—the red meter for health, blue for magic, and yellow for focus. There is one instance were you do stop the action—you have your techniques that you learn along the way all assigned to the direction pad. If you hold down on one direction the gameplay pauses so that you may be able to choose a different technique. You can go between different techniques simply by press down in different direction on the directional pad. You also can choose one person in your party to help you out. Disappointingly you can not control them in any way, and even worse when they fight they are pretty dumb about. The best thing to do with the second character in combat is to put them in support so that they can keep your magic boosted whenever you need it.
When fighting you have a few different ways of combat to choose from—you can use your hand-to-hand style like “Thousand Cuts, or “Leaping Tiger. You also can choose to use a weapon, which drains from your focus so that you may use the weapon with more precision. You can also change into monsters that you may have defeated earlier on in the game, and while they can deal a lot of damage, normally it is to much trouble to use them and they drain a lot of your magic. There are also magic attacks such as fireballs or ice balls that you can shoot from your hands. Lastly, you can choose support styles that might drain a enemy of magic, poison them, or effect them in some sort of adverse way other than taking away there health. Of course certain enemies may be immune to certain techniques so you have to figure out new ways to destroy certain enemies, although it normally isn’t too difficult. Each style has two basic ways to execute—press A for a basic attack and X for a charged attack. The charged attack takes a bit more and will always be powerful, but it also leaves you open for attack a little longer. You usually use the charged attack when an opponent is blocking You can also block attacks with the B button, but like you, enemies can break your block with a harder attack.
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