Neverwinter Nights introduced a new generation of gamers to D&D style roleplaying. When Knights of the Old Republic was released it was arguably the best Star Wars tale told since the end of the original trilogy. Given the chance to create their own world, Bioware has produced an immersive action/RPG with a compelling plot, memorable characters, and entertaining gameplay. Jade Empire is a most worthy addition to Bioware's library of games. Read on for my take on one of the most original RPG's in recent memory.
- Title: Jade Empire
- Developer: Bioware
- Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
- System: Xbox (only)
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 9
Jade Empire begins with another day in the simple life of a martial arts student in the town of Two Rivers. You get to pick who that martial arts student is, and can choose from among several different characters with distinct styles and kung-fu names. Whether you pick Wu the Lotus Blossum or Furious Ming, you'll be introduced to Two Rivers and the Jade Empire combat system via sparring and talking with your fellow students. The idyllic scene is broken by the sneers of a bully and, more seriously, a pirate attack. The aftermath of the pirate attack thrusts you and a few followers onto a path to discover your destiny, rescue a friend, and unravel the truth behind the history of the Jade Empire.
The story-based gameplay, then, is very similar to the Xbox version of KOTOR. You move around the world through various maps people with NPCs, and talk (and talk, and talk) to them. What could have been a frustration is a joy in Jade Empire, as every character's lines are voice acted and the quality of the voice acting is almost universally high. Even minor NPCs get performers with heart assigned to them, and the result is very engaging. By default the entire game is subtitled, but I found that the subtitles were distracting me from the quality vocal performances and I switched them off. The Tho Fan language, made specifically for the game, is subtitled to allow you to follow along with the traditionalists who don't speak english. Without subtitles in most of the conversations Jade Empire is a cinematic experience with you as the protagonist.
The cinema of the game is brought to the fore by the impressive graphical presentation Bioware wrings from the Xbox. The graphics are not groundbreaking or extraordinarily realistic, but evoke the world with soft tones, slightly exaggerated character designs, smooth looking animation, and beautiful effects. Much like KOTOR the beauty of the game is occasionally marred by slowdowns, but I found these technical hitches to be relatively rare. Given the story, cinema, and quality voice acting, Jade Empire evokes a well made wire-fu film.
Where there is wire-fu there is combat, and Jade Empire balances the preponderance of storytelling with a thoroughly enjoyable real-time combat system. Unlike Neverwinter Nights or Knights of the Old Republic, you actively control your protagonist character and your reflexes determine the success or failure of the Jade Empire saga. The basics of the combat gameplay, despite this innovation, remain firmly rooted in the d20-like systems of past games. Defeating enemies results in experience gains, and at certain intervals you gain levels. At each level gain you are given points to slot into your attributes to permanently increase them, and points to slot into your martial arts forms to improve their damage, speed, etc.
Your character has three attributes: Body, Mind, and Spirit. In turn, these attributes help determine your consumable personal resources. Body determines Health, Mind determines Chi, and Spirit determines Focus. You also have three social skills: Charm, Intuition, and Intimidate. Bonuses to your attributes affect these skills as well, with a higher Body resulting in more affective Intimidation and a higher Mind resulting in better Intuition. Your attributes, your resource pools, and your social skills can all be modified by amulet jewels. The amulet the protagonist possesses is given to her near the beginning of her quest, a powerful legacy from her mysterious past. By slotting jewels into the amulet you can customize your character beyond the levels you gain. Every jewel modifies one or more attribute or social skill in a specific way. The stones themselves are found at regular intervals throughout the game, and with only a limited number of slots you'll constantly be shifting the stones in your inventory looking for a good combination for combat and social situations.
Every character starts with a pair of martial arts styles, and as you move through the game you acquire more through combat, purchasing them, and questing. Every form, in turn, has a specific purpose. Ghosts are unaffected by weapon forms, demons turn aside magic forms, and other forms have supporting roles, such as stunning or blinding opponents. Some forms are pure support, draining chi or focus from your opponents to refill your own bars. Combat itself uses the martial forms in several basic ways, and even small fights tend to be varied enough to keep you on your toes. The basic martial arts forms have three moves: hit, block, and power attack. In the classic rock/paper/scissors style basic hits disrupt power attacks, blocks deflect hits, and power attacks destroy blocks. Each form uses the same moves, with their own variations. Long Sword's power attacks is a sweeping slash, for example, while Spirit Thief (a support/draining form) uses a power attack that fills almost half of your chi bar in one blast. The most visually impressive forms are the shapechanger forms, which allow you to take on the appearance and attacks of a demon or monster. The combat drama unfolds, then, with you switching between four pre-chosen forms (on the D-pad) in such a way as to take advantage of the situation. The flexibility of the combat system makes it rewarding to use, and rarely a chore to work through a battle.
The other element that enters into combat, and ties the combat system into the fully realized story of the game, is your companion. As you move through the game (much like KOTOR) you pick up fellow travelers and miscreants who have something to add to your tale. These individuals range from a fellow student and friend from your days at the 2 rivers school to a little girl possessed by a demon to a mad inventor who maintains the airship you travel in. Each of them has a well fleshed out backstory and as events unfold you have the opportunity to delve into their pasts and fish out interesting information and personal insights. The characters are well written and in some cases downright funny. Kang the Mad, in particular, gets some choice lines.
Next time I hide something, I'm packing explosives around it. Explosives shaped like silver bananas! Stops thieves, monkeys and monkey thieves in one fell swoop.
- Kang the Mad
Besides talking with them, you are allowed to choose one to travel with you as you explore, and when you enter combat your companion fights alongside you. The AI is usually effective in their tactical choices. The companion picks a target and stays with it until it's down, countering the baddies moves as best they can. While they do occasionally take out enemies, as is befitting of a game where you are the hero, for the most part they engage supporting characters while you move in on more important targets. If you don't want them mucking up your battlefield you can also choose to place them in support mode. In support mode your companion doesn't fight, but each individual aids you in some specific way over the course of a battle. One companion regenerates your focus as you fight, for example, while another does so with your chi. The added complexity a companion brings to a fight allows for even more options on the field of combat.
Each companion has their own outlook on life. Some tend more towards a gentle disposition, while others have a harder edge to them. These outlooks reflect the two opposing points of view that your character will choose between as you move through the game. The Way of the Open Palm and the Way of the Closed Fist correlate, roughly, to the light and dark sides of the force as explored in KOTOR. As in those titles, moral choices are presented to you in nearly every conversation and situation. The more you tend towards kindness and understanding, the more enlightened you become towards the way of the Open Palm. The more you tend towards cruelty and indifference, the more accepting you become towards the way of the Closed Fist. Your physical appearance begins to change as you reach a choice along either path, and different martial art forms open up to you as well. In the end, your choice along the two paths determines what your role in the Jade Empire becomes.
Jade Empire, then, is a complicated game. It's a long story (I'm well over 30 hours into it and no where near done), well written, with impressive graphics and memorable characters. The only two real complaints I can lay at the game's feet are occasional slowdowns during combat, and (as with all Xbox Bioware games) sometimes abominably long load times between map areas. Neither of these minor technical hurdles was annoying enough for me to become frustrated by my play experience. Jade Empire is a new high water line for console RPG titles, and in my opinion is Bioware's best work to date. If you enjoy an engaging story, have gotten into Bioware titles in the past, or have a love of well crafted martial arts tales don't let Jade Empire pass you by.
Write a review without finishing the game? (Score:5, Insightful)
She looks cold. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sure its a great RPG.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess I don't see your point. If you're disappointed that the game isn't long enough, there are plenty of games that are longer. Personally I think that games becoming shorter is a blessing. Thinking back about the games I've played in the past few years, one thing that most of them have in common is that they are too long-winded. It's a good thing for games to be tighter and more 'efficient'.
Also, I spent roughly the same amount of time playing through Xenosaga as I did FFX.
Re:Sure its a great RPG.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say there is almost as much content in Jade Empire as FFX, especially considering there are two ways to approach most situations (Open vs Closed fist, or Good vs Evil), and probably more dialog considering all the branching conversation possibilities.
To see most of the game, you'd have to play through it at least twice, which could provide similar time as a Japanese RPG.
Re:She looks cold. (Score:5, Insightful)
So when, oh when, will someone give me an RPG heroine who actually wears suitable clothing?
When the adolescent, videogame-playing male demographic ceases to exist.
You've got a long wait.
Re:First Post (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't really blame Bioware on either count. Console games are where most of the sales are anyway.
Re:Sure its a great RPG.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats funny (Score:4, Insightful)
Allow me to disabuse you of this notion. Reviewers can't spend 30 hours beating X number of games before hitting press. There isn't enough time. The few times they actually do are with A list titles, which are going to get steller reviews anyhow.
Also, you seem to be under the impression that if there was a bug which crashed the game, it would be specifically noted in any review. When was the last time you read a review noting bugs? The last I knew of was an arstechnica review for "Pirates!", and that's hardly a games site. With previous, all you get are "I had a few glitches, but that's probably going to be cleaned up before release."
I actually thought this was a nicely done writeup.
Re:KOTR with Swords (Score:2, Insightful)
As to trolls writing articles on
Re:Sure its a great RPG.... (Score:5, Insightful)
What I personally don't understand is why people who are fine paying $8 for tickets to a 2-hour movie will bitch at spending $40 for a 20-hour gameplay experience. Not everybody *has* 200 hours to play games these days, and if you don't finish the game, at least part of our effort as developers is wasted.
-- Anonymous U5 developer
Word (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, the game's setting is absolutely fantastic. Bioware have put an enormous amount of creativity into creating their fictional gameworld, and it definitely shows. There are abundant references to Chinese literature and mythology, which are a treat if you already have familiarity with them, but which are so organically woven into the gameworld that even people without familiarity with the Chinese classics will love discovering them. I particularly enjoyed how each of the game's "chapters" opens with 3 lines of foreshadowing (a la Monkey a.k.a. Journey to the West), the rich "celestial beaurocracy" glimpsed so often in Chinese literature, and the numerous historical allusions (the northern horselords clearly refer to the Mongol hordes, while the land of the six sacred scrolls in the west seems to be a reference to Bhuddist Tibet). Actually, the background universe is so vast that it almost seems dissapointing that you don't get to travel to some of the more famed cities like Pheonix Gate (sequel, anyone? please?).
Secondly, there is the utterly fantastic story. The main plot is epic to say the least, and contains some excellent twists (one about 2/3 of the way through the game just blew me away). The numerous interesting side quests keep the game interesting as well, and if you spend the time to really explore the world and get to know the characters, you'll be rewarded greatly (did I mention that a certain Monty Python alum makes a hillarious appearance as the game's only European character?). Interactions with members of your party are interesting as well, with possibilities for friendship, rivalry, and romance. This is a slight spoiler, but if you're a male character and you play your cards EXACTLY right, it is actually possible to arrange a threesome of sorts with the game's two female lead NPCs. I'm not certain if something similar is possible playing as female, but I just started a run as Wu the Lotus Blossum, so I guess I'll have the chance to find out.
Finally, the game is pretty much perfectly streamlined. While you can learn numerous styles and techniques, the fighting is always easily controllable through the 3 basic moves: fast attack, strong attack, and block (area attack is also available by pressing fast and strong at the same time). Having only 3 basic character attributes makes character customization a much less taxing experience (don't get me wrong, I love the depth of the D20 system, but this is a nice change of pace), and the fact that equipable inventory is limited to your amulet and the single-follower system all combine to make a very accessable system. Basically, the typical RPG elements are there, but they never get in your way. You won't ever spend 5 minutes equipping before a battle, you'll pretty much always be directly engaged in the story. And when the combat and story are as good as they are in Jade Empire, this is definitely a very good thing.
Re:Sure its a great RPG.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't take the time to enjoy the sidequests and the story itself, did you really play the game? Seems to me that there are some types out there that try to "speed read" their way through the game only to bitch about how short it was.
Re:First Post (Score:4, Insightful)
"Can't really blame Bioware on either count. Console games are where most of the sales are anyway."
Would you back this up? Around 90 Million PS2's out there. Tons of PC's and how many Xboxes?
I believe the real answer to the question was that Microsoft gave them a lot of money.
Re:Article text (in case of slashdotting (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Sure its a great RPG.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait, you mean FFX-2?
Then you're still VERY wrong. FFX and FFX-2 were VERY different games. Making them one game would NOT have worked.
Re:She looks cold. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Sure its a great RPG.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand this. I am not a developer, though, so perhaps I'm just not in the loop. If you wanted to do something that every single person will have a relatively equal chance of finishing, why are you not writing novels, or movies, plays, things that are linear and their scope clearly pre-defined.
Games, as far as I can figure out, are meant to be challanges to the player, whether through visual puzzles, word-play or hand-eye coordination. I have never once finished a game of Dragon's Lair and I doubt that the developers are all that disappointed. I would hope that they were more concerned with how I enjoyed what I did get through.
This is somewhat beside the point, however, if people are more interested in finishing the game. This would explain the derth of games with no concrete endings like Tetris
Well damn.
Still, I'd rather a game be more concerned with the journey, not the destination.
Re:Redirect THIS (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok I'm calling Shenanigans on this.
Btw, I am Chinese, and I speak Mandarin as well as several Chinese dialects fluently. Also I am an Anthropologist and have limited experience in the field of linguistics.
To a native Chinese speaker, Tho Fan sounds like complete gibberish. And I'd wager it sounds the same to native English speakers.
IMHO, many of the phrases and words are looped, and most of the time it doesn't even appear that the complete dialogue being presented is being voiced verbatim in Tho Fan.
Aside from sounding very repetitive, the language is overall unconvincing and feels very artificial.
If they paid $2000 for this "language" they were horribly gypped.
From a technical standpoint the "Klingon Language" is far more impressive.
Just my $0.02
$8? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My own thoughts... (Score:3, Insightful)
K2 was certainly more complex. It had some interesting ideas, although it didn't follow them through particularly well. The ending of the game was catastrophically weak. The problem was that it wasn't "Star Wars" in its plot or atmosphere. It drew much more inspiration, I think, from the "further removed" bits of the Expanded Universe. I'm thinking here of the New Jedi Order stuff, among others. Problem is, a lot of this source material isn't actually very good. So what you end up with in K2 is a plot that takes itself way too seriously, cheesy dialogue and mostly shallow characters. Oh, and far too many proper nouns with more xs and zs than vowels. I'll grant you that Kreia was a good character, but look at the other companions. Kreia has far and away more dialogue than anybody else. Atton and Handmaiden/Disciple have a fair bit. Visas, G0t0 and most of the others get just a few short snippets, which they basically repeat ad nauseam. As for the other villains... I can't even remember their names. Compared to them, Malak was of Shakespearean depth and complexity. They basically seemed to have been designed purely around the concept of "looking cool". Just see how well that worked out with Darth Maul.
As a non-Star-Wars sci-fi adventure story, K2 is OK. As Star Wars, K1 is by far the superior product.