Jade Empire is a very good game and I enjoyed playing it, but.
User Rating: 8 | Jade Empire: Hisui no Teikoku XBOX
There is no doubt that the Jade Empire is a refreshingly new and innovative game, and I will be the first to admit that everything that makes a game of this genre worth playing was indeed in place. The graphics, animation, sound and game-play were all very well done. Even the storyline was enjoyable and there were many unexpected twists that kept me interested and looking forward to finding out what was going to happen next. The old world china theme was what was new about this game; most of the games of this genre are normally based in the mid-evil ages in a land that was most often modeled after England (Example: Elder Scroll, which is a grate game by the way.) The old world China setting was both different and refreshing; however I quickly lost my fascination with the locations in Jade Empire, and I think that the mid-evil England settings with there knights who were armed with mighty swords and shields and fought with or sometimes along side the mighty fire breathing dragons are far more interesting not to mention more entertaining than anything that I saw in Jade Empire. Don’t get me wrong, I totally enjoyed playing Jade Empire and was entertained the first time around and even with it’s little letdowns and the fact that I prefer a different local for this type of game, it was still fun to play, nevertheless when I was done I had no drive to play it again even with the other characters to chose from. Mostly because of the fact that even though there are different characters with which to play, the story, abilities and just everything else are the same for all of them, this was one of the largest letdowns for me. Bottom line, Jade Empire is a good, not great, good game and will provide you with about eight to ten hours of entertainment, not fantastic outstanding entertainment mind you, but it will do to pass the time between brakes from one of you better games in this genre such as KOTOR and Elder Scroll. You may want to rent this one or buy it if you like but I doubt that it will make it in your classic games collection. 
