Jade Empire is a hopelessly broken game that is crippled by an array of bad design choices.
Well that might've been a good thing because I'll never play a game from Bioware again. They seem to fully know what a Japanese-themed adventure is but can't put the experience of it into the game.
It's story is simple yet compelling and when it turns out it seems to be 'good versus evil' all over again but this is handled nicely. With some attention you can understand the many plot points and somewhat interesting, if confusing characters. The voice acting is inconsistent; at moments you'll be listening in awe to what story the characters need to tell and at other moments the voices of the characters are just plain godawful and annoying.
Jade Empire packs some amazing graphics, even when played in 2010. Because the graphics are so nice, the architecture and design of the world becomes lively and very believable. The facial animations and the overall design of the characters leaves some things to be desired, but it's okay for the most part.
Jade Empire's combat is where the game fails the most. Having a lot of actions and weapons is okay on paper but the simplicity it's supposed to have isn't implemented in the game.
As the game progresses you'll get fancier and cooler weapons and you will have the chance to upgrade them as you level up. When you level up you can upgrade your character and your weapons, as said above.
When upgrading your weapons you can choose the usual stuff: damage, speed and some misc. stuff. This standard mindset keeps the game entertaining and simple to comprehend. One would think this game is just cool enough to pick up and play, right? However, when you choose to upgrade your character you can choose health, chi (mana) among another special 'force' ability.
You'd think if you spend your points like you'd want to (many points in health because you want a warrior character, or you put many points in chi because you want a wizard character) the game would just come along for the ride, no? No, the game doesn't want you to have the slightest bit of freedom and pleasure in the game.
Let's say you have a warrior character, right? You've spend a lot of points in health to stay alive longer, right? Well, after a good while the game says **** all to that concept and frustrates you by throwing in ghost enemies in the game.
So, why is that such a bad thing? Well, to defeat these ghosts you need to hit them a million times before they die. Well, if you dodge their attacks enough, you'll be fine, right? Again, no. See, most ghosts seem to have a ranged attack THAT FOLLOWS your movements! I mean, what?!
You'd think with an ability that restores your health you'd survive these with a little practice, right? No you won't. Yes, you do have an ability that restores your health but since you didn't spend a lot of points in your 'chi'-bar (that's your mana), this bar will quickly run out and after you'd just lengthen your life for a good ten seconds. Even with a supporting character that restores your mana for an inch every X seconds it still doesn't help. Therefore the combat is simply broken and very frustrating, it shouldn't have played such a big part in the game and if you desperatly want good combat in your game, make it accessible, make it POSSIBLE, damned!
All in all, Jade Empire is a hopelessly broken game that is crippled by an array of bad design choices. The story, the graphics, and even the voice acting is somewhat passable but the combat is brutal and unforgiving, if not impossible. If only that could be improved to normal standards, we would have a great action-RPG here, but sadly, we don't have anything.
TOTAL SCORE: 52,5%