JE ushers in a promising age of Knights of the Old Republic clones.
User Rating: 8.4 | Jade Empire: Hisui no Teikoku XBOX
As BioWare struck huge gold with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic a couple years back on the Xbox, of course they'd make another game with almost the exact same engine, but an entirely different setting, and slightly varied plot, right? Well, they did. Before you read this whole damn review, as I know it's going to be like 4 pages: If you like either of the KOTOR games, or even Fable for that matter, possibly even Black and White, check this game out, you won't be disappointed. Starting off, I'll attack the story. Ok, so we're about a thousand years ago in China, I presume, but not really. So, about 1000 a.d., you've got your little martial arts school (believable), you've got the imperial city (believable), you've got lotsa ghosts running rampant (well, it is China), you've got mechanized planes flying all over (straying from believable), and you've got this guy from England with a gun. Ok, gun powder was invented in China in 1000 A.D., how did this guy from England already have a gun? Moot point anyway. Jade Empire does have a gripping storyline, just as KOTOR did. It's the kind of game where you start to get into it (it starts slow, btw), and you don't want to leave it. If you have work the next day, beware, you won't be able to wait to get home. You start off as the senior student of the two rivers school under Master Li. It takes a little while, about half an hour, before the story gets interesting, but it does. So while you're playing, you can choose good and bad things to do based on your conversation choices, these, in turn, effect your overall standing with the gods or whatever. Basically, light side, dark side, just like KOTOR 1,2, Fable, and Black and White. This does make for good replay value as you'll likely want to play through on both. The story is an ok length. My first time through the game, I made it in just under 30 hours, and that was doing absolutely everything. Much better, though, than Fable, which took me a whopping 13 hours. Graphically, I'm not amazed. The cutscenes look decent, but I hate when a game nowadays needs cutscenes, it just seems cheap to me. There are some nice, heavenly, oldworld Chinese landscapes with vivid contrast, but nothing has enough texture or detail. A big improvement by Bioware, however, over KOTOR is the framerate running on the xbox. In KOTOR, whenever the battles would pick up, the framerate would drop into single digits (for the dummies, that means less than 10 new images per second, typical games run over 30). Jade Empire, however, seems to have no problem slowing down there. Unfortunately, the load times seem to have taken a hit. Bioware really didn't do anything to improve them, as each time a new section loads, I actually turn on the picture in picture on my tv and start watching something else for a minute. Luckily, there are maybe only 50 or so of these loads during the entire 30 hours campaign. The fighting mode, I have to be honest, could have been soooo much better. So in KOTOR, they had a pseudo pseudo turn based system. It was turn based, but you got to throw in actions real time. Jade Empire is entirely live action, full control. Unfortunately, the controls suck. But first, the bright sides. You get a vast variety of fighting styles you can use, and you can map them to the d-pad for changing styles on the fly. Your styles are weapons, martial, magic, support, and, well, transforming into giant monsters, and even ghosts (weird). Also, no matter which character you get, you move really well in battle, with the ability to make an energy shield, and to flip all around the battle. Once you get the hang of the controls, you'll be able to really do incredible things in battle. On the downside, the controls often become extremely unresponsive in battle. For instance, if you're launching a flurry of attacks at an opponent, then stop pressing the button, your character will continue attacking for a while. Also, you flip around the battle, you must have your guard button pressed in, well, sometimes the game "forgets" you have the button pressed in. It can all get very frustrating. And to top it off, the camera angles in some of the close quarters battles are terrible. The companion system is slightly fresh. Unfortunately, even though you will get many people travelling with you, you can only have one in the battle with you at most times, the rest of the time, none. The companions can be set to either attack or support. Some of the character enhance your attacks in support, others refill your health, chi, or focus. And one actually throws in bottles of wine so you can pick them up and access the drunken master style. A note about the drunken master style, I have studied it myself, and I must say that they did an excellent job in capturing the moves of some of its basic forms. Now, to audio. The game features a nice score of classical Chinese music, from traditional instruments. So I think it does a very good job in the music department, setting all the right moods at the right times. The voice acting, as far as games go, would probably get a B, maybe B+. It is good, they're all professional actors, and some are really outstanding, but a some of them hold the rest back. Now that you're all asleep, my final review. For RPG/action-adventure/platforming fans all alike, I'd say Jade Empire is a B+ purchase, an A rental. For those of you not so much as fans of the previous categories, I'd say C- purchase, B rental. There you have it, I've spoken my mind. 
