Is Jade Empire a cold stone or a diamond in the rough? Let's find out.
The character system is not the deepest you will ever encounter in an RPG. But due the fact that it is not based on the D20 system but instead is created solely for this game, and what this means is that Bioware could fit the system to the game and not the other way around. In other RPG's like Neverwinter Nights that is based on D&D the game designers must make the game fit the RPG system by ensuring that all classes can survive the game and all classes get special weapons, enough XP etc. Jade Empire only has 6 classes and they don't radically change from one to the next so Bioware had enormous freedom in creating the setting and story that would easily fit all classes. You can choose between 3 men and 3 women and they each have their own fighting style. Some focus on melee and others focus more on magic attacks. The class you choose, effect your starting stats like body, spirit and mind. Body has to do with your life force, spirit with your chi energy and mind has to do with making focus attacks. During the game you will learn many new fighting styles that you can use no matter what class you are. You earn XP for solving quests and killing enemies and you can then level up your character. You can increase your 3 base stats but you can also put points into your fighting styles to make them more efficient by increasing damage or decrease the amount of chi a style use. There is no inventory system in Jade Empire and you don't get many new weapons and armour and stuff. Instead you get various gems that can boost stats and abilities and you can place them in your amulet. You can also purchase these gems from various merchants during the game.
The main focus of Jade Empire is on the story and setting – verbose is one word to describe the game. It's hard to talk about the story without spoiling it, but let me say that it is a Bioware game so expect all the usual ingredients like quest for your identity, love, betrayal, mysterious evil, funny sidekicks etc. The main story is decent enough and moves the game forward but it's also very predictable for those of us who have played other RPG's before. Even the romance choices you have are fairly clichéd and follow the same well-worn path of treating her nice, be sensitive to her needs, empathize with her hardship (even though your character does most of the work) and just say what she wants to hear. I chose to romance Dawn Star and even though you know where it will end, you still have to jump through all the hoops in order to make out with her. I really longed for some Jedi Mind Tricks to speed up the process but that's how I feel in real life also, so I will not fault the game too much for that. When you enter a new area or you approach an important NPC the game will take control of your character and you will see a cut-scene that shows the dialogue. These mini-movies are great to watch but they do tend to drag on for longer than what is necessary to tell the story and sometimes you wish that they would speed it up or just shut up. You can actually skip these cut-scenes but then you will miss important information (though most will be noted in your journal).
The setting in Jade Empire is great. Ancient China has never looked this good before and there is a great variety in locations. You will go through swamps, little Chinese villages, temples, underground tombs, a fortress and the Imperial City and others. The graphics may not have a high polygon count and super crisp textures etc. but the art design makes up for it with beautiful vistas and attention to detail. You really feel this is a mythological version of ancient China. This is also helped by the amazing soundtrack created by Jack Wall. The oriental themed songs really create the mood of a martial arts movie. The game is mostly bug free and there is no patch for the game, but I did encounter one annoying bug that would get the camera stuck upside down that forced me to save and reload whenever that happened.
So far this all sounds great, right? Well, now for the not so good. Combat is a big part of any RPG and it is the same in Jade Empire and sadly combat is deeply flawed. You can have many different fighting styles but due to a limited set of points to put into each style you will likely stick with 3 or 4 styles through out the game. You can switch styles on the fly and even string styles together to make a combo finishing move but none of it works well. During most fights it is simply a violent click-fest and as long as you make some evasive jumps you are fine. Each style has a primary attack, secondary attack and chi attack, but the secondary attacks take so long to release that the enemy will hit you and interrupt your move. This also makes combo moves almost impossible to use and you mostly resort to simply spamming primary and chi attacks every single fight. Half way through the game you will have maxed out your 3 favoured styles and then you get access to a style called Jade Golem that turns you into a big Golem. This is the closest I have ever seen in a game to God Mode. I killed the final boss in two hits with this style and it made the game too easy. You can have a companion that will help you in a fight but sadly they are completely useless. They will never attack the same one you do and so sooner or later they simply die on you. Instead you make them use their support style that lets them meditate during combat and then they boost your stats like increasing your chi energy. They cannot be harmed when they meditate but now you have to kill all the bad guys. Combat simply becomes boring really fast.
The game was originally created for the consoles and it shows. You can't use short-cut keys to do simple things like read your journal, map and character screen. As the game went on these little annoyances became bigger and bigger. It shouldn't be necessary to press "Escape" and then click on the "map" icon to get to the map and then click "journal" icon to read the journal when you play on the PC. Also because of the console's lack of RAM, each area is very small. There are many places you can't go and quite a few "invisible" barriers that stop you in your tracks. The game is very linear and the side missions are generally boring fed ex quests. The game uses a morality system similar to "Knights of the Old Republic" with a good and evil side and you gain points based on how you behave. But sadly the choices are so retarded that the duality is completely lost. It always comes down to a choice between Mother Theresa and Satan and the game clearly wants you to pick the good side because the rewards are much better there. It also begin to get boring that you never gain new stuff like you do in other RPG's like weapons, armour etc. All in all it feels like you are playing a console game on the PC.
Jade Empire is by no means a bad game. It does pretty much what Bioware wanted it to do i.e. create a "light" RPG that would be easy to get into for those who don't usually play RPG's. It's a dialogue and story driven game with cut-scenes that can go on for 10-15 minutes at a time. The combat is very easy but also very cinematic. The main quest is clichéd but still manage to keep you interested right to the end. The game is fairly short and can be completed in 20-30 hours. This is actually a good thing because had the game been longer it would have gotten very boring, but 30 hours is enough to not feel cheated and short enough to see it through to the end. I guess we will no longer see dark, difficult, long RPG's from Bioware like Baldur's Gate 1+2, Icewind Dale or even Neverwinter Nights but it looks like Obsidian has taken over. Jade Empire is like a summer blockbuster popcorn movie – it entertains but it doesn't leave a lasting impression.