A lovely blend of Asian style culture,Chinese style mythology and Bioware's trademark RPG elements.
After a series of events that I won't spoil you'll need to go on a journey to save the world from an emporer who wants to conquer the world and that means journey to distance places and cities.The story has some surprising twists and emotional moments.The story also has supernatural themes and uses them in an emotional way too.
The game will make you select the gender of your character and whether your character to specialize in speed,magic,strength,be balanced in all areas,athleticism.You can also select whether you want your character to be tattooed,or a monk(only available in certain versions of this game) or a scholar or beautiful,seductive woman.
The combat is not turn based,but you'll select which actions you want to do in real time.You can use various different martial arts techniques.You can fight unarmed or use weapons or use chi(magic) or transform into demons and use them to fight with.To keep things balanced,your character has a limited amount of chi and focus(focus is required to use a weapon).
Weapons that are available can include spears,swords,guns.The more powerful weapons will consume more focus.When you transform into a demon,you'll start consuming chi until you transform back into your normal state.You can restore your chi and focus in certain places.
Like in many other RPGs,some enemies and bosses are immuned to certain types of attacks.Just like in other RPGs where certain enemies might be immuned to a certain magic element,some enemies and bosses in Jade Empire are immuned to chi or focus based attacks.
Like in all RPGs,there's levelling up.You will be given a certain amount of points when you level up to spend on levelling up the stats of your choice.
Jade Empire has the trademark Bioware style RPG features that allow you to select what you want to say to characters during conversations which can create different conversation paths.You can create romance(which depends on how you talk to other characters).You can persuade or intimidate other people you come across such as people who are guarding a building.Whether you select to be male or female has an effect on romance possibilities too.There is a time in the game where you'll need to battle in an arena,and you can even poison your next opponent before a match or decide not to,but poisoning them will make them much easier to beat,but it's cheating.You can be rude or polite in the way you talk to people.Sometimes it's funny when you act arrogant towards other people and they react in an unhappy way.
There's also a quest where you'll need to debate philisophy with another character and you can choose which philisophies you want to use to counter argue the philisophies of the other person.
There is sidequests you can do which often involve helping people with their personal problems and learning about little substories within the game.
The game has interesting characters.I will explain a bit about each character but I will reveal some minor spoilers.
SPOILERS BELOW
Like I mentioned above,Dawn Star is another Two Rivers student taught by Master Li.She is beautiful,a very disciplined and moral person and tries to do what she believes is right.She was passed around a lot as a child and likes to keep to herself and often keeps her emotions held within.
Kang The Mad builds flying machines.He was sabotaged by his rivals who were competing against him in the same trade.He is helpful for the party because the group can use his flying machines.
The Black Whirlwind is a large,bad tempered man,who drinks a lot and got his nickname from all the people he's killed while working as a mercenary.He was beaten by his father as a child so he killed his father,and was disowned by his mother.He has issues with his brother(who you'll later meet in the story).
Sky was a wanderer until he met a woman and married her and wanted to settle down and start a family but his wife died during childbirth and his child was murdered.
Wild Flower is a little ghost girl who died during a flood,who has supernatural abilities.She even glows like a supernatural entity presumably would.
Silk Fox is a female character who's a ninja/assassin who tried to assassinate the group because she is the daughter of one of the villains,but she realizes the terror going on in their world must be stopped and joins the group.She is cute looking,of Asian appearance and is very extraverted and will even insult people if she doesn't like something about them.She will take on a challenge head on and it causes conflicts with Dawn Star who is more cautious and conservative when it comes to strategy.
END OF SPOILERS
The game also has shoot em up mini game segments when you travel from place to place on flying machines and it adds variety and it's similar to those old style 2D shoot em ups/
I love the way the world looks.The buildings often have Asian style influence.The demons your characters can transform into have a nice style,and can be things such as a giant toad or horse and have a chinese,mythological style feel to them.I like how ghosts that attack you or who you meet will glow bright blue.Besides just typical bandits and wild animals who attack your characters when they travel from place to place,they'll also be attacked by things such as ghosts or humanoid creatures with fox heads.
Some of the environments you'll travel through include villages,cities,forest,murky swamps and you'll see a beauitful sunset in some places and details such as asian style bridges that go over ponds.
The cinematics are beautiful and I think the floating cities and the sky full of ancient rocket powered flying vehicles looks spectacular.
You'll hear peaceful,asian style music during the game.The character voices match their personalities.I like the way Dawn Star speaks in such a gentle soft way.I like how
Overall,this game has a wonderful combination of Chinese style culture/mythology and the great Bioware style RPG elements and this game is very addictive for me because I love being part of it's world.