This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Eric Dayday.

BioWare is best known for Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It was just a matter of time before they would step out with a game not based on someone else’s intellectual property. Jade Empire is that game. While a lot of the ideas, themes, and characters are all-new, calling it “Star Wars: Knights of Crouching Tiger” isn’t much of a stretch. But, being a clone of SW: KOTOR, the 2003 Game of the Year, can only mean good things, right?



The biggest and most obvious similarity between Jade Empire and Knights is the “good vs. bad” system. In Star Wars it was the Light versus the Dark side; in Jade Empire, it’s “the Way of the Open Palm” versus “the Way of the Closed Fist”. It is this system that gives both games their depth and the biggest reason why they both deserve their critical acclaim. This puts the “role-play” into role-playing games. In Jade Empire, you will come across hundreds of different people and most of the time you're given a number of options in how you can respond. Some responses move your allegiance towards the noble, selfless hero of the “Open Palm” path, while others make you come across as an uncaring villain following the “Closed Fist” path. This is where the replay value skyrockets. The main game itself clocks in about 20 hours, short by RPG standards, but you won’t be able to see all that the game offers in one playthrough. With so many options, choices, and sub-quests that are available to certain alignments, no two games will be exactly alike.

Adding to the variety is the number of characters from which to choose from at the beginning. There are about six different character skins each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and fighting styles. Picking between a male and female will have repercussions on the ending, albeit minor ones, but it’s still worth going through at least once with each gender to see how things work out.

While Jade Empire has more than its fair share of likenesses to Knights of the Old Republic, it does have some distinct differences – mainly the graphics and some combat tweaks. Graphically, Jade Empire blows the doors off Star Wars. They’re a lot sharper and more detailed, but the obvious difference is the colors. Star Wars featured a lot of dark and bland colors, which while fitting, made the games look boring and drab. Jade Empire, meanwhile, features a bevy of colors, making all the ancient-China inspired environments and surroundings look picturesque. There’s also a generous dose of light blooming to help create a beautiful dreamy effect to further establish the empire as a place of fantasies. It is also nice to see that BioWare didn’t overuse the effect – take a look at Fable to see an example of that.

What I find impressive is that almost every character you come across has a unique look, which really adds to immersing you in the world of Jade Empire. They’re all very detailed and there’s a good variety in their facial expressions to express what they’re feeling. To make the deal even sweeter is the fact that the voiceacting is superb. The lips synch well and the lines are delivered with the correct tone and intonation in the right situations. And with a script that’s as witty as it is poignant at times, the voiceactors do an excellent job of conveying emotion through words. Though you can skip through dialogue, you may find yourself holding on just to listen to how the conversations will play out. In addition, an imaginary language called the Old Tongue was even invented for the game. Throw in a soundtrack that fits the themes with all of its flutes, whistles, and strings and I think the audio director deserves a round of applause.

The combat is new and old at the same time. It shares some of KOTOR’s battle elements, but the biggest change is that it is no longer pseudo-turn-based; the action is now done in real time. The A button is your standard attack, X is a power attack that can render blocking useless, and the combination of the two buttons performs a non-damaging area-clearing move. Holding B blocks, but if used in conjunction with movements on the left control stick, you can dodge, roll, and flip behind enemies to put you in a better position to attack. The Y button activates a Matrix-type effect where you move at normal speed while your enemies are slowed to a crawl. The white button lets you heal as long as you have chi, or magic; the black button activates chi strikes, which imbue your attacks with extra oomph while draining your chi. You’ll come across characters that will follow you, but you can only have one other person fighting with you at a time, and they are completely uncontrollable. However, you can change it so that they only offer support. In that case, the enemy will ignore them, but they offer you some sort of added bonus, such as recharging chi or adding power to weapon styles.

All that sounds simple and it is, but that is only until you start playing with the different fighting styles the game has to offer. The styles are broken up into different types: martial, which involves hand-to-hand combat; magic, which features a load of long-range attacks as you might expect; support, which deals no damage, but can deal status effects like slow and poison; transformation, which allows you to fight as a defeated monster; and weapon styles, which let you wield different weapons, but uses up the focus meter as it takes great concentration to use a weapon. There are a large number of fighting styles and you can map four of them to the D-pad so that you can switch between them on the fly. This will become very important early on as some enemies are immune to some styles, i.e. ghosts can’t be harmed by weapons, but are weak to magic attacks. Knowing what style to use and when to use it is an important strategy. It also opens up the ability to do harmonic combos, in which you perform a combo in one style, switch to another style in the middle of it, and finish it off in the new style.



Sharing a few good things from Knights of the Old Republic unfortunately also means Jade Empire shares some of its bad qualities as well. The load times aren’t overly long, but they are quite frequent, since the game needs to load up a new area each time you enter one. And the “Open Palm vs. Closed Fist” paths seem deep, but it still boils down to good and bad. And the choices you are given in such situations almost always screams at you in identifying which response will give you “Open Palm” points and which will give “Closed Fist” points.

The combat may have moved to real-time, but that too has its downsides. Changing fighting styles is fun and all, but you really could beat every enemy by mashing the A button, dodging, then rushing back in or jumping over your opponent, and mashing A again, changing styles only when you come across an enemy with an immunity to your current style. This turns combat almost into another session of Dynasty Warriors, which considering the Chinese influence in Jade Empire, is ironically fitting. Altering the difficulty setting can alleviate this problem, however, the jump in how hard the game gets may be too much for some.

Character customization is a big part of games like this, but here it’s so streamlined it almost feels non-existent. You’ll have points to distribute at each level up to improve your health, magic, or focus, but adding points in doesn’t feel substantial. Also, there’s no inventory to speak of save for essence gems that you can insert into your amulet and purchasable techniques that both give stat bonuses (bonuses from techniques are permanent). Again, those don’t feel like they make a lot of difference in battle. All this renders the money you collect over the course of your journey virtually useless.

Lastly, the game looks gorgeous, but when a lot of enemies are on-screen, the game suffers from quite a bit of slowdown.



You can probably judge for yourself just by looking at the length difference between the two sections that this is a good game. In fact, I’ll say that despite its shortcomings, Jade Empire is an awesome game. There’s incredible depth, high production values, and a story that starts out rather generic, but turns into a flat-out epic. What more could you ask for in a game? Fans of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic will feel right at home with Jade Empire and fans looking for a light diet of RPG will find a game they can bite into with no regret.

Can turn into mindless button-mashing, but there’s plenty of strategy and fun.

Beautiful, dreamy ancient-China inspired world comes to life.

Music is fitting, and the voiceactors’ delivery and direction are top-notch.

Experimenting to see what fighting styles fit you is just as fun as actually playing the hero.

So many choices, so much to see, you’ll need to play it at least twice to see everything.