Bioware’s—I mean, Jade Empire

(Written for my Spring 2008 Review Writing Class)

Bioware’s—I mean, Jade Empire

In the past decade of gaming there are very few companies that can just come out with a game and you know people will buy it, just because they made it – Bioware is undeniably one of those companies. If RPGs are your thing Bioware is the place to go, so trying to hold back salivating to pick up a copy of their latest: Jade Empire, there were already high hopes. Luckily, as always Bioware delivered, though they still haven’t managed to top their Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

Jade Empire is an interactive martial arts first person based RPG set in a magical Feudal China. Fans of the turn-based gaming system shouldn’t be too worried, as JE’s system sets a nice middle ground between that and regular first person. The main character (once again, the chosen one, but who’d want to be anything less) can only take one of his or her companions, who doesn’t actually do much to support if put in attack mode (The Black Whirlwind and occasionally Silk Fox come in handy that way), but offer interesting back ups if put on support. The enemies focus only on you, but you get extra ‘chi’ (magic points), ‘health’ or ‘focus’ (it lets you use weapons). There’s also an option if you picked Hen Pecked Hou to use “Drunken Master” a martial arts style that lets you pick up jugs of wine as you go (belching sound effects included). The thing that really makes the fighting system is the harmonic combos, which include a chi and a focus attack done in a certain way that lets you trigger an animated action – such as lets say exploding someone’s head. Very satisfying result after all that hard work.

Now it wouldn’t be a Bioware game without a rich array of supporting characters, unfortunately we’ve seen them all before in KotOR. Dawn Star hits you in the face with a less feisty Bastila Shan; Sky is trying to be Carth Onasi not quite hitting the mark (he’s basically there to hit on any female and that’s about it), the wizened ex-mercenary figure, the old coot, the young girl and the monster, etc. While this does get a little distracting (and disappointing in the romance department if you’re playing a female character who doesn’t want to be a lesbian), several of the characters work anyway. Sagacious Zu provides interesting commentary and moves the plot along, Silk Fox has her own twists and taking a sharper tongue with her provides pleasing results, Hen Pecked Hou and The Black Whirlwind are hilarious and the interaction between the NPCs themselves really hits its stride.

Storyline wise, Jade Empire could be longer, but that’s mostly because it’s so damn enjoyable I wanted to keep playing. There is definite replay value, especially to play the Dark Side/Light Side Routes, called Closed Fist and Open Palm respectively. Though probably not a reason to stretch yourself playing a different gender than the one you prefer, there’s no visible difference in storyline (as there was in Knights). The philosophies of Open Palm and Closed Fist come up a lot at different points of the game and are very interesting, although Closed Fist (more of a ‘let people do things on their own so they can get stronger’) turns into literally kicking puppies (you get hit points). Though on the rare occasion an option for a real Closed Fist choice arises, the results are very compelling. My favorite was convincing a girl to kill the man who was going to make her a slave, which shifts her entire demeanor and she starts to seem like she won’t need you to rescue you her again.

Overall, Jade Empire has great graphics, great game play, and plenty of entertainment value – but I probably didn’t need to tell you that, because if you’ve played any of the other Bioware games you’ve probably picked this up already.