Jade Empire

THE BAD:
No character creation screen. After even the basic customisation of Star Wars:KOTOR I was really let down that you could only pick set characters.

The game in general is far to short.

SUMMARY:
The world of Jade empire is based heavily on Ancient Chinese lore. The levels fit well with the mood of the game, either colourful and interesting or bleak and hardened.

The "Open Palm - Closed Fist" system is interesting, it is similar to most RPGs that give you the choice to be a goody or a baddy. To be of the open palm you must be respectful of the natural order in the gameing enviroment and help those in need. Those that attempt to advance and believe survival is the only way for the strongest will follow the way of the Closed Fist.

This system does its job - to create moral decisions for the gamer. But the game is not dictated by it. You can try and stick to a certian path, which gives you different rewards. Or you can play on impulse and be good and bad. This gives few material rewards but can be easier when the "good" path is a difficult trial.

The characters react differently to different stages of "good" or "bad" characters. The dialogue engine in Jade empire is brilliant. You can clearly follow the seperate paths sometimes and other times your choices can borderline, like in real life.

A serious drawback to this game is the short story time. The game took me about 20 hours, this was missing out several quests along the way but the game seemed cut off. This is only a problem because the game is so much fun to play you can easily go through it without realising.

The dragon Amulet is the only real aspect of the game that feels RPGlike. Choosing gems to give your character some extra strengths fits in with the final fantasy model, but other than that the game is very streamlined rather than item - inventory based.

The load screens can be a pain (especially in the arena, where you will need to go through about 40 load screens to complete the task) its a small time to wait for such highly developed levels however.

THE BAD:
There isn't very much to complain about, the camera can get awkward rarely and it could have been a bit longer but since this game has such an awesome replay value being a little short really isnt a big deal

SUMMARY:
To those of you who didnt know these are the same people who did 2003's game of the year Star Wars: Knights of the old Republic, now personally I didnt like that game but this game completely blew me away. The engrossing story, the fluidness of battle, I loved it. Like KOTOR this game has the same concept of choosing to be good or evil like in KOTOR but this time they call it "The way of the Open Palm (good) and the Way of the Closed Fist (bad)." Now when you see them you immediately think that all people who follow the way of the closed fist are evil, but that's not always the case. In fact the way of closed fist is the way of life thinking that power is what can truly make peace. They don't do evil things beacuse they're evil, it goes much deeper than that, actually they do it make people stronger and to teach them to protect themselves. Now the battle system is what you have been waiting to hear about. This game is in no way like KOTOR which is basically watching your charcter fight as you get a bag of chips. This time they being bioware have created a battle system that's so much fun you can resist. The way it works is you have diffrent styles of fighting, for example Legendary Strike, this is a martial style, what that is, is you use your hands and feet for attacking like kicks and punches. These are the basic moves in the game. Then you have the weapon style which obviously uses a weapon like a sword or a staff. Your probably think why use the martial skills at all if weapons are clearly superior? First of all when your fighting ghosts (yes ghosts) it won't hurt them and each time you strike it uses some focus (I'll explain later) the next style would be magic and transformation. Both use chi (again I'll explain later) and you can go from shooting fire balls out of your hands to turning into a golem and destroying everything your path. The final style type is support, now unless you use chi strike (chi strike uses a bit of chi to empower your strikes) these strikes do no damage. What's the point? Well each support style lets you do something diffrent like slowing them doing or stealing chi or paralyzing them. Now what's chi and focus?

Well technically chi focus and body. First of all body is the amount of damage you can endure, to put it simply your health bar, chi is basically magic bar, now focus is your ability to concetrate, like using a weapon, also while fighting when you press the Y button it turns on focus mode which slows everything down except you to give you the edge in battle. Now here are some of the games controls, the A button is for a combo attack, the X button is for a power attacks(when you press both together it does an area attack to give some breathing room) the B button is for blocking and when you move the thumbstick you dodge out of the way the Y button is for focus mode, the white button is to heal (it uses chi), and the black button is chi strike. In the beggining of the game you get to choose what kind of charcter you want to use, now in KOTOR, the only worthwhile charcter would be the soilder but in this game every charcter should be taken into consideration for they are all unique in their own styles. Well to sum it all up, this game has an awesome story, fun as hell gameplay and replay value that will leave you playing for a looong time and when you're done with everything, you'll pop it back in to play again cause it was just too damn fun.

THE BAD:
- not enough coustomization
- to textt heavy

SUMMARY:
This is the best rpg on the xbox hands down! This does have it's down falllls (only the fact that your players aren't completely coustomizable). The best parst of the entier game is the tons of fighting and the path that you choose(evil or good) effects gameplay. another
thing that is great about this game is the the fighting system is great and the enviorments are beautiful. Another thing that is bad about this is that it's to text heavy. The fighting styles are magic, martial arts, and weapons. This is one of the few rpgs that is better than Fable. Okay Jade Empire isn't perfect but it's close!

THE BAD:
-Combat somewhat lacking
-Focus mode means you ignore the nice environments
-No inventory system pretty much rules out merchants
-Framerate a little stiff sometimes
-No proper character creation

SUMMARY:
I really liked Jade Empire. I dont think its OMG Amazing!!!!1 But i think it is a really good game. The graphics are lovely, the sound is good and the voice acting is very pleasing. Its just a shame that the game focuses so much on combat, and the combat system is lacking somewhat. However it is really good fun even if it is usually the same routine.

4.7/5

THE BAD:
I thought some of the quests took a little too long,and some were just boring.Mostly the side quests were the only annoyance in this game,so thhere isn't really much to complain about .

SUMMARY:
I was skeptical when I bought this game,it being a new Next Genereation RPG,but I was suprised.

I found myself actually liking the characters and wanting to play the game again.I would reccommend this game to any RPG fan,or even just someone who has heared anything about this game,because I guarantee that they will be pleasantly suprised with the result.



Pick up this game!

THE BAD:
Too much dialog and too much reading. The inability to regenerate health or chi over time makes it hard to get through fight scenes.

SUMMARY:
This game is packed with quests and you also have party members that can adventure with you.
The game really reminds me of Fable because of the Open Palm and Closed Fist states. You can even get a halo for your head!
I did find myself dozing off a lot because of the long winded conversations that goes on.
Aiming is pretty odd too. Seems like I hit more air than I do enemies.
The Map system is very useful and the "character console" reminds me of Sudeki. There are many different types of people you can be when you start off. Either fast, strong, balanced or magic. This helps with re-playability I believe.

I would recommend renting before you buy it.

THE BAD:
Sometimes combat isn't the greatest thing but all the other stuff overshadows that easily.

SUMMARY:
Its been awhile. BioWare first released their mega-hit KOTOR and it swept us off our feet. Now they are back and from the ground up comes Jade Empire. So how did they do? KOTOR swept me off my feet. Jade Empire felt like I got tackeled from behind by a linebacker from the Patriots and thrown into a table and then the whole team decided to dog pile me! Oh yes....its that damn good. But I guess one of the reasons I was so blown away by this game was that I didn't know a lot on it. I knew some stuff but I never looked into it 100% like I did with KOTOR or Halo 2. Guess that was the surprise to it, eh?

From Jade Empire, you can smell the oder of KOTOR. The way the game is run is basically the same thing. Choices. You have Open Palm and Closed Fist (Good and Bad) just like in KOTOR. These choices will also affect the ending to the story aswell. But not just that, but it can affect your followers. Not in the way KOTOR 2 did, but in a different way. You'll have to find out for youself without spoiling it and you'll have to find out the story for youserlf aswell but it has enough twists to make you love it!

But lets get onto what makes this game.....it. The combat. Very simple yet very fun and very wide. You can learn multiple styles that will help you defeat your enemies. Use a combonation of the two or over power them with brute force. Its your choice. You will develop your own way of fighting. Me? I developed a love for demon transformations and I didn't stick to the magic as much as did. But that is the great thing is that it is so wide that it makes the you have your own style! Not like with KOTOR where you only used a blaster or saber (but who the hell ever used a blaster anyway?). So, the combar isn't turned based like before, its more faster and its more wider. Yet sometimes I feel the combat is....odd. I can't explain. Something was in the back of my mind. Maybe I didn't enjoy it as much? Whatever the case, I loved it most of the time and it is really great!

But in order to help you out with combat, you'll need the help of gems. Gems are these things that give you boast in one of the 3 areas of your power (body, mind, and spirit). They also can help your charm or some other characteristic. Gems will be vital in you're quest and when you combine the right kinds of gems, you're power will have noticable change.

All in all this is a great game. The story is the best with plenty of twists, the combat is from the ground up and it great and the amount of time you can spend on this game is a lot of hours. This is the best RPG I've played.

THE BAD:
Limited combo system
in combat walking is slow
rare camera issues

SUMMARY:
Jade Empire is everything i have come to expect from Bioware. An open ended RPG with an epic story line and high replay value. This game is even better than the acclaimed KOTOR but still does not have the special something of BG:SOA. From the moment i picked up the control i was and still am engrossed. From the time i first started to where i stopped to make dinner i never once looked at a clock, which was about five hours.
What keeps this game from being gaming nirvana is the combo system is small but, in fairness works well and combat may seem simple but can get complex. Also while barely worth mentioning our the occasional odd camera angles in combat and when combat starts your character loves to walk as though nothing is going on. To the point where using evasive techniques are more useful for moving around in combat