Fascinating little piece of history. You can see a path here from Star Wars to Mass Effect in terms of rpg design. I fond the combat extremely bad and there's plenty of pacing issues. The lore gets dumped on you in such chunks, its hard to find the emotional resonance its looking for in those heightened moments.

The Good/Bad choices seen in KOTOR or Mass Effects really suffer here. Open Palm vs. Closed Fist starts with some interesting nuance. Open Palm believes in helping others no matter what. Closed Fist believes in self-strength and tough love. Closed Fist ideology might ignore someone in danger if they felt the victim merely needs to get stronger. But if they felt the odds were clearly unfair, with the oppressed having no path forward on their own, then they might feel obligated to help. Its an interesting distinction, but ultimately the choices fall back into that Good Bad binary.

But the ambition here carries this a long way. Numerous people worked on this with a different idea of what kind of story they were telling and you can feel how those concepts meshed or clashed with each other. There character writing needs some polish and there's definitely a feeling of 00s yikes about a few asian character designs. But the overall vibes are nicely tuned, its easy to forgive the clunk.

I might get immersive sim pilled from this.

An under-hyped Bioware game that deserves more attention. There are a lot of quality of life improvements like how the game jumps you back to places in quests instead of needing to mindlessly backtrack to the location. I enjoyed the combat though it may seem dated to some, there's a lot of flexibility in fighting how you want to fight. The world felt immersive and I genuinely cared about the lore. The companions were also wonderful and I really liked every single one of them. The story is fantastic with a lot of really epic moments and plot twists. The game does not overstay its welcome and had great pacing from beginning to end.

A good game but sadly an older one that Steam has not cared to patch. Luckily you can find plenty of guides on Steam to get it up and running. For me it was as simple as running as administrator and launching it that way rather than through Steam itself. (Another note I'm editing later, if you experience random framerate issues later in the game I found it was tied to saves, if you have too many saves the game randomly starts chugging, so delete a bunch of saves if you experience this issue in mid to late game). Onto the actual game though:

The setting is great, we don't see East-Asian Wuxia inspired settings in video-games often which is a shame since it is such a good one for games and stories as a whole! This game is charming in that it takes itself seriously but also allows for some of the fun and goofiness of the genre with enjoyable fantastical characters and action. The lore as well is based largely on real history and mythology and history buffs will certainly notice parallels to our own world's history such as a certain dam. The game's world is fantastic and worth going through.

The graphics are so-so, I think many zones are gorgeous with great design and others while looking graphically limited have a clear aesthetic flair to them: From beautiful idyllic villages to spooky gnarled tree-covered and mist-laden forests to large sprawling metropolises. Sadly though the fact this was crammed onto the Xbox Original means it had to be graphically limited and some zones are neutered because of this, with a weird amount of loading between zones, small zones, lack of detail (especially further away), etc. Likewise some side-characters look rough but most main characters look amazing with clear interesting clothing and armor designs as well as fun unique and cartoonish faces. Overall, Art Style>Graphical Fidelity I think sums up the graphics well.

Writing is certainly staple Bioware and I think people who enjoy or dislike other Bioware games will find they feel the same about this game. Closest I'd say in comparison to this game is KOTOR followed by Dragon Age Origins followed by Mass Effect 1 most to least. I love Bioware and enjoy their writing and so I enjoyed this game a lot. There are also usually several ways through a quest-line, certainly at least two paths: One the path of the Open Palm and the other the Closed Fist. This game's equivalent of the Paragon and Renegade morality system. Although some quests have other options too that are beyond just good-guy choice bad-guy choice. Voice acting is either great or while not the best certainly enjoyable. Every companion has great voice acting and this game also genuinely has the best child voice actor I've ever heard in Wild Flower. In terms of other characters, you will recognize some voices here with some surprising celebrities showing up like John Cleese of Monty Python fame and Nathan Fillion of Firefly fame! As well as other Bioware staples like the voice of Male Commander Shepard. Many side characters become memorable due to both their writing and voice acting as well, my favorites being Minister Sheng and Gravedigger Shen.

Gameplay is good, it is super clunky but undoubtedly fun and well-done. I think a sequel especially could refine these into something groundbreaking. It is a mix of Yakuza-style combat switching up different fighting styles with regular RPG health, stamina, and magic meters. You learn many fighting styles as well as techniques to change around how you play, there is also a mod that adds dozens more for even more variety and replay value. There is also a surprising mini-game where you fly an airship and shoot at others like an arcade game of Galaga, these sections are entirely optional as well which is interesting to me.

Overall its very good. If you want a game with this setting, another Bioware game, a good RPG, a martial arts game, or all of the above, get it. You will have to change around some files to get it working but it's worth it. Now give us a reboot or sequel, Bioware.

It sounds like a good idea for BioWare to follow-up on KotOR with an Eastern fantasy RPG. Since the Star Wars mythology was largely inspired by Daoist and Chan Buddhist ideas, this seemed like a step closer to the root. But honestly, playing this now felt like it was, on the contrary, a further divergence from the ancient Eastern philosophies.

I started the game off reading all the texts and listening to all the dialogues before I quickly got tired of that. In addition to their very dualistic, very traditionally Western perspective, they seemed to say very little of value. I suppose KotOR probably didn't have the best writing either, but the lore itself was so rich and developed that I didn't mind the expositionary nature in which it was conveyed. And though the characters in KotOR were also mostly two-dimensional, the Star Wars mythology itself allowed for a lot of flexibility in the interpretation of their actions.

Most importantly, I think the reason I wanted to keep exploring the world, talking to people and progressing through the story in KotOR was that I love Star Wars, and the game was a loving recreation of a movie-like Star Wars experience, which I think it succeeded at. However, the universe of Jade Empire isn't based on any existing property, and unlike with Mass Effect, I didn't find it very interesting. In fact it felt very orientalist to me. When Asian aesthetics are placed on top of philosophically Western storytelling, it comes off as a fetishization of the exotic. A superficial look at Eastern cultures and blind copying. The thing this game most reminded me of was Avatar: The Last Airbender. And I understand that, for people who love that show, this game is probably perfection. But I never liked Avatar.

I did like a lot about Jade Empire though.The game is just really well-made all around, but I especially liked the graphics, which are astonishingly beautiful. The gameplay is mostly the same as in KotOR, just more simplified, and I think, as a simple Asian-flavored action-adventure, it serves its purpose. The voice acting is great, and the mini-games (at least the ones I encountered) weren't infuriating like KotOR's mini-games. I found the combat a little clunky though. Like you're always locked onto your enemies, so you're always facing them. And there's a dodge button, but you can't dodge towards your enemies. For some reason, when you get closer, you jump over them instead (and they instantly turn towards your new position). Which means the only way of approaching them is walking into their fists. But there are ways around it. Thankfully, there are a lot of different styles and ways to modify them through upgrades, so you can get a little creative and outsmart your foes. But still, I thought KotOR's combat was much better.

At the end of the day though, despite its polish, I was struggling to maintain interest in this game. I caught myself drifting off and missing some entire dialogues because I was bored with the exposition. Considering how long RPGs tend to get, I decided that I didn't wanna invest 30-40 hours into something that I'm on the edge about. I already did that with KotOR 2 (which ironically is also stripped of Daoist and Chan Buddhist concepts) and regretted it.