Step into the role of an aspiring martial-arts master and follow the path of the open palm or the closed fist. In this multi-award-winning action-RPG, your choices and actions will determine the fate of the entire Jade Empire. Will you prevent the destruction of this beautiful land, or will you c...
Step into the role of an aspiring martial-arts master and follow the path of the open palm or the closed fist. In this multi-award-winning action-RPG, your choices and actions will determine the fate of the entire Jade Empire. Will you prevent the destruction of this beautiful land, or will you crush it beneath your heel? Are you a warrior who uses his strength and fighting mastery to bring peace, or will you instead use your power to bring pain and ruin?
The choice is yours.
The Original Award Winning Jade Empire
An incredible, engaging story that makes you the noble hero or the treacherous villain!
A wealth of fascinating characters to interact with.
Beautiful, mysterious lands to explore, discover, and save...or conquer.
A rich blend of role-playing and exciting real-time combat.
New monsters and enemies.
New fighting styles.
Customizable, intuitive controls including support for game-pads and keyboard/mouse.
Increased graphics resolutions and new visual effects.
I'm only 5 1/2 hours in and already can't get enough of this game. Even the players who've given it 3-star reviews recommend Jade Empire %100, and I couldn't agree more. Just buy the game. At the very least you'll appreciate it.
The reviews for this game don't reflect the actuality of the game IMO.
The game is entirely linear. You may decide the order in which you perform side quests, but little else.
A world map and transportation is available, but there is zero reason to backtrack.
Combat is ridiculously easy: Spam the fast attack button and evade. Occasionally use the power attack on a stubborn block. There is virtually no reason to block for yourself.
Companions are virtually useless in combat, making them worthwhile only in support roles. Those, I admit, are varied enough to fit most any playstyle or anticipated opponents.
Moral choices amount to good or evil with nothing in between, and both choices massively obvious. No moral ambiguity or shades of gray here.
The martial arts styles have effectively nothing distinguishing about them. Power attacks and chi attacks might cause different effects, but these are minor at best.
Combat debuffs, either your own or the enemy's, are so minor as to be useless.
Support style offer interesting gameplay choices and useful debuffs, but a huge portion of the harder enemies are immune to them entirely.
The maps are tiny to fit into the pitiful memory of consoles at the time. And by tiny, I mean TINY. Missing a secret is virtually impossible. There's no "off the beaten path" to explore.
Other reviews say the game was cutshort; by the end, I was just powering through to get it over with. Maybe if they'd had more locations, there would have been some choice to the game rather than just the linear story it had.
The only positive I can say with certainty I enjoyed was the setting and aesthetic.
After the masses of 5 star reviews, this is at best average and a huge disappointment.
After playing DA - The Veilguard going back to old Bioware was a breath of fresh air. Plus I had never played it before and in the few hours I've played I find it to be a way better story.
Jade Empire has an interesting setting that I wish had been expanded on. It has an intriguing combat system that I wish had been expanded on. It has an engaging story that I wish had been expanded upon.
But unfortunately, it all ends up being somewhat shallow. That's not to say it isn't good, or that you won't have a good time with it, or that it's somehow broken, far from it. Jade Empire's problem is that it doesn't go far enough. The combat is too simple. The Way of the Open Palm/Way of the Closed Fist aren't developed much beyond "pacifistic/good" and "aggressive/evil" (the Way of the Closed Fist isn't quite evil, that's an over simplification, but it's sort of like choosing to be Dark Side in KoTOR 2).
I think the most depressing thing about Jade Empire is that it's really hard to replay. The plot twists you already know about just leave you with the feeling that you're going through the motions, and is unsatisfying. The game is fairly linear to boot, so there's not a lot of content to explore once you're done. For all my personal gripes about Dragon Age: Origins, BioWare packed it to the brim with content - and Jade Empire manages to feel anemic compared to KoTOR.
Still, I love the music, I love the setting. I love the martial arts action. I love the characters as well. I just wish there was more. If you've never played it, and you're looking for something a little different and need that RPG fix, you likely won't go wrong with Jade Empire.
I liked too much when I played it on XBOX and thought that would be very good playing it on PC but it was really dissapointing the crap port made. It is not a widescreen game but a stretched 4:3 one, unoptimized and mehh graphics. Really dissapointing coming from GOG.