Flashback 09.15.07: Jade Empire
Posted by Steve McHugh on 09.15.2007
A look at one of my favorite RPG's.
Welcome to my third and final (for the time being anyway) look at Xbox games. There won't be a column next time as I'm off on holiday but when I come back I'll be taking a look at something special, but you'll have to wait a little while.
Oh and I forgot to score KOTOR 2 last time for whatever reason so I'll do it now. I should have given it 89%. It's still good and all, just not as good as the original.
After the success of KOTOR everyone seemingly expected Bioware to work on the inevitable sequel but as we found out, this was passed off to another developer whilst Bioware went to work on something completely different.
In fact, Bioware's next console game was going to have nothing to do with the Jedi or Star Wars in general and would be set in a world inspired by Chinese mythology, which you'll agree is a fair departure from alien worlds.
It was released in all territories in 2005, and was received reasonably warmly. It even won awards on a few websites but there were always those who, like every game, found huge problems within it. Still, it managed to get a decent 89% at Metacritic so it's not like Bioware should be crying into their cereal or anything.
Like pretty much every RPG ever, it starts with you picking your character and with this game you get to pick from 6 (7 if you got the special edition). These consist of 3 men and 3 women and each of them have a different level in magic, strength and speed. You can change these to make them what you wish but the pre-set levels are actually very good. You then pick your name and it's off you go.
Henpecked Hou is basically running away from his wife. And is also awesome.
The first thing you notice about Jade Empire is the look. It's easily one of the best looking Xbox games, and still looks good today. In fact it's easily one of the best looking games on any console in that era. The animation is stunning, at least for the most part, and all of the areas you'll travel to on your quest look fantastic. Unfortunately there is the occasional dip in quality in the animation but it's not something that causes massive problems, although getting stuck behind the occasional item will cause annoyance. The real issue is the load times which are horrendous and seem to occur on a regular basis. It's especially annoying when having to run from one area to another several times and having a long wait between each one.
But the plus far outweighs the negative and some of the special effects look amazing, such as transforming into beasts or using your magic. On top of that the FMV movies, whilst sparse, are utterly engrossing when they do turn up. All in all this is one utterly beautiful game.
It sounds good too, with some fantastic voice work that really does help to immerse you within this world. In fact it helps the characters to become real people and you'll form attachments to some and like others less showing just how much personality each character possess.
This is helped along by just how well the characters are written, the writing throughout the whole game is excellent and the story is both interesting and exciting. Yes there are a few lulls and a couple of twists you'll see coming but mostly it's fantastic and some of it rivals anything I've ever seen in any other RPG's in recent memory (the two dead children who want your help are one such example).
Apart from the great voice work there is also an excellent score that will accompany your travels and the sound effects work perfectly.
This is Death's Hand and he's an evil, evil bad ass.
As in KOTOR, the action is viewed from behind but the battle system is completely different. You only ever play as yourself and you can take only 1 person around with you. This person can do one of several things, they can aid your attack by fighting or they can meditate and help to recharge your attributes such as your Chi or Health. It works very well and fortunately once in this passive state your companion is ignored by enemies around you allowing you to get on with the task of kicking bad guy ass.
And there's a lot of ass kicking to be done. Combat is handled very well and consists of fighting in real time with a variety of styles and for each one you get a variety of attacks be it quick, charged, an area blast or a block. You can map 4 (out of many more) of these styles to the face buttons and switch between them quickly as needed. They consist of combat, spells, transformations, weapons and support and you'll need to use all of these at some point if you actually want to get anywhere in the game. Combat and support will form the base of most of your attacks as they compliment each other. Whilst combat will actually hurt the enemy the support styles allow you to do things such as stun an opponent, and strung together with the combat styles, can perform a "Harmonic combo" allowing you to kill an enemy instantly. It's incredibly satisfying to pull one of these off and something you'll try to do over and over again.
During battles you can also use the analogue stick to roll around out of danger and the triggers allow you to switch between targeted enemies making combat a pleasure.
This is Sky and he's.........umm.....shall we say... probably very interested in drapes.
The weapon style is self explanatory and consists of you hitting people with a sword, spear or some other dangerous weapon. Spells also are not exactly difficult to work out although some of them are only available to you depending on what path you follow. The really impressive ones are the transformations that allow you to transform into a huge demon and deal out massive damage to anything around you. Unfortunately these three styles eat up your Chi or Focus meaning you can't use them forever.
Chi is sort of like your magic, and spells and transformations will decrease it. You can also use it to heal yourself but once again that will drop it somewhat. Focus is slightly different in that it allows you to wield weapons but also allows you to go into "focus mode" where everything slows down and allows you to inflict more damage then usual. Both these and health can be replenished in a variety of ways but you need to make sure that you don't just go in all guns blazing or you'll find yourself out of something that could help you pretty quickly.
You can increase you health, chi or focus with leveling up and at the same time you get points to spend on your various styles, allowing you to make something more powerful or have it damage an opponents Chi on strike. It's yet another great system, and allows you to maintain control of your character but removes all of the micro management that really can get in the way of some RPG's.
As I said some spells, and certain other rewards, can only be gained by those following a certain ‘path' and in fact this is the same for some of the sub quests. Like KOTOR you have the choice to be ‘good' or ‘bad' and in this game they're called The Way of the Open Palm or The Path of the Closed Fist. Neither is inherently bad or good as it was in KOTOR but followers of the Open Palm will be more willing to help others whereas the Closed Fist is more concerned with self preservation and letting people sort it out for themselves.
The fights are a stand out in the game and really do make you feel like you're in a Kung-Fu movie.
Both of these routes lead to widely different story developments and the way in which you move along to one path or the other is more subtle then KOTOR.
So at the moment this is pretty much the perfect game, it looks fantastic, sounds great and plays like a dream, but there are problems. During various levels you get to play a scrolling shooter in a plane and for the most part they are excellent fun and a nice diversion for the rest of the game but for some reason the last few appear to be unlockable but they're not. It seems like a fairly cruel thing to do to show that you can get something and then just not let you have it because it didn't get put into the finished game.
Also the game isn't very hard, actually it's pretty easy once you've figured out the fighting or at least it's easy right up until the end when a few fights just seem to be almost unfair in nature and are certainly frustrating.
And that leads me onto my biggest problem with the game. Personally I feel that the 22 hours or so are a little short for a game of this type and I would have liked another 10 hours although you could combat this by saying that the level of replay is immense and that's true but it's still something I wanted to bring out.
Should I buy it?
It's the best RPG on the Xbox and one of the best RPG's in recent memory. It's also one of the main reasons why I'm so excited about Mass Effect. Everyone who owns an Xbox or 360 needs to have this game in their collection. Yes I know I had a few issues with the game but to be fair it's just me nit-picking as opposed to serious issues I had.
Other Stuff.
- TNA. Joe seems to be building up to be a bad ass again and Angle puts over Lethal. If they keep doing stuff like this I may actually start caring again. At the moment I'm presently surprised.
- Bioshock. Everyone who owns a 360 get this game. If you don't own one go buy one. This will be the GotY this year and only Mass Effect has a chance of changing that. Sorry Halo 3, Mario, CoD4 and Orange Box none of you will be as good as this and if you are I will be very, very surprised.
- In the world of comics the Baltimore convention had some nice surprises. I'm interested in the Skrull invasion and X-men Disassembled although why is Loeb on Hulk? Seriously why? Loeb can do great things but he always does too much and everything ends up being crap. Just leave Hulk alone and go play in the Ultimate Universe, you can do what you like there now I don't read any of it.
- Still nothing DC is doing interests me in any way. Despite what they keep saying all they're doing is kill, kill, kill and it's lost all meaning and become boring. Which is why I only get 3 (soon to be 2) DC books these days.
- Mike Carey's new book is out. Man that guy can write, and his Felix Castor stuff is some of my favorite reading I've done this year. Highly recommended. Also I met him at Bristol Comicon a few years ago and he's a nice guy too.
And that's it for another column. Come back in a few weeks when I'm back off holiday for something that I hope works out as planned. If it doesn't I'll blame someone else…
