Jade Empire (Xbox) - Part 1

Developer:

BioWare

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Release Date:

2005

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Systems:

Xbox, PC, Mac, Android, iOS

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm checking out a game that I'm absolutely sure I've probably played before. I just can't remember doing it, or even how it plays exactly. I feel like I must have gotten past the tutorial and then ran around the starting area for a bit before turning it off.

I have to wonder what Jade Empire did to lose my interest so quickly as I can usually sink hours into a BioWare RPG. This was their 7th game, by the way, coming between Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. It's what they were working on while Obsidian was making the considerably higher-rated KOTOR 2. Wait, is that actually true or am I just making a huge assumption there?

Okay, I've done the research and according to Metacritic, Jade Empire actually scored just a little bit better than KOTOR 2, on Xbox anyway. Jade Empire falls a bit behind on PC for some reason. I'd check their scores on PlayStation 2 and GameCube but they appear to have neglected to port the games to either system. Possibly because it came out in 2005, near the end of that console generation... or possibly because it was published by Microsoft.

Anyway, I know what BioWare games are like, so my plan is to keep playing long enough to find the first proper quest hub town and sort out their big crisis. Assuming that it even has towns. I'll be playing the original Xbox version, but I'll be running it on an Xbox One through the magic of backwards compatibility because it'll be easier to get video out of it that way. Plus it might even boost the framerate and resolution a bit.

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Thought first I want to back up a second because these are two options you don't see on many menu screens. Unfortunately, the mini-games option doesn't have any games unlocked yet and the game demos option doesn't work on the Xbox One, so right now they do nothing.

But I had to know what the demos are, So I got out my original Xbox and it turns out I'm a victim of false advertising.

It should actually say "Game Demo" as all it actually gives you is Conker: Live & Reloaded.

Though people who own the Limited Edition get a second disc with Forza Motorsport and MechAssault 2: Lone Wolf demos on it. I used to like Forza, I wonder how well that holds up...

No, I can't get distracted, I have to play Jade Empire already. I know so much about the Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age and Mass Effect games, but this is still a total mystery to me and I need to do something about that.

The game's offering me a choice of how difficult I want it to be. In fact, there are two difficulty settings, one for the main game and one for the mini-games, and I'm going to leave them both on the default average normal setting. Which is called "Master", confusingly.

Nice cloth physics on his sash; it's blowing around a bit in the wind.

Most BioWare games let you decide what your character looks like and pick a class, but in this I have to choose one of six heroes (or seven in the PC version). Two are 'balanced' type, two are 'fast', one's 'strong' and one's 'magic', but I'm fairly sure they all know kung-fu.

I think Wu the Lotus Blossom has the most claim to being the default protagonist, as she's the one they chose to put on the box art. Probably because she has the least clothes on. But I'm going to go with... I dunno. Radiant Jen Zi looks cool and she's a fast type who can 'easily sidestep strikes with blinding speed', so I'll go with her.

There is a 'Customise' button, but it's for redistributing stats, not remodelling faces. The character customisation in this is pretty much zero it seems. There's not much character building going on either, as all I can do here is adjust my Body, Spirit and Mind scores, and pick one of four fighting styles.

Body is health, Spirit is for Mana, and Mind gives you Focus, which is used when you wield weapons or go into slow motion. I decided to put them at Body 4, Spirit 3, Mind 3, because I don't know what I'm doing yet and you can't go too far wrong with health. While there's life there's hope, so always increase your life.

Alright, it's started me off in a conversation with some guy who wants to beat the crap out of me, or at least land some blows for a change. He seems like a nice bloke, so I can't bring myself to pick the rude options. It's hard to tell the difference between a playful response and an insult sometimes, especially as my character has no voice, but I'm pretty sure that one at the bottom is the bad guy choice.

Whatever I pick, it seems like I'm agreeing to a bit of tutorial sparring.

Okay, the gameplay is kind of what I was expecting and kind of not.

It seems like the combat uses a 'rock, paper, scissors, dodge roll' system. A slow heavy attack punches through your opponent's shield barrier, regular attacks interrupt their heavy attack, shield protects against their regular attacks. Or you can just roll away, maybe do some flips. The character's very mobile.

I knew the game was going to be more of an action game, with direct control over all of the running around and punching, but I guess I assumed there'd be a tactical side to it somehow. Like maybe I'd be able to pause and choose a special move or something.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Xbox One)

It's weird, because at first it looks a lot like their previous game, Knights of the Old Republic, and it does lock onto enemies in the same way. But in KOTOR you have to choose attacks from that menu on the bottom left and the character does all the punching and flipping by themselves.

Jade Empire seems to be more along the lines of Fable or The Witcher 2, or a bunch of other obvious games that I can't remember right now.

Anyway, I beat this tutorial guy up no problem, and he told me to go speak to my master.

Alright, I've reached chapter 1, and it's given me a bit of text to read. Seems that I don't know how I ended up in idyllic Two Rivers, so either I'm an amnesiac hero or I was brought here as a young child. It's all very mysterious!

Now that I'm free from the tutorial in the sparring ring I can go walk around and explore, maybe even go see my master like I was told to. First though, I want to check out the menu and make sure I've got all my stuff equipped.

The menu is a bit similar to what you get in Knights of the Old Republic, with the icons along the top, but there's no equipment page anymore! No inventory either, shared or otherwise, or even a skills page. It's dropped all the D&D-inspired systems as well it seems, as there's no mention of a 'to hit' stat or 'penalties', or any of that.

I found a map covered in green stars though, so that's cool. It's also letting me save the game anywhere I want (outside of combat), which I always appreciate.

It didn't take me long to find the master's house thankfully (it was the big house right next to me with the door open), and it brought me into a cutscene. These scenes can't be skipped entirely, but I can certainly skip lines of dialogue if I'm in a hurry. Even though that does mean missing out on the voice acting. My character's silent but everyone else seems to have voiced dialogue.

Turns out that I'm a bit of a chosen one who has a mysterious role to play. Not an unusual trope for a video game story, but it's so blatant here that I'm thinking there has to be some kind of subversion at some point. I mean, these are the people who made Knights of the Old Republic.

Master Li kept my destiny a secret until now because I wasn't ready to survive the kind of attention it would bring. But now he's finally ready to tell me everything... right after we've dealt with the bandits attacking the town. This guy had better not die before he can tell me about my awesome destiny!

The bandits seem like an urgent problem that needs to be sorted out right now, but I can't just leave without exploring the master's house first.

I spotted this altar with a lion statue behind it over in the corner and learned that it's a training aid left by a former master. So I decided to see if I could solve the puzzle myself. Destroying the altar is an option, but that seems a bit... final, so I've decided to try using these mysterious lion figurines I picked up next to it instead.

The lion statue is holding a blue coloured orb, so I tried putting the blue figurine down. This caused the orb to change, so I put the next figurine down, then the last one. The thing mocked me for doing the obvious thing and gave me 1 XP! This statue's a jerk; it's no wonder that there's evidence of previous students wrecking the altar.

Anyway, screw it, I don't need its treasure. I'm the chosen one and I have a mission.

Oh cool, I have a minimap now as well!

Alright, I've got two goals: I have to get to someone called Dawn Star and I have to pick up a weapon. The master told me where to go, but I don't know my way around here so that wasn't much help. I'll just go everywhere and see if I run into them.

First though, I'm going to go running around in circles for a bit so I can watch the grass get pushed aside. KOTOR had a bit of grass around as well, but not like this. In fact, the scenery's a bit prettier in general; it was designed for the same Xbox hardware but you can tell the software's gotten better. It's probably still running on the Aurora Engine though, first created for Neverwinter Nights back in 2002. Probably.

I found a dude selling stuff, and I was curious to see what kind of items you can get in a game without equipment or an inventory. Seems that he's selling exercises that can adjust my Body, Spirit and Mind bars, but I'm about 399 silver short of being able to test that out. That's a lot of silver for such a small boost.

A little further down the path I ran into a couple of NPCs having a chat.

Hey, it's Dawn Star, and she's being harassed by someone who picks all the bottom dialogue options in his life. Also, that's blatantly Nathan Fillion's voice and it's really weird considering how extremely Chinese-themed this setting is. This might even be China for all I know. It's probably for the best that BioWare didn't tell their actors to try to put an accent on, but he really stands out.

It turns out that Dawn Star has dark ghost skills that let her peek into the spiritual, but all she sees are problems, while I'm the one tasked with finding solutions. Seems like we'll make a great team.

There are no solutions in the immediate area, though I did find a Spirit Font (the 'structure holding holy water' kind, not a typeface) and a Focus Shrine. One refills my blue 'Chi' bar, the other recharges my yellow 'Focus' bar. Seems like those bars are going to be important.

Anyway, now I have my first party member! Which I guess means she follows me around and hits whoever she feels like, seeing as I can't pause and issue orders.

The streets have groups of bandits lurking around and when I walk up to them I get drawn into a fight. Fortunately, I've just been told that pressing A+X together unleashes this shockwave attack that knocks everyone over, so I'm finding the crowds manageable. 

Plus I picked up my legendary sword from the shop, so that's now an option. I can use the D-pad to switch between styles mid-fight (you can see them mapped to a cross shape on the bottom left), so I can start off pummelling someone with Thousand Cuts, then whip out my blade. The only downside to the sword is that it's so powerful it uses up my Focus (the yellow bar), which I also need for bullet time.

Sometimes defeated enemies drop an orb that refills one of my three bars, but I can't count on it.

Jade Empire: Special Edition (PC)

Here's the PC version for comparison and man I don't know what happened.

I'll give them credit for altering the controls for mouse and keys, changing it so that you're steering the character with the camera, but you can't switch back to the Xbox style when you're using a controller! So it's a third-person brawler with the controls of a first-person shooter. I have to play this version with the mouse as it's too frustrating with a gamepad.

Also, the game seems much harder and I'm not sure what's changed. On the Xbox version these are some nice easy tutorial fights to get you used to basic concepts, on the PC I am getting my ass handed to me. My health disappears so fast that I don't even realise I'm in trouble until the game over screen comes up!

I went into the options and switched dodging back to the original controls instead of double-tapping a direction, and it still doesn't feel right. Games like this can work fine with mouse and keys, but I'm liking this much more on the Xbox.

The game told me to go down to the beach and it turned out to be a good call. I've got a beautiful view of the bandits' ship from here.

It's just a shame about all the bandits. The captain in particular is a bit of a dick, telling the villagers on the beach that their village serves no purpose, so they'll just take everything and kill everyone. Then he fired a cannon at them, exploding someone into blood and bones! They got chunked. I guess that's what the 'gore' option is for.

Does this really count as a beach though? I mean sure there's a little bit of sand over there, but not much. You could accidentally take it all home with you in your shoes.

I nearly got taken down by a cannonball myself during the inevitable fight that followed, especially as it also set me on fire. I saw it coming, but the character doesn't instantly roll and evade the moment you want them to. Fortunately, I noticed my low health and remembered I have a heal button at the last moment. I just have to hold it for a bit to redistribute the bars so that the blue is channelled into red.

I'm not keen on these three gauges so far, to be honest.

Though I do like it when enemies occasionally drop an orb that fills one of them up.

The captain summoned some spirit opponents immune to my blade! What is it with pirates and necromancy? One of them has a spear, which doesn't seem fair, and it's definitely not fair that they keep shooting me with ice magic.

Once they were dealt with the bandit captain himself teleported over in a flashy effect and gave me a round of applause with his evil hands. I can tell they're evil as they have giant spiky fingers.

Then Master Li leapt in out of nowhere and punched the ship to death with a single blow! I don't think he ever got around to teaching me that technique. He followed it up by whooping the bandit captain's ass in a fuzzy obvious cutscene video before I even got a chance to fight him.

I like this guy! I hope he sticks around for the whole game. Maybe he could be some kind of summon. When I'm bored of a boss fight I just press the button and he comes to remove the obstacle.

Hey, I got a level up, which let me put points into my three bars again. Woo.

Though the three stats aren't just for improving my health, mana and bullet time, they also determine how persuasive or intimidating I am. Focusing on Spirit to get more mana will also make me less charming and more scary. So I'm being encouraged to alter my combat build in order to have the dialogue options I want, which is kind of weird. I'm not sure I like that.

Oh cool, it turns out that there's more to building a character than just choosing which bar should be bigger. I've also been given two points to invest in my fighting styles.

I decided to upgrade Thousand Cuts and my sword style with +25 damage each, as it sounded better than 5% extra speed. Thousand Cuts is already plenty fast.

Dawn Star is a bit confused about the captain being able to summon ghosts as fighters, as that's not normal. It's like they've been blocked from the afterlife and being trapped in this plane has driven them mad. Anyway, I haven't killed them, because they're already dead, but they've been dispersed for a while so they're someone else's problem now.

I found a guy called Old Ming on the beach, or to be more accurate I was dragged into a cutscene with him. And he doesn't speak English, or any language on this Earth, so I have to read the subtitles to understand him. Saves on disc space and recording sessions to have some of the chattier people speak Chinese Simlish I guess. KOTOR did the same thing with some alien dialogue.

I don't mind though, as he's got some fun writing and it's nice to finally get the opportunity to ask some questions. I don't like it when games drop a ton of lore on me from the start, but I'm at the point now where I wouldn't mind learning a bit about this world I'm in.

It seems like Old Ming's main subject of interest is the Emperor and how awesome he is. In fact, the guy even managed to solve the horrible drought a few years back, though Ming isn't even slightly curious about how he pulled that off. As far as he's concerned, how other people do their jobs is their business; the chef doesn't need to know how the fisherman catches his fish, and so on.

Me, I'm more of the 'ask all the questions until the NPC's ran out of things to tell me' type, so I'm sure I'll learn how the metaphoric sausage was made eventually.

I finished exploring the beach, found a stash of coins, then headed back to Master Li's school in time to catch Gao the Lesser whining about me getting preferential treatment.

So now I'm having a brawl with Gao to settle our dispute!

The trouble I'm having is that whenever I charge my heavy attack to break through his shield, he just stops blocking and hits me when I'm vulnerable. I'm not getting a lot of use out of the heavy attack to be honest. It's a bit like a Falcon Punch in Smash Bros: you have to be clever if you want it to actually connect with someone.

Weird thing is, Gao's using the Heavenly Wave technique that slows me down instead of a style that hurts me so I'm not taking a lot of damage here. I wasn't even sure I could take damage until he got a few good hits in and nearly emptied my whole health bar in a blink.

I won in the end though, and Master Li jumped in to protect me when Lesser Gao inevitably cheated with an illegal move. That's the kind of thing that gets you kicked out of ninja school, so he's gone now! He's going off to become my recurring rival and nemesis I suppose.

Meanwhile, I'm getting a pre-rendered flashback video to twenty years ago, as Master Li finally reveals his mysterious past and my character's secret destiny!

Turns out that he's actually the Emperor's brother, master strategist Sun Li! Now I know why the game was so keen to make me chat to Old Ming five minutes ago, as without his exposition I wouldn't have known that the Emperor had a brother who went missing. I probably wouldn't have known there was an Emperor!

Anyway, the player character is from the Temple of Dirge in the Land of Howling Spirits, and that's a pretty awesome address. Sun Li came up with a master strategy that allowed the Emperor to attack the temple and slaughter its defenders, but he had a change of heart and switched sides to save a single baby.

There he is, creeping away with the baby player character in the background.

That guy in the foreground is Sun Li's brother, the Emperor, and the guy on the right is Death's Hand, the utterly evil leader of the Lotus Assassins. Of course Master Li's the one telling the story, so we're only getting his side of things, but we see him playfully boop the baby on the nose with his finger so I'm pretty sure he's a good and trustworthy man.

The Emperor did have a reason to attack the temple though, as the land was suffering from a drought and he needed to go see someone with the power to change that. Long story short, they fixed the problem but now dead people can't reach the afterlife anymore. Which seems worse to be honest.

Fortunately, there's one person with the power to sort this problem out: the last survivor, all grown up now. And my first task is to go down into the Spirit Cave, which is conveniently accessible from a secret door in Master Li's house.

I did some stuff in the Spirit Cave and found a magic amulet stored inside a rock! But this cutscene is obviously a pre-rendered video, which means that there's a different version of it on the disc for every character you can pick! I guess this explains why you can't customise your face.

Anyway, I also came across the restless spirit of a martial arts master that preceded Master Li, maybe even the one who set up that bloody puzzle with the lion figurines I can't figure out. So I beat the crap out of him. Ghosts can't be killed but he certainly won't be back any time soon.

The amulet comes with three slots for gems, which alter my three stats and have other effects. So I guess I do have gear to equip after all, but instead of cuirasses, helmets, pauldrons, gauntlets and greaves etc., it's gems, gems, gems, gems and gems.

It's a bit disappointing, especially as BioWare's first RPG, Baldur's Gate, gave these items a bit of a description explaining their history, but makes sense I suppose. I mean Bruce Lee and Donnie Yen never wore plate armour. Plus the characters have to keep wearing the same clothes to make the pre-rendered cutscenes match.

I also met a friendly ghost who told me that I'm the last Spirit Monk and gave me a choice between fire and ice powers, with zero information about what their effects are. I went with fire magic, so now I can shoot fireballs! It costs Chi though and I might want to hold onto that for healing.

A portal opened up, so I figured I might as well walk into it. I've never been the chosen one in real life, but it seems to me that if you're going on a spiritual journey in the Spirit Cave to explore your nature as a Spirit Monk, you should probably  investigate everything weird that's down there.

The portal teleported me right back to Master Li's house, to his annoyance. I was supposed to be meditating down there for at least another day! I guess bathroom breaks are forbidden. Still, it's a good thing I came back, as Dawn Star's gone missing!

So I guess I'd better go check the marshland to see if she's there. I mean I have the option to tell Master Li that she can fend for herself, but that doesn't seem very heroic and worse it won't push the plot forward.

This post is running a bit long though, so I'm going to take a break and then save Dawn Star in part two.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO

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Thanks for reading! Part two will be finished when it's finished, but I don't expect it'll take too long. I never expect things will take too long!

Oh, no point trying to guess the clue as it's just Jade Empire again. But you can still leave a comment if you'd like.