Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3381 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Take 2
• Released on: 2007-03-02
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platform: Windows XP

Manufacturer's Description
The beautiful and mysterious world of Jade Empire, optimized and enhanced for PC. Experience the award winning martial arts action-RPG. Jade Empire is a fast-paced martial-arts role-playing game (RPG), from Knights of the Old Republic RPG-developer BioWare. It's set in a new, fantastical world based on mythical China, where sinister events have upset the peaceful harmony of an isolated martial-arts school. Featuring furious action previously found only in Hong Kong cinema, the game lets players master more than 30 fighting styles and a wide range of mystical powers as they embark on a perilous journey, stretching from the Land of Howling Spirits to the lush gardens of the Imperial City.

Jade Empire casts the player as a martial arts master and lets them choose between good and evil. That choice will follow them throughout the land, affecting their interactions with other characters and followers. Developed with a revolutionary second-generation Xbox engine, the game will offer fans a stunning visual and gameplay experience.

PC exclusive features:

Two additional fighting styles:
Iron palm: Sumo type, slow and powerful. Viper: A faster fighting style that poisons the opponent's chi and slowly kills them. This style is used by the Lotus Assassins in the game, and has been very popular with our X-Box fan community.

These two styles will not be available to the player right away, but will be discovered and learned as the player adventures through the game. Learning these new styles will function exactly the same as when the player learns styles that were part of the original Xbox version - the Player will have the option to spend level points to upgrade these styles as per any other style. These styles were designed to be used by some of the enemies the player faces in the Xbox version. They are even more powerful then the original fighting styles. We will to tune these styles specifically to fit with the PC game balance.

New Monsters:
Tentacle demon: This monster is a higher level opponent and is a sentinel the player must defeat to continue the game. Rhino demon: A new monster the player has to defeat. The Rhino Demon is very large and aggressive, and will pose a significant new challenge for the player.

New Weapons:
In the Xbox version, the player could upgrade their weapon if they found the appropriate items and used them in a certain order. In the PC version we will provide a third upgrade to the weapon, making it yet more powerful and visually attractive.

Improved Combat:
The combat AI has been refined to make enemies smarter and more dynamic, which will make combat a more varied and interesting feature of the game.

We are also tuning the number and variety of fights the player has. The Xbox memory limitations prevented fighting vs. multiple types of opponents at the same time. In the PC version we can set up fights against multiple types of monsters simultaneously so the player has to alter fighting tactics on the fly. The difficulty levels will be tuned to balance the additional styles, monsters, combat AI, and weapons. We can adjust the drop rates of health, and magic power, the player's damage, number of opponents, and opponent damage.

Additional Difficulty level:
We are going to add a 4th difficulty level that is designed to be harder then Grand Master level. Besides testing player's skill and offering a greater challenge, the player retains all the skills and abilities from Grand Master level so they can attempt to become skilled in every combat style we have placed in the game.

Improved visual effects:
Using the power of the PC we can add significant upgrades to visual effects. From player auras when they gain max skill in a style to additional effects with the magical talents, the game will look more exciting and magical.

PC centric control scheme:
We are committed to making Jade Empire a great experience with mouse and keyboard. From early in development we have created a new control system to take advantage of the mouse/keyboard system. The player will be provided with default control layouts as well as being able to customize their controller layout to their own preference In addition, we are supporting the most popular PC game controllers so player's can play Jade Empire PC in anyway they see fit.

PC resolution upgrades:
The visual quality of the game has been scaled up from the Xbox version to take advantage of the PC's greater resolution options. Depending on the player's computer Jade will now run from resolutions from 640X480 16bit upwards to 1600X1200 32bit. Maintaining a minimum frame rate of 30fps.

PC Graphics upgrades:
BioWare's internal Art team has also upgraded specific in-game textures, models and GUI art to reflect the resolution upgrades.

Customer Reviews

Stolen pieces of the past add up to be the best of the new.
If you've played through the Bioware/Obsidian set of RPGs, you may have a sense of deja vu in some places while playing this game. Protaginist with mysterious past? Check. Female partner with equally mysterious past? Check. Powerful teacher/mentor with mysterious past and with a host of shocking stories about yourself (the ones about your destiny, that is)? Check. Evil guy in a huge suit of armour? Check. This is basically Star Wars:Knights of the Old Republic (with "chi" instead of "Force") and Baldur's Gate (did I mention the characters with a mysterious past?) rolled into one, upgraded, sprinkled with the Oriental appeal and a sense of humour. Is this a bad thing? Heck, no.

The newest additions to the normal Bioware fare is the real-time combat and the "transformation" discpline, whereby you can turn yourself into a demon with added benefits - kind of like turning into the Reaper in BG2, or a druid turning into a sword spider. It also puts in a few more situations of moral ambiguity that may find you running around the map a lot, but the reward is worth it in the end. And like KOTOR, you feel that as you're going along, you really are getting impressively powerful. This is a game that is not merely a console port - it has been designed for the PC as the controls are keyboard and mouse oriented (as they should be) and it takes full advantage of the resolution and texture changes. It also knocks Oblivion for six with overhearing NPC's conversations - you actually hear about people talking about you and what you have done, rather than the "hello - hello - did you hear about the emperor's murder - I hate you - good day - toodles" way of Oblivion.

So why four stars for "fun"? Well, it's a bit short for an RPG and it feels like it does re-tread old ground in a few places - albeit in new and interesting ways - and you may be able to see some plot elements coming from a mile away. And also there's the camera. Sometimes the fight area runs out of room and you can't see properly who you are fighting - this is annoying when you have half a dozen opponents bearing down on you.

This is a well-packaged RPG (it even comes with a shiny tin box - putting the "special" into special edition) that will leave you wanting for a Jade Empire 2. If you've bought NWN2 and were disappointed in that, then this may be for you instead. Hell, if you're disappointed in general with the current glut of mediocre RPGs, then this is for you - it will truly brighten your day.

Tragically under-rated
It disappoints me greatly that this game hasn't proven to be more of a success. I owned it first on Xbox, and loved it so much that I repurchased it on the day of release for the PC, having sold my Xbox.

I found it to be a hugely engaging RPG with a superb and engulfing storyline. There are some great characters - the beautiful Dawn Star, the hilarious Black Whirlwind and the mysterious Segacious Zu - and plot twists that I just never saw coming.

I think ultimately that's the best way to enjoy this game; by seeing it almost as an interactive movie. A movie where you get to choose the main character's fate, and the path he chooses to get there. That's the most enjoyable part of any RPG, and in JE there's some interesting decisions to be made.

Gameplay is enjoyable enough - the combat has its critics, but I had enough fun with it. The PC version is a touch more challenging.

So, if any of the game's themes - martial arts, mythology, Asian culture - interest you, it's definitely worth taking a look at.

Compatibility issues with Windows Vista
Not a review, more of a warning for people interested in this game.

This game along with many other PC games which lack native OpenAL support, has a lot of audio issues when running it on the newly released Windows Vista. In many cases only the BG music can be heard, action, speech, and various other sound effects etc are not heard at all.

The reason to this? Windows Vista no longer contains DirectSound3D.

It is likely at some point Windows will roll out a patch for this, however this has no confirmation.

I hope this helps.