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During the time when Microsoft was porting many console games to PC, Jade Empire was no exception. Jade Empire is an RPG from the creators of such epics as Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights; Bioware. Set in the prosperous East, you begin an epic journey of martial ... Read review
Jade Empire casts the player as a martial arts master and lets them choose between good ... more
and evil. That choice will follow them throughout the land, affecting their interactions with other characters and followers. Featuring furious action previously found only in Hong Kong cinema, the game lets players master 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. Customisable, intuitive controls including support for gamepads and keyboard/mouseIncreased graphics resolutions and new visual effectsNew monsters and enemiesNew fighting stylesImproved combat AI and difficulty levelsNew world map interface
...many console games to PC, Jade Empire was no exception. Jade Empire is an RPG from the creators of such epics as Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights; Bioware. Set in the prosperous East, you begin an epic journey of martial arts mastery that will take you through several beautiful environments to peaceful villages hidden away to bustling cities of the Jade Empire.
From the get go, you have a variety of characters ... ...was only priorly availible for Jade Empire Special Edition on the XBOX. Once you have chosen your character, you will then be able to give him/her a name, as well as that, you will be able to distribute a set amount of stats between three distinct character developments. You have Health, then Chi (magic) and Focus (skill), each prooving to be a valuable asset towards what you wish your character to be a master of. Health naturally increases the amount ... more
Difficulty: Medium. Learning Curve: Around 10 minutes.
During the time when Microsoft was porting many console games to PC, Jade Empire was no exception. Jade Empire is an RPG from the creators of such epics as Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights; Bioware. Set in the prosperous East, you begin an epic journey of martial arts mastery that will take you through several beautiful environments to peaceful villages hidden away to bustling cities of the Jade Empire.
From the get go, you have a variety of characters you can choose from, be it male or female, and with the inclusion of the PC version, you also have access to a new character, which was only priorly availible for Jade Empire Special Edition on the XBOX. Once you have chosen your character, you will then be able to give him/her a name, as well as that, you will be able to distribute a set amount of stats between three distinct character developments. You have Health, then Chi (magic) and Focus (skill), each prooving to be a valuable asset towards what you wish your character to be a master of. Health naturally increases the amount of damage you can take before dieing, while Chi enables you to heal yourself more, or have the ability to conjour up magic with your bare hands, while Focus is more for skill, allowing you to enter a slow motion "god mode" for so long allowing you to damage all enemies around you in super quick speed, and also allows you to wield weapons in combat for a longer length of time.
Now that you have your character all kitted out, you are thrown into the emersive storyline, where you are a student under the aptly named Master Li. You have excelled at every department of your training, and have become his star pupil, and have been fortold that your destiny lies more then just a simple student. You are able to master several different martial arts, being it Legendary Strike, A Thousand Cuts, or even mastery of a weapon/magic, which you'll be able to unleash all this on several different types of enemies throughout your long journey.
While playing, you will come accross a variety of characters that will join you on your journey, all haveing their own unique bonus to helping you. However you are only allowed to have one companion with you at any time, you are able to switch between them whenever you like. You also have the option to bringing them in as a combatant where they'll activly attack enemies, or bring them on as a support character, which will then aid you on the side-lines, be it healing you, giving you attack bonuses, or charging up you Chi bar. Some characters can only be brought on as support characters, however these are normally those that give you more of a special boost in that department then those that can perform in combat also.
During the game, you are able to interact with pretty much everyone, and majority have a voice to boot. As a pretty big part of how the game plays, you are given options on how to respond to people, and how you respond is more of how your character changes. There are two main keys to the game, you being good, or evil, and the actions you perform dictate which side you induldge in more, opening up new forms of combat and how your companions like you.
Sometimes, when talking with others, you will have special talking options, allowing you to possibly get more out of it then you originally would. These areas are either under Intimidation, Intuition or Charm. These are your linguistic skills that you can increase via items and stat upgrades. The higher you are in one area, the more likely you will succeed, however sometimes it will come at the cost of being more evil or more good.
As you play through, you'll notice the more enemies you kill, the more experience you'll get, and that talking with people can reap you benefits in experience and/or silver (the games currency). With experience, allows you to level up, and once you have levelled up, you will be given a set amount of stat points to add to your characters health, chi or focus, as well as action points which can be spent on improving your characters fighting styles. It isn't very in-depth, but it does give you the feeling that you have the choice of how your character is developed and played out. Also as you travel through the land of Jade Empire, you will come accross scroll stands which when read, will gain you even more experience.
On the other part, when you receive silver, you can spend them on a variety of items such as magical stones that can increase stats, powers and your linguistic skills. You can even buy new weapons later on in the game, opening up a new variety of combat options for you.
Gameplay - 8/10
The combat of the game is very simplistic, which for those looking for something more in-depth and complicated, will most likely find rather boring and repetitive, however for those diehard rpg fans or those casual gamers, this will be more for you. You have on key to attack, then another key to perform a heavy attack (allowing you to breakthough blocks), one key to block yourself and another to enter focus mode. You will then have keys to allow you to choose from up to 10 different fighting styles that you have equipped (6 more then the XBOX version) for quick changes in strategy allowing you to get a jump on your enemies. Unfortunatly you arn't able to combine fighting styles together in combo's, however the combat is meant to be very simplistic.
Design - 8/10
This being a newer version for the PC, the graphics have been enhanced graphically, and higher resolutions. This has been a big bonus for the game, as the beautiful, lush environments and detailed characters make your mouth drop in awe. However, the downfall to this is, it makes the FMV's (Full Motion Video) scenes that were not updated look very poor, which has changed the balance the other way around to what the XBOX version of the game offered.
Sound - 7/10
Jade Empire offers a very good soundtrack, that allows you to emerse yourself even more into the game, however the PC version has a let down where certain sound effects are missing in places with a few other technical sounds problems. The voice acting is pretty decent on the other hand.
Value - 9/10
With the game coming to around 20 hours in length, and the variety of ways you can play through, this game will give you plenty of replay value, especially with the "New game+" option after you complete, allowing you to start the game again with your prior character with stats and items all intact. With the gameplay getting shockingly addictive to those who keep at it and the story never getting tireing, you'll be able to play through this game several times, offering a wide variety of ways of how your character turns out.
The PC version also comes with a steel case, an artbook and a 18"x24" poster, which just adds to the reason to go for it.
Overall - 8.5/10
The great storyline, the addictive simplistic combat, and the lush visuals really make this a worthy purchase for all gamers, however with the non-exsistant FMV update, and the sound issues, this game couldn't become as good as it could of been.
...the game and story.'''
Jade empire is based in a fantasy world, which owes more than little to the culture of feudal China or far east in general. The spiritual side is highlighted and combined with martial arts. Itīs close to impossible to explain it to those who havent experienced it. Clearly it still is fantasy world, with crazy flying devices and magic.. which of course comes from the spirit. Just like in Knights of the old republic series, ... ...big +++
'''Gameplay'''
Jade Empire is surprisingly and at first bit disapointing due to fact itīs quite different from Kotor series. Character development is much more simple and battle is real time instead of turn based. At first, it feels odd. Itīs very easy to expect them to repeat something they did succesfully before, but itīs not sensible to wait every game to be the same. So after i cleared my mind from expectations and played the game.. ...
Drunken 01.02.2008
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Jade Empire: Special Edition (PC)
Advantages: Everything, I cannot fault it Disadvantages: At a loss to think of anything
...from the Emperor.
In Jade Empire you may select a character from a range each with their own fighting styles. Fairly early on you'll need to decide how you're going to spend your skill points to make your character strong at one fighting style.
The stats are Body, Mind and Spirit. The points in these will determine your Health, Focus and Chi in that order as well as your Charm, Intuition and Intimidation. There is a good/evil element in that you ... ...make decisions in a Closed Fist manner you follow the evil path, this generally means leaving NPCs to defend themselves. Depending on which path you're on you'll either be able to choose Viper or Iron Palm fighting style later in the game. You don't have to select the path immediately, your path will become apparent depending on how you react to the different scenarios but you do not always have to react in an Open Palm manner to be considered good.
...
CloudRuler 11.09.2008
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Jade Empire: Special Edition (PC)
Product Information for "Jade Empire: Special Edition (PC)" »
Product details
Age
15+
Publisher
2K Games
Genre
Role-Playing Game (RPG)
Release Date
2nd March 2007
EAN
5026555052580; 5050740022294
Operating System
Windows XP
Manufacturer's product 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.
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