After nearly a year of waiting since I last played the short demo on the floor of E3 for Jade Empire, Bioware's first original game has been released. I must say that even though I've only played the first chapter (of I believe 8), I am so far thoroughly impressed. Jade Empire runs on an improved Knights of the Old Republic engine, which is very nice for a few different reasons. Number 1: the game looks amazing. You really have to see the game in motion to see just how good it does look. There's some great lighting effects in the game, and the character models are simply stunning. This goes a long way to pulling you into the game, especially when two of the three characters I have so far are quite hot. And yes, the framerate doesn't drop nearly as bad as it does in KOTOR or KOTOR 2. You will get the occasional slowdown, but it's more of a change from 60 fps to 30, so it's not really that bad.
Reason #2: The decision trees. Yes, just like KOTOR, whenever you want to talk to someone in the world of Jade Empire, usually you'll get one of the great dialogue trees that can change the course of actions that you're working on. The morality system is still in the game, but it's changed just a bit. Instead of just good and evil, they have two philosophies to choose from: The Way of the Open Palm and the Way of the Closed Fist. Open Palm basically accepts power whenever it is only possible, and tries to avoid conflict whenever possible. The Closed Fist is basically a philosophy of power, and that things should be settled by force whenever possible…think of it as a sort of "survival of the fittest".
Like I was saying earlier, I'm really not very far into the game, only about 3 hours or so, but so far, I'm really liking the combat. Like most of the reviews you've probably read so far, I'm not going to be any different. This isn't your traditional RPG. The combat occurs in real-time, so there's no queueing of actions or anything like that. You press the "x" button, you'll do a heavy strike, you press "b" you'll block. Jade Empire's combat has much more in common with a game like God of War or Fable than it does with KOTOR or NeverWinter Nights.
If you're an RPG fan, or you're an action game fan, I strongly urge you to go pick up Jade Empire. I think this is Bioware's best game so far out of all of them, even this early into it. The story is once again top-notch, and the voice acting is very professional throughout…I really can't think of any other game besides KOTOR or Psychonauts where the voice acting is this good. And did I mention that John Cleese has a role in Jade Empire? Best use of a Monty Python Alum in a videogame, as far as I'm concerned. What are you all waiting for? Go get Jade Empire!
Oh yeah…and go download the PC demo for Psychonauts. You'll laugh so hard you'll pee. Seriously.
-Jack
