When I first heard about Bioware's new “Chinese Themed RPG” for the Xbox, I didn't really care too much. After all, there aren't a whole lot of RPGs, notable or otherwise on the Xbox, and “Chinese Themed” has usually been an avenue that hasn't been done properly. I mean, if I was looking for an Asian RPG, why wouldn't I just look to an Asian developer? I don't go running to Canada to ask the finest Canadian chefs to whip up some pho, sushi, or a bao, so why would I expect non-Asian company to treat thousands of years of culture properly?
But then I figured, surely there are enough Asians in the industry for the guys at Bioware to at least contract out to one to aid in the thematic design and development of the game. Then after hearing some of the rave initial reviews that some of the guys in the Netjak forums had given it, I decided to give it a whirl. After all, I needed something to play that wouldn't be beaten in a day, and I hadn't turned on my Xbox for a while.
Story
You are...Hiro Protagonist, or whatever you decide to call yourself. You are the brightest pupil in the village of Two Rivers, and have flourished under the tutelage of Master Li. One day a strange ship arrives, and starts slaughtering the villagers, so you step up to defend them.
After Master Li rushes to your defense, you discover that the assailants are linked to the Master's dark past, as well as what Master Li refers to as your destiny. You discover that you are the last of the Spirit Monks, rescued when your village of Dirge was destroyed as part of a plot that involved the slaughter of the Water Dragon in order to end a long drought that was afflicting the Empire. You must go and unravel that path that you, the last of the Spirit Monks must travel in order to restore balance to the world.
Gameplay
The basic controls are simple. The left analog moves, and the right analog controls the camera. A is your basic attack, X is a power attack, B defends and jumps, and Y uses your Focus (bullet time). The White button allows you to use your Chi (blue bar) to heal, and the Black button utilizes the Chi for damage.
Throughout the game you will acquire new martial arts styles and weapons. You an cycle through which style is best for the situation at hand by using the D-Pad. You can pause the game to remap any of the multitude of styles you've learned to the D-Pad, even in the midst of combat.
You will also gain the assistance of followers in the course of your travels. They're all supposed to have different benefits and such, but, honestly, they don't seem to do anything at all in combat, except die.
The first that you will recognize right off is that Jade Empire is far more action than RPG. You have a total of 3 stats and 3 skills, all communication based. You have no inventory, save for plot items. All 3 stats are key, so you're really best suited to keep everything balanced. Your HP is based off your Body score, Spirit gives you Chi, and Mind gives you Focus.
You'll get training that increases some of these scores, and you'll also find Essence gems that boost your skill and stats scores as well. As is the trend with these Xbox RPGs you will have a “light” and “dark” side that your easily defined actions will determine. That's pretty much all the customization and upgrading you're going to get.
As far as the merging of the styles go, I would much, much rather have had one style, and incorporate moves from other styles and schools, rather than have 30 useless styles of combat. At the end of the game, I only ended up using 3, “Legendary Strike”, which I started with, and hence upgraded most, “Spirit Thief”, which is what I would have to resort to using to hurt things that were immune to physical attacks, and “Mirabelle”, the musket...for when I just didn't give a damn anymore.
Combat, for the most part, flows fairly well, even in multiple target situations. However, sometimes you will encounter problems like your teammates or enemies randomly appearing in spots where they weren't a split second ago. What you'll typically face is in 4-5 enemies, which you can quickly dispatch with judicious backflipping and attacking once you've found an opening. With the exception of a couple boss fights, most of the battling is over fairly quickly, but is enjoyable for a while.
The game levels maps are pretty nice in scope, which is good because more loading would have definitely broken up the continuity of the game's story and made the sidequests far more cumbersome. This would have been a big problem, seeing as how the flow and progression of Jade Empire are without a doubt, its strongest point. That isn't to say that there's a rich and deep storyline in Jade Empire, it's pretty bare-bones, but the pacing is done right, and that's so much more than I hoped to see. There were actually a couple plot twists that caught me a bit off-guard, but that was more a testament to how the bar has been set so low by other games, and not really the writing.
Graphics
The people don't look right. Of the 3 female characters you can choose from only one looked even decent. The extremely low poly body models didn't help either. However, the models are easily forgiven in light of how well the scenery is rendered. There's lots of interesting looking countryside to roam around, and the soft lighting in the game is an interesting touch as well.
The fighting animations, however, are pretty bland. Seeing as how you only have two attacks per style, they grow old within the confines of the first town. They're rendered appropriately, but the way the game's combat is structured makes them very lacking in variety. Why, though, do you have such limited celebration animations? The “chest flex/neck relaxing” bit is very unbecoming for a woman. I mean, what's that supposed to say after a fight? “That's right! Who's bad?! Check out my breasts!” Strong enough for a man...not made for a woman.
Lack of variety is also evident in the game's effects. Every fighting style has the same power attack effect, and every ice/fire/lightning attack from one enemy in the game looks the same as if they were dealt from a boss. Not a single “wow” moment to be had from any of the visuals in combat.
To balance this out, the pre-rendered cutscenes do have their share of wow moments, and the shooter mini-game looks pretty clean...up until the point you realize that's probably because there are a whopping 6 or so types of enemies in the mini-game.
All tolled though, a pretty decent crop of visuals to support the game. Not completely polished, but better than most.
Audio
The voiceovers are done very workmanlike, as Bioware just dips into the same group of voice actors once again. You start pointing them out from other games, and as other characters within this game. Kind of a drag, as I figured a Chinese-themed game would hire some Chinese-themed voice actors. I can understand using the same actors for all your similar themed games and in similar roles, but they're quite obviously out of their element here.
The music is pretty good. Basically the stuff from the Dynasty Warriors series of games without all the extra pep. They add to the feel of the game, but you aren't going to be listening to them afterwards.
Most of the audio I find about the same as the video, serviceable, not exceptional.
Gripes
Since this game is 85% action and 15% RPG, I would be doing potential customers a disservice if I didn't point out how flawed the combat is. While it stays fresh for a good part of the game, it's easy to see that by tweaking the system it would be leagues better. I'm certain that this game would be much better suited with something along the style of Shenmue. You're given your basic repertoire of fighting moves, and as you learn other moves from other schools, you're given a choice of whether or not to incorporate them into your own fluid martial art. Instead of having upwards of 20 absolutely useless styles of kung-fu, you'd have one core style, customized to be as efficient for your personal combat tastes as possible.
The game's designers would also do well to familiarize themselves with some Kou Shibusawa titles. Each Koei title manages to have different combat, despite being limited to basically 2 attack buttons, and a special attack. Same setup with Jade Empire, but when you compare the two combat systems, something like Crimson Sea 2 has a much longer shelf life than the 2-attack system found in this game. You can try and set your opponent up for some “Harmonic Combos” but the payoff is so weak that it's not worth it to try and hit an enemy with an attack, release your primary control, hit a direction on the D-Pad, switch back to primary control, and then hit the same enemy with an attack from the new style. In theory it seems like it would work out fine, but tapping out A, A, X, or A, X, A, X would be far less cumbersome for combos, no? A fusing of the move substitution of Shenmue with the simple combo systems of the Koei titles would give more customization in combat styles, it would make the combat more fluid, and you wouldn't have the pesky problem of going to attack, only to discover you're in a style that you had forgotten you were in.
As a direct result of the combat's effective simplicity come the two biggest gameplay flaws, the ease of combat, and the blatant cheese given to the scant few boss characters that are tough to fight.
For the most part, combat is a foregone conclusion. You'll never be threatened on Master level difficulty until the game starts deciding it's not going to play by the rules anymore. I hate bosses that regenerate health, have multiple life bars, or have priority over all your attacks. Some bosses in Jade Empire have all these traits, and my least favorite gimmick in any combat...the infinite status effect. The only thing more frustrating than discovering you're paralyzed is discovering that you're constantly being paralyzed. If boss characters wanted to, they have the option of putting you in infinite paralysis or infinite slow, or linking these into what people who play fighting games refer to as a T.O.D. Combo (Touch of Death.) where the only button you can hit to effect any change is the Reset button. About the only major combat faux pas this game didn't commit was the enemy that infinitely respawns weaker enemies to protect itself gag that is just SO fun to play. At the end of the game, I just switched over to “Student” level combat because I grown tired of fighting, and the seeing the end to the story was the only enjoyment I was getting out of the game.
The camera gets pretty annoying at times, especially when you're in combat and in a corner. You're at the mercy of whatever you happen to be targeting, and often you can't really switch targets or switch to Free Mode before you've taken some hits that you wouldn't have without the outside interference of the camera.
Along with the difficult camera come problems with clipping and hit detection. Often times when facing larger enemies, you'll be unable to move any closer to them, and your attacks can't hit them. The fact that all your non-projectile/area based attacks in this game have a range of mere centimeters means that you end up leaving yourself wide open for big attacks, or at the very least, missing crucial openings in combat.
Aside from that, there really isn't anything else about the gameplay I have issues with...but the game's theme, on the other hand...
Excuse me, I Think There's Been A Mistake...
You see, I heard this game was supposed to be the “definitive East Asian fantasy RPG” (this was taken straight off the Gamefly label for the game). Well, as it turns out, this game has Chinese themes like those late night movies on the USA network have “mature themes”. All tease, no payoff.
If you're going to create a world based off of ancient China...why not have them speak Chinese? Instead, the closest they come is speaking some invented tongue that sounds like a cross between Norse and gibberish. The voice actors are so out of touch with the Chinese language that they can't even manage to pronounce names of other characters correctly. How are you supposed to pronounce Grand Inquisitor Jia's surname? Is it “Ja”, “Gia”, “Gee-Ah”, “Zha”, what? This is where hiring Chinese people who speak English would come in handy. They can tell you how to pronounce stuff in their own language, or even just pronounce it correctly themselves. Isn't that crazy how that works?! Instead the poor guys in the voice cast end up fumbling through the names and can't keep them consistently pronounced in their own lines, much less from voice actor to voice actor.
As a person of Chinese descent, to me this game reeks of “obviously trying too hard to look Chinese”. I feel this game's about as Chinese as Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. I haven't let my feelings detract from the overall score, though, what you see in the score columns are what I feel this game should be scored when compared against other games, my ethnic issues about the game notwithstanding. A good game experience is still a good game experience.
However, I felt strongly enough about it to make note of it in this review. I make these suggestions to the crew at Bioware. If you want a Chinese gamer to take your work seriously instead of giving it the “Hey, we just got the license to use Chinese culture in a game” feel, you should take the following steps for the inevitable sequel:
1) Hire some specialists to oversee the action, script, and voices.
You took this step for the music. Why did you choose to stop your efforts at legitimacy there? I don't get it.
2) When you have completed a playable demo of the game, take it to a couple of the local colleges. Find the branch of the Chinese Association or the Chinese Culture Club on campus and demo the game to them.
If they start giggling by the time they get to the character creation screen and they see “Radiant Zhen Yi” or something similar, that's a good sign that you're not anywhere close to authentic. Ask for their advice, and implement the feedback they're giving you.
I strongly suggest you take my advice, as the closest this game ever came to getting a does of authentic Chinese in it is when I named my character Lin Shi Lei after the smokin' hot Kelly Lin. I mean, it's just common sense, isn't it? If you want to create something that is authentically Jewish, you would hire some Jewish consultants. I wouldn't try and make a Canadian themed RPG without a Canadian consultant no matter how many months of studying the culture I had done on my own. No amount of book learning and web surfing could possibly compare to years and years of life experiences, a tenet that Jade Empire sadly proves beyond any doubt.
Overall
All ethnic issues aside, Jade Empire manages to put forth an tight, excellently paced story and wrap it into a game that doesn't tarnish the story's glory too much. However, if you're waiting for the Xbox to get a true RPG, well, you need to keep waiting. This is about as action oriented as it gets.
Taking into account the Xbox's failings for big budget games like Halo 2, it's very possible that a lot of the flaws that drew my ire in Jade Empire are a result of hardware that has been pushed to the limits. On better hardware, and with a more elegant combat system, we would probably be looking at something like a 9.0-9.5 overall score.
As it is, though, Jade Empire is still deserving of an 8.0, and could be the start of a very promising original property for Bioware...provided they actually work some Chinese into their Chinese-themed world, and fix the combat to provide the player with an actual challenge.
