Jade Empire: Special Edition review (PC)

Two years ago amid much wailing, gnashing of teeth and, quite possibly, rending of flesh from their PC fan base, Bioware released Jade Empire – its latest in a string of high quality RPGs – as an Xbox exclusive. It was a triumph of story-driven game, set in a lush Oriental world where all the legends are true. The protagonist was martial arts student with a Mysterious Past and a Great Destiny, on an Epic Quest to rescue for master from the clutches of the Evil Emperor. It was the kind of game that deserved such lavish use of capital letters. It was, in a word, glorious.

But two years is a very long time for those PC gamers to wait, as other titles received ports much more swiftly. Bioware’s own Knights of the Old Republic and Obsidian’s sequel to it. Lionhead’s Fable. And that’s just the some big hitters in the same genre. We saw it with Halo – it had already been surpassed by the time it came out on PC, and nobody was all that interested. So the main question one has to ask about Jade Empire on the PC is “should I care?”

The Path to Enlightenment

Jade Empire’s strength lies in its writing – enjoyable if slightly clichéd storytelling supported by sparklingly witty dialogue and an impressive array of voice talent including cameos from John Cleese and Nathan Fillion. As no amount of time will change this, a major source of enjoyment, and all the amusement – of which there is much – remains in tact.

The graphics, surprisingly, have held up almost as well as the writing, albeit with a few tweaks during the porting process. While it would have been nice to see some HDR lighting, the use of bloom is for once a worthy substitute, often giving the already rich environments a mystical glow. The town of Tien’s Landing – the central hub for most of the early part of the game – provides a particularly fine example, basking in a permanent vermilion sunset of which even Oblivion would be proud. And while the textures and polygon counts are obviously lower than games developed since, the art direction is good enough, and the world so believable that it’s easy not to care (or even notice). In other words, Bioware have created a game which stands the test of time impressively well.

The Curse of Imperfect Balance

Of course, nothing is perfect, and Jade Empire’s flaws are still rather evident. The main problem is the combat system, and how much better it could have been. Your character in Jade Empire has three basic stats – health, chi and focus. Chi is used for magic, healing and dealing extra damage, focus slows down time during combat, and is also required for the use of weapons, and health, obviously, keeps you alive. The combination of these stats with a multitude of fighting styles promised an incredibly deep combat system, but sadly Bioware stopped short of this, probably in fear of alienating their RPG fan-base. The result is a system where button-mashing will get you out of most tight spots, and you will probably only rely on a handful of the styles available as you level up.

Bizarrely, the other problems are the RPG elements themselves. As already mentioned, your character relies on health, chi and focus in combat. These stats are determined by the attributes of body, spirit and mind respectively, with combinations of these attributes controlling your ability to use charm, intuition and intimidation options in dialogue. The process of levelling up merely consists of increasing these three attributes and improving your proficiency with the combat styles of your choice which, compared to other games in the genre, feels rather shallow. Interaction with your followers is also a bit muted. While there are romances to pursue and amusing anecdotes to hear, there are no follower-driven side quests, and therefore not much incentive to spend equal time with each of them. In fact, as only one follower accompanies you at a time and the each support you in different ways, it is not unlikely that you will spend the whole game with just one of them, who best compliments your style of play.

Finally, fresh from their success in a galaxy far, far away, Bioware decided to implement a Light/Dark Side system for Jade Empire. It is referred to as the Way of the Open Palm and the Way of the Closed Fist, and is meant to reflect not good and evil, but a philosophical approach to people – either aiding them in their struggles at the risk of causing them to become dependant on others, or forcing them to become strong and solve their own problems. However, as these choices are often between obvious extremes, and the in-game meter looks so much like that of KotOR that it might as well be treated as the same thing.

The Inscrutable Power Source

Thankfully, while Jade Empire is neither a great combat based action game, nor a deep RPG, the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. Maybe it’s so easy to pick these holes because the game fell short of attaining the legendary status it could have had, and settled for mere excellence instead. The fact is that the elements that both made it great and held it back two years ago are still present, and remain more or less unchanged. The process of porting it to the PC has actually improved things a little – the control system works perfectly, and mapping combat styles to all ten number keys instead of the four directions of the d-pad encourages greater variation in play. The AI has also been given a pep talk, so fights are a bit harder, although still not much of a challenge on the standard difficulty setting.

So should you care? Yes. While two years is a long time and the genre has surpassed Jade Empire’s achievements (in the form of Oblivion, if nothing else), no one makes RPGs quite like Bioware. It is arguable that no game that is directly comparable to Jade Empire in the past two years has been better than it, and that in all probability none will be until Mass Effect is released later this year. The only reason the score has slipped over the period is that it is impossible for a game not to age at all, but for those who didn’t play it on the Xbox, Jade Empire is still a must-have.