I’ve played Jade Empire just once – in 2007 when it got ported to PC as Special Edition. And while I remembered liking the story, that was all I could recall about it. I’ve considered revisiting the title for quite some time, but was never in the mood up until recently. Now that I’ve replayed it, I’m not surprised I didn’t remember the gameplay – it’s not good.
As all games in the Ugly Duckling reviews, Jade Empire has a very strong idea behind it. BioWare attempted to use their experience with story driven RPGs to build a very unique experience – a beat em up action RPG that abandons the typical inventory systems of the genre, set in a fictional titular land inspired by the history and the myths of Ancient China. It was built on the same engine as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, but unlike the previous title, players had direct control over the player character and while tactical pause was still available, combat was fully real time.
Ideas behind this game are genuinely awesome. You only have 3 stats – Body, Spirit and Mind, – which directly correspond to Health, Chi (magic) and Focus (weapon style usage and slow-mo). Mixes of these stats produce dialogue skill stats that you may occasionally use. Instead of skill trees you have a selection of fighting styles, some of which are unlocked based on your character creation, some are given by the story progression and some need to be unlocked or bought later. Styles are divided into several types, all of which are designed to be an answer to certain situations and accommodate certain playstyles and can be upgraded with skill points. Some of the styles can be combined into a harmonic combo if done correctly, which produces an especially damaging attack that can also leave an energy sphere, restoring one of your bars. There is no inventory, no healing options apart from exchanging Chi for Health or using special shrines found on levels and only “equipment” you get are “techniques” which are permanent upgrades you can get or buy.
The story is, as I remembered, pretty good, with lots of fun characters, interesting main and side quests. The reused morality system from KotOR (although it’s closer to the concept used later in Mass Effect) is well grounded in certain philosophy and doesn’t just equate being a Good Person or a Bad Person. The soundtrack from Jack Wall is neat, the voice acting is good, the visuals are quite good for a 2005 original Xbox game (PC port did make it slightly prettier). And the fact that everything is tied to very simple concepts, with the story and gameplay blending in goals for the player really well, makes for a fantastic setup. The problem is in the execution of it all.
Playing this game is frustrating. It doesn’t matter if you try to use the keyboard and mouse or the originally intended gamepad, the game feels sluggish and annoying every time combat starts. Out of combat it’s just odd, as it uses a very uncommon today approach similar to how Max Payne controlled, not how 3D action adventures usually work. But in combat it’s just dreadful. Despite being real-time, it’s extremely unresponsive and much much worse than what modern “not really hack and slash but kinda” games like Scarlet Nexus feel like. It feels like if in KotOR you’d just have direct control over the character, but with no additional tweaks to how awkward fighting is. And enemies like ghosts are just obnoxious to fight, because their main gimmick is that they constantly slowly float away from you, always being slightly out of your range.
Granted, you have lots of styles to select and some are more efficient to use on ghosts, but… Well, some styles are so efficient, that once you get them, there’s almost no reason not to use them – they just destroy everything, including bosses, in seconds. While trying to do the same “properly” is often just unfun and not challenging in the slightest. Companions are very odd in this one as they have an attack mode, where they are entirely useless, and a support mode where they are helpful, but in a very minor way. Yet for whatever reason if their support ability is, say, heal you, they can only heal you when inside the battle. But in reality running out of Chi or Health is less of a danger and more of another frustration since most levels have focusing shrines to heal you, you just need to waste some extra time to backtrack to them. But it’s always better than not backtracking to them, so… why doesn’t the game just heal you after fights anyway? Except, sometimes it does that too…
The story is, sadly, quite flawed as well, seemingly out of budgetary or time reasons. The game starts relatively slow, builds characters, has several long chapters with an incredible amount of fun side-quests. Then you hit an important plot point and the game suddenly rushes through the remainder of the story in linear chapters that take less than any of the previous chapters alone. Being a BioWare game from that era it also forces romance on you so unexpectedly that apparently just talking to someone and not telling them to shut up means that you love them with no option to say no.
And I’m not even going to focus on horrible shmup mini-games some incredibly stupid choices for gameplay and level design in some spots and just how incredibly odd it is to play a game about a fictionalized Ancient China where almost all characters speak with American or British accents. What I will say is that the game runs relatively okay on modern PCs without much additional tweaking, although most of the UI elements don’t render correctly in widescreen and are stretched instead. Oh and also they kept the horizontal letterboxing the same as in the original 4:3 aspect ration, so in widescreen you occasionally get views that are even more “cinematic” than The Evil Within.
Thing about Jade Empire is that I’d love to see more of it, but I doubt that a simple “remaster” of the original game will cut it. What it would need is a complete reset – keeping most of the story and concepts, but building a genuinely great action RPG that’s fun to play. It can even still rush through the latter parts of the story, but just handle it better and it will feel fantastic today. If the main action gameplay can be turned to something genuinely fun. You could take a look at the game as it is, of course, but be ready to get frustrated by the combat a lot.