One might make a case that any game in which you can verbally spar with a John Cleese- voiced obnoxious twit is automatically worth playing. Still, the quest ends with an absurdly overpowered weapon as a reward - and that's Jade Empire in a nutshell: flashes of brilliance mixed with unbalanced combat.
Neither one of BioWare's finest RPGs (the Baldur's Gate saga, Mass Effect 1&2, Dragon Age: Origins, KOTOR) nor of their weakest efforts (Dragon Age II, NWN OC), Jade Empire is elevated by its fresh, original setting, inspired by a mythological version of ancient China of a "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" wuxia flavor. I like Tolkien as much as the next guy, but for once it's nice to have fox spirits and ninjas instead of elves and orcs.
There is much emphasis on combat (real-time, action-oriented), which unfortunately isn't that great. A few initial styles are pretty much deadly already, and some later powers - cue the infamous Jade Golem stance, the closest thing to a "I win" button I've ever seen in a RPG - so hideously overpowered that the game might as well have skipped to the end credits the moment you obtain them. It's like adding to the rock-paper-scissors hand game a fourth shape (let's call it the Death Star) which trumps all others: you have no reason to use anything else, if not as a self-imposed challenge.
Still, characters, dialogues and plot are compelling enough, and there are a few effective twists and choices, with a morality system focused, more than on a good/evil dichotomy, on a predecessor of the paragon/renegade system seen in Mass Effect.
Neither one of BioWare's finest RPGs (the Baldur's Gate saga, Mass Effect 1&2, Dragon Age: Origins, KOTOR) nor of their weakest efforts (Dragon Age II, NWN OC), Jade Empire is elevated by its fresh, original setting, inspired by a mythological version of ancient China of a "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" wuxia flavor. I like Tolkien as much as the next guy, but for once it's nice to have fox spirits and ninjas instead of elves and orcs.
There is much emphasis on combat (real-time, action-oriented), which unfortunately isn't that great. A few initial styles are pretty much deadly already, and some later powers - cue the infamous Jade Golem stance, the closest thing to a "I win" button I've ever seen in a RPG - so hideously overpowered that the game might as well have skipped to the end credits the moment you obtain them. It's like adding to the rock-paper-scissors hand game a fourth shape (let's call it the Death Star) which trumps all others: you have no reason to use anything else, if not as a self-imposed challenge.
Still, characters, dialogues and plot are compelling enough, and there are a few effective twists and choices, with a morality system focused, more than on a good/evil dichotomy, on a predecessor of the paragon/renegade system seen in Mass Effect.