If you had trouble playing Mass Effect you will probably have trouble playing Jade Empire. I'm a huge fan of KoToR, Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age Origins but Jade Empire only resembles these games in it's technical aspects. The narrative is bland and the setting/characters are an alarmingly stereotypical depicting of Asian culture. The PC version also has many technical problems with the nearly impossible to navigate menu. Personally I think the graphics were pretty good for it's time but that's coming from a KoToR background. Basically, if you are KoToR fan like me who was expecting a similar game in Jade Empire, you may be disappointed.… Expand

Very good game.

I bought it on Steam. Quite unstable on WindowsXP. Nothing for the price.

A fantastic game. After playing Mass Effect, I went out and bought every BioWare game I could find, including Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire, simply because I couldn't afford to have missed these brilliant games at the prices they are being sold for now. Having a strong interest in Chinese history, Jade Empire appealed to me immediately. As with Mass Effect, Jack Wall has produced another hit-and-miss soundtrack, with slow, drab tracks followed by thunderous, spectacular masterpieces. The yu pipes and taiko drums prove to be the saving grace here, and the Ancient China-based theme of Jade Empire certainly benefits from their presence. The graphics, whilst not brilliant, are more than adequate. I did, however, play the "Special Edition" PC version, which has been obviously heavily modified as opposed to its Xbox counterpart, so my perspective may be somewhat skewed. I found the characters enjoyable, with vibrant colours and intricate clothing designs making them all the more appealing. I was surprised to read that my personal choice of character, Monk Zeng, was not even in the original release of the game! Good thing then that BioWare had the presence of mind to return him to the cast for the Special Edition release. Voice acting is above average, which is always a plus with a dialogue-heavy RPG, and there are familiar voices involved. I believe I even heard Nathan Fillion in there, whom I had no idea did voice acting for games. There were also no bugs, crashes or sudden errors of any kind here, which plagued my experience when playing through both of the KotOR titles. On the negative, I found Jade Empire's one and only major flaw to be the combat system, which was far too basic. The AI was not particularly brilliant and the combat move sets for each style were very limited. This alone strikes one point from my final score. Nevertheless, if you enjoy BioWare's other renowned high standard RPGs like KotOR, you should certainly not miss this game. For $10 (Australian), there's really no excuse.… Expand

Unfortunately, after years of uninhibited revolutionizing of the RPG genre, the quality bar has been raised to staggering heights. Games like Bethesda's Oblivion seem to have implanted a new standard for RPGs in our minds that just isn't representative of other gamemaker's abilities. While Jade Empire is loved by hardcore fans, i would equate it with the butchering of Tribes 3 by Vivendi Universal. Fans of this game will come to dislike it and abandon it. the game has improved at the most basic roots: the storyline and graphics, a key part of RPGs is there, however, even more basic gameplay functions are lackluster and make me want to play Oblivion instead to suit my RPG needs. All in all, a 6.8 says its playable, but in my mind, a waste of time in a busy world.… Expand

Awesome game, best action RPG I've played since Half life 2. has a truly unique, compelling, and intriguing story line that keeps you wanting to hurry to the end to save Master Li.. In truth you can take your time and finish all the gloriously illustrated and story voice acted NPC interactions of any game yet to come.. This game even compells you to talk to simple peasants due to the chance you may stumble upon some simple quest that may make your character more powerful. The action is simply wonderful, fluid combat moves non turn based real time combat makes this game very challenging, I suggest playing on easy mode your first time through so you can master the martial arts moves on each successive play of this game I suggest raising the level of difficulty as the game itself will change due to your difficulty rating.. Every choice you make allows you to change your alignment towards good or evil.. or possibly neutral if your choices aren't genuinely good or evil.. but selfish. Overall this game gets 10 out of 10 due to the amount of work put into this game to enhance the realism and draw your further into the world that is The Jade Empire.. I can see this game becoming the next World of Warcraft.. or Everquest.. As long as they don't make the MMORPG suck like Matrix online sucked... or Star Wars galaxies.. etc.. (or even FF12's horrid grinding rate.) I'll be playing this game for a long time, hoping and wishing for a Jade Empire MMORPG...… Expand

This is more like it, an RPG that does not take days to learn tp play. The visuals are good, the story compelling and the control system works. So its "old fashioned"? so what! Its all that a game needs to be. My only quibble is that it is fairly short at 21 hours.

Bar none the best game in this genre that I've played. Please Lionhead give us a sequel it seems as though the the time they put throwing a few extra polys and baubles into the PC version would have been better spent with a sequel.It seems the makers of Fable are finally learning this(My second Fave).

Lite fun and lots of action; beautiful to look at.

This game is yet another amazing RPG by the RPG gods, BioWare. Amazing gameplay, excellent story that keeps you going, minimal complication of leveling up (unlike some games like Oblivion and maybe even NWN2), and great graphics. Finally a game that got me playing for hours on end, after so many not so good games... The problem is the kind of games that are TRYING to pass as RPG nowadays are focused on two things: graphics, and character customization. The amount of customization options on the characters looks and later level up option in Oblivion is pathetic. Why would I want to change the angle of the guys chin or the color depth of the guys nosehair?? Especially when I barely even see my character..? Graphics? the graphics in oblivion though meant to look real are very artificial and ugly looking... and the skin textures for the people are extremely ugly. and gameplay... what gameplay? the combat system is stupid for hand-to-hand combat. Jade Empire on the other hand doesnt focus on these things. It has some customizations but just enough, and good, vibrant graphics with nice effects, but just enough so that the world doesn't look like a hazy artificial place. And the gameplay is lovely. Hand-to-hand combat is done very naturally in this game.… Expand

I found this to be a great game. The story is very good , probably the most compelling I've seen in awhile. I recommend this game, if not for windows, then for Xbox.

Awesome game this game have really good fighting system but there is problems too.The style of fighter is extremly slow and style of fighting tiger (magic) is fcking fast.I use it in almost every battle.The dificulti is too much easy for me and when u get the style of lighting dragon u will havent problem defeat everyone in the whole game.Lighting dragon is something like stun for 10 sec so u just hit him with dragon 9 seconds fight by using other style and then u will hit him with lighting dragon again.CASTSHOUT the problem with installing the game DONT MEAN THIS GAME SUCK. if u win the game there is cool difficulty where u play as character u using in the master campaing and u have all your styles and stats but the enemies is extremly strong and whit favourite style fighting tiger (which was maxed) is relly hard to play only the third battle i hope this reviev is helpful. ps:The style called mirrabel is good for defeating deamon and the tiger style is for nothing there Zalonza… Expand

Other than exceptional music, fantastic setting, several well-written characters and some emotional moments, this game is completely dull in gameplay. The game may be fun at beginning, but later it's just getting more and more repetitive and boring. very little creative strategy needed or possible. Yes, the setting is unique... but there's very little of it to explore. But I do hope they could make a sequel for it to fix those problems, since this Asian style is so fresh in the current major video game industry.… Expand

Very good game which contains a lot of the stuff of which Bioware were the very best at delivering - excellent story and great characters, excellent voice acting (how on earth did they get John Cleese?) and solid gameplay. Quite beautiful to look at in some parts too. The fighting system is by no means perfect but it's good enough and the mini game brought back some good memories. I was a little disgruntled with the duration of the game, but at today's prices this is very good value for money and you should get at least one playthough out of it. Try it if you haven't already.… Expand

Great game overall. Had some crashes on Windows 7 and these keep it from scoring higher. Plot: Quite good. Nothing less than what I expected from a Bioware game. Without spoiling it, there's a couple of great surprises that seemed fitting. I never felt like they were contrived or forced. Gameplay: Good. I used Leaping Tiger and the lightning one almost exclusively. Made the boss fights too easy. I'd have expeced the bosses to be immune to support styles. Still fun though.… Expand

Awesome game, very involving story, fleshed out companions, rich dialogue and a lot of roleplaying options. The outcomes are not quite spectacular, but the sheer amount of options give me that great feeling of being there and staying in-character as much as possible. The combat is simple but dynamic and rewarding. The world design and atmosphere are top notch, I wish there were more games like this, with distinct personality. I love the lore and the presentation. The voice acting is also great quality.… Expand

Awesome, highly atmospheric game with lots of love for fantasy kung-fu clichés and amazingly cool endings. Do try to play through as an utter, complete villain and be amazed. The only downside is a bit simplistic combat, plus it´s not the longest thing out there, either. But, for any RPG fan, this is a no-brainer. Must play, will enjoy.

For me, the combat system in this game made it nearly unplayable. I just didn't enjoy it at all, and actually didn't finish this game (a huge rarity for me, as I play to the end of just about every game that I buy). The story also was uninteresting to me. BioWare has made a lot of great RPGs, but I don't consider this to be one of them.

A purely action-based game made by a company which had no experience in making action games. And it shows. Nothing truly stands out in JE, it's not bad to the point of hating it, but it's not good to the point of loving it either. Just lukewarm.