From the moment you and your cohorts bust through a palace door to encounter twenty guards pointing sharp things at you and demanding your surrender, right up to your chasing up the stairs of the throne room to the altar at the top, it is as if you are playing through a movie. Situations are recognizable and familiar, but that’s a great deal of their charm. While this quick and dirty plot summary might sound extremely generic – and let us be honest here, the meta-plot is, on the whole, generic and the twists predictable – there’s a great sense of fun in the game that comes from playing through what is akin to an amalgamation of every kung-fu movie under the sun. Well, this is a BioWare game, after all!ĭon’t be misled. Along the way, in the traditional fashion, a whole bunch of misfits will join your cause, you’ll encounter increasingly stronger bad guy minions, infiltrate some enemy strongholds, become a martial arts master, and probably start a romance plot with someone. Taking the role of the young orphan prodigy at a calm, idyllic martial arts training facility in the mountains, Jade Empire slowly leads you into a wonderfully cliché plot involving the overrunning of the little connecting village and the kidnap of first your childhood friend and potential sweetheart and then that of your erstwhile master, a firm-but-fair man who happens to have saved you years ago when he defected from being the greatest strategist in the realm.

The question is whether BioWare, after so many successful turn-based systems from the team, can pull off a full action battle system, or will Jade Empire play stonily? You loved the Knights of the Old Republic games, but you tend to prefer something a bit medieval for your playing pleasure well, fear not! Jade Empire is a decidedly eastern affair from BioWare in something of a Knights style but with a more action-oriented battle system. Let’s imagine that you own an XBox and are a bit of an RPG fan – both fair assumptions if you should happen to be reading this.

Jade empire drunken master