Jade Empire Review

"Jade Empire" is one of the best OG Xbox games ever made in my own personal opinion. It's beautiful, and masterfully well done game by the creators of the the masterpiece "Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic", Bioware. Now with Bioware going down the tubes because of their purchase by the evil entity known only as Electronic Arts, and also the "firing" of the companies founding fathers; I think it's about time that we look back at a time when Bioware was one of the best companies when it came to deep, story driven RPG experiences and Jade Empire is in my opinion, one of their best games.

Story: The story of Jade empire is very well told and super engaging. I am not going to spoil the plot's many surprises and plot twists, but I will give a basic summary. The plot involves you, the protaginist (which is based on whoever you pick to play as at the beginning of the game and what you name them), who attends a martial arts school in the mithalogoical world based on ancient chinese lore simply known as the Jade Empire. One day while you are off practising, your school is attacked and your master is taken away. Following the kidnapping of your master and the killing of almost all of your school mates, you decide to go out and rescue your master and defeat whoever is responsible for his kidnapping from destroying the world. It sounds like a very annoying and generic plot, but it does have the character richness and extremely good dialogue seen in "Star Wars KOTOR".
Story Grade : A

Gameplay: The gameplay of Jade Empire is very different from any other RPGs. The gameplay is very much inspired by martial arts movies and it succeeds at replicating the intense and fun martial arts moves and coreography seen in movies such as "Enter the Dragon". The gameplay is a real time style, which works very well. Basically, each button does a different move, and what moves the player has is based on which fighting style you choose at the beginning of the game. As you fight more and more you can either level up your health, spirit, or stamina. Health is how long you have till you die(obviously), spirit can be used to regain some lost health, and stamina helps you pull off better and better moves, the more stamina you have the better your combat moves outcome will be. Overall the gameplay of Jade empire, is to be honest, the weakest part of the game in my own persoanl opinion, but it's still well done and extremely fun.
Gameplay Grade: B-

Graphics: I am not going to spend too much time on the graphics mainly because it's the least important part of any game but, I just have to say that Jade Empire's Graphics are some of the best on the OG Xbox. Every level is absolutely sprawling with life and rich landscapes and people.
Graphics Grade: A+

Overall "Jade Empire" by the masters of the story driven RPG, Bioware, is a worthy successor to the astoundly good Star Wars KOTOR. It's story is very engaging and rich, the gameplay is rich and well done, and the graphics is the icing on the cake that give the game it's amazing personality. You can probably find this game super cheap online or anywhere else. So Go play it.

Overall Grade: A-