Jade Empire
Jade Empire is an epic action roleplaying game developed by Canadian developer BioWare. It was published by Microsoft and released on April 12, 2005 in North America.
Overview
Jade Empire is based in a mythical China that never was, and allows the player to progress through an adventure based on traditional martial arts. Unlike previous BioWare games, Jade Empire does not use a turn-based combat system. As the character progresses through the game they are able to discover new fighting styles (either martial arts, weapon or magic styles) and upon levelling, may enhance those styles. During combat the player can switch between styles by hitting a pre-assigned direction on the D-Pad. Instead of selecting an opponent to attack and watching the character, the player controls how the character dodges and selects attacks, either a Power Attack or a Normal Attack from whichever style they have currently selected. The traditional RPG stats are also done away with. They are replaced with just 3: Body, Mind, and Spirit. These primary stats control the secondary stats of Health, Focus, and Chi, respectively. By entering focus mode the player slows down time for everybody but their character, allowing them to attack at high speeds. Focus is used up whilst in focus mode but replenishes slowly over time. Chi is a character's spirit energy. They can use it to heal themselves, charge up a powerful chi strike that deals large damage, as well as using it as "mana" when casting spells in magic styles. There is also a little vertical scrolling shooter included in Jade Empire as a mini-game. Once again you have your Health and Chi gauges. Chi is replenished by shooting enemies, and is used for whichever of the 3 special attacks you selected for the game. The yellow "Focus Spheres" will upgrade your primary cannon up to 3 times. Jade Empire features the constructed language Tho Fan developed by Wolf Wikeley, a Ph.D. candidate in linguistics at the University of Alberta.
External linksOfficial Jade Empire websiteBioware websiteNetjak ReviewGamespot Review1up Review
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