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Jade Empire is a new kind of role-playing adventure, set in a mythical, medieval China. You are a young martial artist, studying under your master's watchful eye and developing your mystical powers. When danger threatens from the ruling authorities, you must travel across the world and learn the secret martial styles & techniques. Use them to defeat the most powerful enemies and carve a place for yourself in the Jade Empire. Limited Edition features: Bonus content, extra characters, additional combat techniques, "making of" video and playable demos of upcoming games.

User Reviews about Jade Empire (Limited Edition)

This game is brilliant, especially considering it's age! Fantastic game. If you like Bioware's other stuff, you'll really enjoy this one too. -- Great game!

I remember being a kid and watching all of the old Kung-Fu classics that this one television station used to show on lazy Sunday afternoons. Most were cheesy. Some were outright over the top. For example, there was this one movie (I can't remember the name of it) where a monk with a bo-staff was wandering through a graveyard and all of a sudden several ninjas erupted out of the ground underneath him and started stabbing him in the gut. His intestines were hanging out of his pant leg and he STILL kept slaughtering them by the dozens. The only way they beat him was when he stepped on a loop of his own intestine and went down on one knee and the only pain he showed was this puzzled look on his face. And that was another thing about those movies; no one seemed to die simply. If one of the protagonists got killed, they had to stagger around, looking enraged, take out a couple more enemies WHILE THEY WERE DYING, and then do a backflip and three front somersaults before they went to the ground and were still.

But they were still good fun to watch when you had nothing else on your plate for the day.

Jade Empire is a successful creation of this type of fun. The outlook is a little more serious, but playing this game evokes a deep feeling of notstalgia 'for me younger days'. Plus, the play time ranges anywhere from thirty to forty hours, MUCH longer than the time it took me to get through any of those chop-sockey films. If you like fantasy-based roleplaying games with a twist, you'll like this one.

GAMEPLAY-5 Stars
Jade Empire weaves one of the richest tapestries of culture for a console game of this scope, based on the Chinese dynasties of ancient times (quick useless fact: In ancient China, jade was considered so precious a stone that only the emperor was allowed to possess it). The developers even went so far as to create a fictional language, called 'Tho Fan', that the older members of the Empire still converse in.

Like every other game that Bioware has produced, you're given a choice of which character you want to play, all in a third-person based perspective, male or female, fast, strong or balanced, and the moral path you take is also entirely in your hands, with certain aspects of the game altering according to the decisions you make, both at the onset and during the course of your adventure.

Unlike previous games produced under the Bioware aegis, combat is real-time and you can switch your mode of attack on the fly to best take advantage of the situation you're faced with. You can choose between attacking bare-handed, with a weapon, magically or by supporting your team member and each method bears its own strengths and weaknesses when compared to the nature of the opponent you're squaring off against, whether it's a mundane pirate, demon, ghost or what have you.

This is also one of the few original xbox games that will play smoothly on the xbox 360. The one major issue I've seen here is that, in some spots, the texture mapping is blank on certain items and all you see is the greyscale model, but that's rare.

There are three basic statistics that define your character: Body (raw physical might and ability to withstand injury), Mind (ability to think reflexively) and Spirit (ability to manipulate your internal chi energy). There are also three secondary attributes: Health (the ability to take damage before you die; influenced by Body), Chi (raw internal mental energy; influenced by Spirit) and Focus (the measure of your ability to concentrate on one particular action to improve the outcome; influenced by Mind). Aside from your combat skills, there are three conversational skills which can directly affect the dialogue you maintain with people. These are: Charm (friendly banter), Intuition (amount of insight you have on a given person's motives) and Intimidation (ability to coerce by threats).

The mechanics of gameplay are skill-based. The experience you get from your accomplishments goes towards an overall level threshold. Once that threshold is reached, you're given a certain number of skill points that can be allocated among the skills that you possess. Each skill can be increased 5 times before it maxes out and they are each broken down into three sub-categories which govern the speed of the attack, the damage caused and the reduction of the cost of chi needed to use that skill.

One of the main complaints the other reviewers gave this game is in the amount of conversations you have with other parties. I remind them that this IS a roleplaying game. It's a LOT more immersive than your average shooter. Through these conversations, you learn about the nation's history, lifestyles, objectives you may take to progress forward on your quest and Monty Python's John van Cleese does a cameo appearance as Lord von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Ba$tard in the Imperial City's scholar's garden, and he's ALWAYS good for a few laughs.

STORY-5 Stars
It's a story that's withstood the ages, with mythic Chinese legend thrown in for good measure. A promising student at a school learns of their epic destiny. His (or her) master is abducted and they begin a quest to rescue him. Along the way, they gather a following a like-minded individuals out to do the same thing or something similar and, teaming up, find out they're responsible for saving the world.

Bioware also puts the cliffhanger that they're known for into the plot. I was expecting it going into Jade Empire from the previous games I've tried from them, but the first time I saw it, the epiphany STILL had me going "Duuhh..." from the revelation. That alone was worth the price of admission. You discover that Sun Li the Glorious Strategist truly IS a master when preparing his battle plans.

SOUND-5 Stars
The score for Jade Empire is vintage ethnic Asian. It fits the mood of the game perfectly and adjusts to whatever type of area you find yourself in. From the grand sweeping epic music when traversing the Imperial City to the slow, moody sounds as you wander through a haunted inn or graveyard to a more laid-back score when doing your thing in a village (not to mention the heavy percussive riffs as you enter battle), original score designer Jack Wall earned his pay with this one. It all comes through beautifully in 5.1 surround sound.

The voice acting is also top notch. John van Cleese is hilarious as the slap-happy opinionated conquistador. I believe Nathan Fillion, lead actor from the ill-fated Fox sci-fi series 'Firefly' also plays a bit part at the beginning.

GRAPHICS-5 Stars
For its time, Jade Empire was one of the most visually appealing games on a console. Considering the active code required for everything you could do in the game, the graphics themselves were pure eye candy and show the skill of the developers. There is some fade-in with the people wandering around the areas, but it doesn't detract appreciably from the gameplay and the framerate stays at very smooth levels. There are no dynamic shadow effects, but the lighting in the game only serves to enhance the mood.

REPLAY-5 Stars
Like every other production from Bioware, Jade Empire allows you to take a different path each time you play through it. This lends a staying power that you don't normally find in a game.

OVERALL-5 Stars
"Confucius say, one who plays Jade Empire has many hours of enjoyment."

Through five different playthroughs, in whatever choice I made, I've enjoyed every minute of my time wandering around and seeing the sights. Games are about escapism and being someone else for a time. This game serves up a full helping of fun and anyone else who disagrees with my assessment, you can come and see me. I'll give you a 'HAH!!' and a 'HA-YAH!!' My 'positive outlook style' is stronger than your 'grumpy crab style'.

Nuff said. -- My Thousand Cuts Style is Stronger Than Your Heavenly Wave Style!!

has a good story line but i must say kinda short... its about 19 to 20 hrs
which isn't alot. Or i could just have gone through it really fast...
the controls are pretty easy and it becomes a second nature, i only had one problem with it and that was the game was scratched, it only had one time it didn't work. and i turned off the xbox and turned it back on and loaded my most recent and i was good to go. GREAT GAME
I just suggest you spend more time on character relationships ships than i did. because i was in a rush to finish mine. GOOD GAME -- Fun game but a little short.

This is my second favorite game ( the first being KOTOR, also by BioWare). The storyline is rich, as as the characters. Sky is one of my all-time favorite characters (along with Carth from KOTOR). The scenery on this is breaktaking. I enjoyed the "good vs. evil" decision in this game, as it is really innovative. It goes so much further than just good vs. evil. It has 2 leaning, the Way of the Open Palm, which is not that different from general 'I've got to help everyone who comes along' good, and the Way of the Closed Fist. The Closed Fist is one of my main reasons for liking this game so much. Basically it states that only the strong survive and florish, while the weak fade away. There was this one point in the game, as someone asked you to describe your surroundings, and there was one option that just blew me away; it talked about how everything fades over time, even the earth. Just the way it was written was beautiful. Another example is giving a young girl a knife and giving her the oportunity to kill the man that had put her into slavery (of course she can't do it anyway) instead of you just killing him. Get this game, especially the Limited Edition, as there is an extra character. BioWare, make a sequel! -- Awesome RPG

I came late to the Jade Empire party, not even knowing the game existed until a couple months after I picked up an X360, but I am hooked! This game is fantastic! I've played "Knights of the Old Republic," also by developer Bioware, and I thought that was one of the best RPG games I'd ever played. Then I picked up "Jade Empire."

The storyline is deep, the characters are fully drawn, the side quests are actually fun and interesting (instead of the usual go-there/pick-that-up/come-back sorts of tripe), the graphics are beautiful (especially for last-gen), and the combat system is truly unique and full of variety. Still being in college, I don't actually have a lot of time to play games, even though I LOVE videogames, but this one easily hooks me for a couple hours every time I sit down with it. (Which means I don't even turn my X360 on when I have a paper due!)

If you want a truly unique and engaging RPG, this is the one. I've read some of the other reviews, and they have some good points: the load times are REALLY long, there is a lot of dialog, and it is a slower paced game. The load times become irrelevant, though, once you start playing the levels, and the dialog is interesting and well written (as opposed to KOTOR 2 -- THAT was boring dialog). As to the pacing, if you're used to beat-em-ups like Final Fight or button-mashers like Ninety-Nine Nights, then this game is certainly not for you. If you want a unique RPG set in a fully-drawn and incredible universe, then this is the game you want. -- Doesn't let go!