This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

There was a time in my life where Bioware could do no wrong. I was big into Baulders Gate and Baulders Gate 2, loved the heck out of KOTOR (knight of the Old Republic) and later Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and ME2. Right in the middle of all those games was a little game called Jade Empire released for the Original Xbox. I remember playing it back around it release and liking it, but never going back and replaying it. I didn't have a reason to not replay it, I have gone back and played ME and Dragon Age multiple times, KOTOR and BG1 & 2 an extra time through, but for whatever reason I never re-visited Jade Empire. Now don't get me wrong, my feelings towards Jade Empire was one of utmost positivity but I was certainly starting to forget everything about the game. When it came up on my wheel of choices, I was pretty excited to give this disc a spin again.

Jade Empire is an RPG much from its time. You play as a star pupil from a dojo with a legendary master. He unfortunately gets kidnapped and your home destroyed right before you learn your true destiny, so you are off to rescue your master and figure out who you really are. You go on a grand adventure where you learn that the world is out of balance and that ghosts walk amongst the living, because they can't find their way to the underworld. As you adventure you will get into martial arts fights, make good and evil choices, gather companions, and maybe save the day.

When I say that Jade Empire is of its time, I mean that in a very nice way. There is a morality meter, but much like Kotor or ME, there is only good or evil and very little gray area in between. The game sets this up in a great way by telling you about the two paths people take in life. The way of the open palm, is one about helping others so that one day they might be able to help you. The way of the Closed fist is about how struggle and adversity help people grow and that by simply solving people's problems you are in fact not allowing them to grow. The descriptions while not verbatim from the game paint a nice flowery way where both paths seem like they have their merits. Throughout the game you are given choices that line up to these paths, and you will get experience either option you choose, I would have loved to see the choices reflect the nuance of the descriptions for these paths, but they really go down the very rote path of SUPER GOOD or SUPER EVIL, where if you want to take the middle path, you might as well not do the quest. I will give two small examples, but are emblematic of the choices you get. One side quest has you tracking down human traffickers to either prove or disprove the innocence of a man convicted of being a human trafficker, the good path eventually has you finding the human traffickers and killing all of them. The bad path has you finding the human traffickers, taking a bribe to let them go, and forging a document to wrongfully accuse an innocent man of conspiring with them. What? I can't just take a bribe or make the cops do their own investigating, I have to purposefully send an innocent man to prison? Another quest later has you clearing a room of people because a fight is going to break out there (I'm trying to avoid spoilers here). The good option is to run around getting everyone what they need so they all leave the room and essentially are saved, the Bad option has you killing everyone in the room and then just hiding their bodies. I don't know how we got here, but holy cannoli! Also like these earlier RPGS, you will want to spec in one direction, because better items await those who fully embrace either the good or the evil and don't play in the middle.

Combat plays a huge roll in this game, and is probably one of the biggest areas this game shines. This game is very much a game about martial arts, so your combat reflects that aspect. While the controls are basically two buttons (light attack and Heavy attack) where this game shines is that there are dozens of styles that can be acquired, trained, and used in battle. Your character starts with two styles (that you get to pick when creating a character). These styles essentially equate to a support style and an attack style. Support styles deal no damage, but can cause status effects on enemies that can then be used to turn the battle in your favor. Perhaps you select the support style that allows you to slow enemies, or paralyze them. Once they are slowed or paralyzed you can then swap to a different style and start doing big damage before they can really recover. Later in the game you learn weapon styles, magic styles, and demon styles that all have their own benefits, but will slowly drain one of your meters in order to continue to use them. Weapons take focus to wield, so every attack will drain your focus meter, which is the same meter you can pop at anytime to make your enemies go into slow motion, which allows you to get in some easy attacks. Magic and Demon forms drain your Chi meter, which is also the meter you use to heal yourself, or toggle on for a damage boost. Did I also mention that some enemies are only weak to certain forms of attack? It can seem like a complicated system and there are easily 10+ styles to learn, but you can only equip 4 at a time. On top of that, when you level up you can put points directly into a style to either boost its damage output, the speed of its attacks, or reduce the drain it might have on your meters, but be warned that you really only gain enough levels to max out 4 styles, and once you allocate points you can't go back.

All of this allows for some great customization and improvisation in order to find what styles you might like best. What can be frustrating is that the game does not do a great job of explaining everything to you. For instance there is a super powerful combo that can be unleashed by using a support style and then quickly switching to an attack style for big damage, but there is no tutorial that teaches you how to do it. You might learn it on your own, or you might complete the whole game without pulling one off. Learning about enemy weaknesses might be mentioned in text somewhere, but instead you learn it on the fly, and you might find yourself fighting an enemy you can't physically damage because you foolishly used up your meter on something else and now need to restart the fight. Overall the combat is rather good, but there are some easy loopholes you can exploit, and it isn't hard to beat the game using only the first 4 or 5 styles you learn. Unless you play on hard, I only ever encountered 3-4 fights where I really struggled to beat them. That doesn't mean I didn't die at other fights, but the 3-4 tough ones are ones I actually had to strategize and think ahead to handle.

Going from something positive to something negative here, but I was really disappointed in your partner characters in this game. In ME and Dragon Age, your companions helped tell a bigger story, whether it was their back story or just their observations about the world when you took them on missions. In Jade Empire you can start to see some of that stuff permeate, but there really isn't a lot of payoff. Sure you can talk to the characters at a base camp and get some of their background, but most of their stories are uninteresting and when you bring them on missions, their small contributions are very small. There are some interesting characters in the bunch, a little girl who is a vessel for two different gods constantly fighting for control, a former drunken master who is now a bun maker who just hates his wife, or a murdering barbarian who just loves to drink wine and fight. While they can help in battle (minimally) they really just take some enemies attention off of you while you kill the rest of the swarm. I found myself sticking to just one companion for the length of the game, simply for ease of use rather than constantly swapping people in and out. It is a shame because there isn't characterization here like Wrex or Thane or even Alister from other Bioware games. In another week I won't remember any of the companions names and that's a real shame.

Speaking of not remembering anything, the music in this game. Another item that I think Bioware normally knocks out of the park is almost missing entirely in this game. I probably got 3/4 of the way through the game and had to seriously ask myself if this game had music at all even in it. It turns out it does, but it is mixed so quietly into the background that you would really only hear it if you change the volume levels or have your character sit still in the menus. I have since looked up the OST online, and its.... alright, but that might be because I am coming to the OST barely hearing any of this music in the actual game. I wasn't able to tie any of the songs to particular moments, and on its own I just don't think the soundtrack holds up to other Bioware games.

Something you don't really think about, until you play older games is that state of Auto-saves. Jade Empire does autosave but not nearly as frequently as you would want, and it was something that I had to get back into the habit of saving every 10-20 minutes so if I did stumble into a bad fight I didn't lose hours of progress. It happened more than once at the beginning of the game for me, before I learned that I need to be more careful as well as more diligent in my saving.

I feel like I was really down on the game in the review, but I actually enjoyed Jade Empire quite a bit. I put down nearly all other games I was playing, so that I could finish Jade Empire because I was enjoying it. Playing this game you can certainly see that they didn't quite have the formula quite nailed down just yet, but part of that might be the charm. Jade Empire is also a more linear game then you might be accustomed to. There are side quests and quite a few of them, but this isn't a big open world and the game is always pushing you towards its goal. Its worth your time if you have affinity for this type of game (ME 1 or KOTOR) and haven't played it before. Its certainly not a flawless game, and it won't supplant people's love for either KOTOR or ME 2, but if you like a good story, martial arts, and an Eastern setting that isn't done to death, I would recommend it.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No

Where does it rank: This is a "sum of its parts" kind of game. I don't think it does one piece exceptionally well. I think the story is good not great, I think combat is pretty good not amazing, etc. However, I think as a whole I left this game thinking about it pretty positively. I never felt I was forcing my way through the game, or playing it because I just wanted to finish it like I get with other games. It won't hold up when I play some other games of the same ilk, but as of right now I am putting it at #26 out of 76 total games. It sits between Super Dodgeball at 27 and WCW/NWO Revenge at 25

Up Next: Thomas Was Alone (PC)

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion). Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for Listening.