Jade Empire

At first I was a bit ashamed to be playing Jade Empire, thinking that my asianness should either be offended by its usage of Asian culture (this coming from a person who owns far too many iterations of Dynasty Warriors); however, in the end my interest in the game was piqued by the good reviews from various game sites.

The first thing I enjoyed about the game was that I could actually play as a female character that wasn’t dressed too provocatively. As the game progressed, I realized that the story had been thought through not only for a male character, but also with the female character in mind. The makers of the game probably had to create different dialogue for the female character. The one aspect I most enjoyed was that they still managed to put in a love story for my female character. Admittedly, it was somewhat hurried and out of the blue to me, but that might just be my obliviousness to things of that nature.

Gameplay was also created with a broad audience in mind. You’re allowed to change the difficulty setting of the game at any point in the game, so if you’re having a really hard time with a particular bad guy, you just crank the difficulty down to easy and go on with things. This is good for me since I’ve never really gotten the hang of combos and technique in my button mashing. For those who are more interested in technique and something beyond mindless mashing of the hit button, the game offers a lot of different fighting styles that you can string together to create “Harmonic Combos” or something of that nature, I can’t say what’s so special about them, as I never attempted to do one. I’m not ashamed to admit that I played the entire game on easy mode. Well, I’m a bit ashamed, but the shame is overwhelmed by the fact that I actually beat the game, which has been a rare occurrence of late.

Jade Empire was better then I had anticipated, but then again, I’m drawn into any game with a good story, which this seems to have with its plot twists, character development, diversity of side quests, and of course the love story for my female character.

Tea Rank: Warm with some good subtle flavor, and probably one refill.