Jade Empire Review
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Jade Empire does fighting acceptably, though not nearly as well as it should have. One might think this is finally a chance to go "wire-fu" a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in a video game. Alas, for all the ado made of the fully motion-captured animation technology (and attention paid to much of Hong Kong cinema), most battles consist of striking the enemy, jumping over (and behind) and striking again. Because of a fairly bad camera system, as well as a tendency for the frame rate to jerk a lot combat doesn't keep pace with the game's otherwise terrific production values. The various fighting styles add some tactical depth, but the rapid and sometimes camera-blunderous pace of combat fails to capture the balletic essence of a Woo-ping Yuen (Iron Monkey) or Siu-Tung Ching (Hero, House of Flying Daggers). Fans of Prince of Persia's much more sophisticated pirouetting may find themselves yawning.
On the upside, Jade Empire tells a delicious story for a video game that's only exceeded by its exotic graphical engine and period-allusive soundtrack. An incredible amount of work went into putting this package together, and there are certainly a lot of reasons to get excited about skipping through a magical, ancient faux-China, leash or no leash. There's not much point fussing over what might have been, and Jade Empire is easy to recommend to fans of high-quality adventure games who don't mind a healthy dosage of kung-fu action.
