Jade Empire Previews

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Written by BuckGB on March 26th, 2004

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Each of the fighting styles you can choose winds up evolving in different ways, and each style even features some unique branches on its individual path. The branching system gives the development of the various styles a more organic feel that should make you feel more like your character is evolving than simply earning a new move. We're especially intrigued by the ways you'll be able to combine different abilities into complementary pairings. For example, you can use a chi-draining ability to help you get more use out of a chi-intensive attack by draining chi from your foes to allow you to perform the latter move more often. While a good chunk of Ming's battle with the toad demon was spent with him in a transformed state, when the final game is balanced you won't be able to stay in an alternate form for too long, as such a move will be a heavy drain on your store of chi, thus forcing you to be selective about what you do. Another unique element to combat is the company you'll be keeping at certain points in the game. Apparently, as you go through the game you'll pick up minions who'll tag along and help you in combat as best they're able. While you won't take direct control of them, they should be useful in a pinch.

Chi energy fuels your spells and of course some spells are more costly than others. One of the more interesting spells we saw in Jade Empire was the ability to transform your character into one of several creatures --both big and small-- for limited amounts of time. As you kill enemies, some of them will cough up specific animal spirits that you'll collect and place in your spirit chart. As you continue to develop your character, level up and collect spirit points in other ways, you can invest in the development of any and all animal spirits you've collected to that point. We've observed at least 20 different animal spirit slots, including some mythological creatures like furry dragons and other conventional animals like birds. After investing enough points you'll actually be able to transform yourself into that creatures during a battle, including potentially dangerous boss battles. We saw a character come across a giant vile-looking boss character with a vicious slobbering tongue attack (no, really we did) and things weren't looking so good. Our character quickly transformed into and even bigger vile-looking demon of some sort and immediately disposed of the licky-monster. It cost an entire chi meter, as most animal transformations will, but it felt great to trump the CPU's ace.

While there's a lot that's new and exciting in this game, longtime BioWare fans will find a lot that's familiar. You'll see the exact number of hit-point damage you cause and incur when you engage an enemy. Although the action takes place in real time, gamers that like to over-think there moves have a nifty pause feature. This allows you to spend half an hour plotting every possible combination of attacks you can make in the next 30 seconds (a technique I and many other gamers have used in the Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights games).

While you'll be able to adopt different fighting styles and weapon schools, one new and powerful detail which has emerged, is the raw power of your dragon amulet. Although you'll have to initially undertake several dangerous quests and missions to find and identify this token, once you do, it provides a permanent boost to selected abilities.

Which ones you choose is up to you of course, but the careful placement of gems in the dragon amulet's many capacious slots might for example provide permanent extra health or faster recharging chi. It looks like RPG veterans are going to be spoilt for choice when it comes to creating really unique Jade characters.

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