Warrior monk with a pragmatic way of approaching things. Sagacious Zu – A mysterious warrior you find fighting a shared enemy who joins your side, and ends up being far more important to the story then you’d first expect. She’s the main love interest for male spirit monks, fairly standard shy nice girl with self-esteem issues.
You end up getting followers as well, including…ĭawn Star – Master Li’s daughter, gifted with psychic powers that give her a bit of a complex. That, of course, requires you go to the Capital City and confront the corrupt Emperor.
You end up homeless and on a quest to figure out your destiny after Li reveals that you are the last of the spirit monks, a society responsible for keeping the spirits of the world in line and protectors of a powerful god that keeps the world’s harmony. Things have been going well, but the village gets attacked by pirates and assassins from the Empire’s Capital City, you discover spirits are going wild across the land, and things only escalate from there. The game has you playing as a martial artist studying under Master Li of Two Rivers village. Some of BioWare’s worst design decisions are here as well and are possibly the messiest they have ever been. It’s a game worthy of respect and definitely played a large part in where the studio ended up going, but it’s also difficult to play to completion if you are at all familiar with their games. It’s also ambitious as all get out and has some of the most interesting narrative ideas BioWare has ever put in a game, matched only maybe by the late game of Baldur’s Gate 2 and Dragon Age Origins‘ extremely developed world building. It is a hot mess of a game, only really passing back in the mid 2000s just due to how messy most action games were at the time. As a result, the game is filled with odd ideas, unnecessary additions, messy story structure, and core gameplay that was less satisfying action and more random button mashing and awkward, floaty animations. Sounds promising, right? Thing is that Jade Empire was made when BioWare was still feeling out who they were as a studio.
They wanted to make a game where you became the greatest martial artist in the world, and it became their first original IP. Even weirder was that this game, Jade Empire, was a passion project by studio founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk. What people tend to forget is that they made one other game between these, a particularly weird action-RPG that shows the growing pains BioWare were dealing with as they moved away from the old strategy focused battle systems they were used to. After getting their foot in the door in the RPG world with their Baldur’s Gate games, BioWare brought out two huge hits with both KOTOR and Mass Effect, two titles that changed the world of console RPGs forever.
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