E-Mail This Article to a Friend Jaded This Empire falls under its own weight BY CHRIS DAHLEN
	Jade Empire Published by Microsoft Game Studios. Developed by BioWare. For XBox. Rated M for Mature.

Two years ago, BioWare shipped the smash hit Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for the Xbox. The game walloped every recent Star Wars movie with its intricate story and a set of characters that argued, lectured, and flirted their way across the world’s most popular galaxy. But let’s stop to take the contrarian view: the gameplay in KOTOR was dull. Yes, you got to role-play as either a noble Jedi or a trash-talking, innocents-victimizing Sith, but the story boiled down to two (similar) endings – and along the way, you had to perform countless standard RPG chores like breaking open containers and swatting monsters. By Knights of the Old Republic II – in which you spend half the game slogging down shafts and gray corridors like an HVAC contractor – even the content didn’t keep it engaging.

BioWare’s latest Xbox title, Jade Empire, instantly recalls both KOTOR games; it’s built on the same engine, but this time it’s set in a mystical, pre-modern China. It boasts gorgeous art and animation – dig the scenery at Tien’s Landing, which stays bathed in end-of-the-day red sunlight no matter how long you spend there – as well as hours of branching dialogue, read by the band of drunks, princesses, thugs and thieves that tag along with you. Once again, you’ll love the story and the presentation – and once again, the gameplay’s lacking.

The martial arts system takes a big step past KOTOR’s " queue up your attacks and let ‘er rip " style of combat. You control every blow and block yourself, and you can switch between different fight styles based on the enemy. Unfortunately, the system’s too simple for even a casual player. For example, you press the A button to hit the enemy; hitting A twice triggers a stronger attack; and to unleash the extra special secret assault you… hit A three times. Mortal Kombat it ain’t.

The Harmonic Combos give you fancier moves and far more gore, but you’ll rarely need them to win a fight; and the range of styles that you learn - which even includes Drunken Master fighting - just conceals the fact that you keep punching with the A button and ducking with the B. As for jumping, climbing or flying, you can’t do much aside from bounce away from an enemy, so don’t expect to relive the elaborate setpieces of films like Drunken Master II or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Even the " improvised weapons " – like pieces of the furniture that you’ve broken – have to be handed to you by the game.

Jade Empire's design attempts to streamline the gameplay by taking away your choices, as well as any obstacles that might slow down the story. Your character gets by with only a handful of attributes and no inventory. Not everyone wants to play a game like Interplay’s Fallout, where fine-tuning your character's statistics is more complicated than doing taxes, but without some intricacy, you can’t have a strategy. You also can’t customize your followers, or even travel with more than one at a time - so instead of building a diverse party, you get one person who usually just mops up your leftovers and throws you an occasional one-liner.

Even the " ancient China! " concept is only halfway realized. The game is true to the spirit of kung fu b-movies, right down to the obviously Western voices that read the dialogue. (Though props to John Cleese for his cameo.) But the presentation is neither over the top, nor believably nuanced – and even though it’s set in Asia, you’ll see ogres, steampunk flying machines, and golems out of Jewish mythology – and really, what couldn’t they have shoehorned in here? Why not add some cowboys?

On the plus side, Jade Empire tells a great story. Chapter after chapter, it moves from one fantastic location and plot twist to another, and even the side-quests show imagination. You rarely get a silly errand or delivery job, and every minor character has a story. While the choice between good and evil still feels like an up-or-down decision between two linear paths, at least the evil path doesn’t pull any punches: as early as the second chapter, it grants you the ability to destroy entire towns.

But it’s too bad you can’t destroy those towns with your bare hands. Jade Empire didn’t need to be an action or a strategy game: nobody would play it for Tekken-like duels. The problem is that while you get to take large actions that change the fate of the world, you rarely face the small decisions and challenges that engage you in your character. Jade Empire continues BioWare’s trend of making the player more passive while the story becomes more involved. It’s an engrossing experience - but if all you do is sit back and enjoy it, is it really much of a game?

Score: 7.0 (out of 10)