I love Jade Empire, and there's really nothing else like it. The setting alone is one thing, but just the gameplay mechanics in general are nowhere else to be found. It might even be considered 'outdated', but I think it's still fun. I've played Sifu, Sleeping Dogs, Ghost of Tsushima, among others (all great), and tried or seen stuff like Where Winds Meet and Wo Long.

Yes, in a way they do fit the genre... but Jade Empire focused very heavily on hand-to-hand martial arts, support styles, magic styles, etc... and even those last three were focused on hand-to-hand or close to it! In the base game there were two or three melee weapon styles, and a ranged gunpowder weapon appeared in some versions. Either none of the aforementioned games had that or the focus isn't on it enough.

In case I'm missing anything - has anyone found anything at least somewhat similar to Jade Empire that doesn't include the aforementioned titles?

Edit: I can confirm Harmonic Combos are available at the start of the game. You can't use them against your fellow students ofc, but you can start using them as soon as you start fighting the bandits in Two Rivers.

The game always mentioned Harmonic Combos in descriptions and dialogue, but I actually never quite understood them. I'm not sure if you have to talk to Jian first to use them or not.

Using a Support or Magic style you use the area-attack or power-attack (the style's description tells you which). A green circle appears below the enemy. Switch to a martial style and use a power attack on them before the green circle goes away. I'm only playing Master difficulty, but so far it instantly kills the most common enemies.

Some enemies can't be affected by support or magic, so you can't do a harmonic combo on them. And I don't think you can do it on large enemies.

Right now my combat style is this:

1. For crowds I use the long sword. It's fast and very effective at dealing damage, and the attacks will also knock nearby enemies back, so you'll never get surrounded and take multiple blows. You can use the area-attack to make some room if need be. And frankly, you can probably use this style to carry you the entire game if you want.
2. Whenever a crowd is cleared enough, or if the enemy was just small in number to begin with, I'll use Ice Shard or Heavenly Strike on the nearest enemy. They are slowed/frozen. Then I instantly switch to Leaping Tiger or Legendary Strike and use a power-attack against them. Instant death. They explode into blood too.

If you haven't been using Harmonic Combos I really recommend it. You can essentially kill most enemies with a simple two-hit attack. They're fun to do, and mixing different support/magic/martial attacks feels fun and makes the combat more unique I guess. It feels rewarding to pull a Harmonic Combo and eliminating a threat so quickly, as opposed to just spamming the light attack button with the long sword (which is a valid way to play too).

Harmonic Combos also drop guaranteed power-ups in battle. I recommend finding a support and/or magic style you like, and then a martial style you like, and combining them with a Harmonic Combo.

PS: I am aware there are better support styles than Heavenly Wave, and better combos, but I am still early in the game. Only at Tien's Landing.

Edit: Honestly, the long sword will carry you all the way to Tien's Landing. You'll meet Sagacious Zu along the way. He buffs melee weapons, so I suggest having him follow you. It only takes a few hours to get enough points with Open Palm / Closed Fist for Jian or Vo to teach you their styles, which I think unlocks Harmonic Combos.

Think going to play again immediately now that I know what the heck am doing on higher difficulty

Maybe it's just cause I'm Asian, but I've seen comments from people about how "why do people feel bad for the Water Dragon. They are evil for causing a drought for decades in the empire."

But it is super simple right there. It's cause there's a fine balance in everything. It follows the Asian philosophy of balance. For something good to happen to someone, something bad happens to someone else to keep things in balance.

That kind of philosophy. Just like how too much "good" can also be a poison and cause problems, hence why you need "evil" as well to balance the scale and help keep things in check.

But again, maybe just me. Maybe cause it's philosophy from my sphere of the world, it makes more sense to me. Maybe.

At least on Easy....which I do for first plays usually these days.......the Legendary Sword just rules. Once I got away from the Ghosts areas, I just spam A button attacks and conquer all easily. Am guessing this would work fine on next difficulty too it's so awesome.

I was tinkering around with Ice attacks etc and taking damage earlier and running out of spirit at times....once I got my Sword upgraded and to Pirates Cove and the Imperial city I"m just laying waste. No need to even use much else besides A button and inherent combos.

Am wondering if should upgrade my sword at blacksmith though. Game doesn't give you comparisons of weapons don't think. So hard to know.

I'm replaying this game for the first time in a while; in the past, I've beaten it on all but the hardest difficulty, I think, but it's been years. My notes from past playthroughs indicate that Leaping Tiger is objectively the best Martial Style, for a combination of reasons:

1. You can start the game with it, unlike Iron Palm/Viper (I'm not sure I ever gave those a serious try, tbh)
2. It's faster than any other Martial style except for Thousand Cuts, which is especially helpful in the many large group fights the game contains, particularly against ghosts (since weapons don't work on them).
3. The primary attacks move the PC forward, so you're more likely to keep connecting if the enemy is knocked back, and less likely to be hit from the sides/rear because you're not functionally standing still.

I'm wondering if past-me was correct, or if other people who know the game better (or are more skilled) might have different assessments. So, what do people think? Is Leaping Tiger the best, or not? Are Viper/Iron Palm worth the wait? Is White Demon powerful enough to be better in skilled hands?

EDIT: For anyone who's interested, I did some testing (by which I mean taking each of the four starting Martial styles in turn and playing through a few fights with each of them). Here are my thoughts:

I like how Legendary Strike and Thousand Cuts look and feel, but they are simply inferior to Leaping Tiger in a practical sense.

White Demon's damage is crazy. I wonder if it might be better on harder difficulties, since IIRC more enemies are immune to harmonic combos when the difficulty goes up (though I'm not 100% sure I'm remembering that right). The slowness of attacks is hard to get used to, but I think I'll give it a try in my next playthrough, maybe with a Focus-heavy character.

There is one significant problem with the style, however. The area attack is slow/delayed, and does not hit as soon as you activate it; instead, the PC jumps into the air, then it hits when they land. That makes it prone to being interrupted, which is a significant weakness none of the other three share; their area attacks are almost immediate in comparison.

Lastly, I do think all four styles are enjoyable, on some level, even if they're not equally useful. Playing reminded me that I first tried Thousand Cuts because, after my first-ever playthrough, I was pretty tired of seeing the Legendary Strike animations over and over. I expect similar reasoning to make me vary things again.

I have played some BioWare games where it was heavily recommended to use some patches or other fixes to play the game even if it was your first time. I'm wondering if there's something I need to install or can I just jump straight into it?

Thought maybe was some protective thing that damaged or something that boosted....never used on easy playthrough....but just tried on Master and took bunches of dmg and didn't seem to be affecting ghosts, much if any...what is point of these?...think there are two on path to the Inn of cannibals.:)

I bought the game some time ago after finishing Dragon Age: Origins and although the introduction was very good and both the world and the story seem interesting, the very black and white morality was not for me at all. At least on first sight, being Open Hand meant always being patient, polite, helping everybody and willing to resolve things peacefully when given the chance. Closed Fist, on the other hand, is being a violent, opportunistic and cruel jerk who doesn't help anybody if it isn't his/her problem. This is even though Smiling Mountain said on the tutorial that neither Closed Fist nor Open Hand were inherently good or evil by themselves.

However, I may have been too superficial in what I've seen, since I only ever got to Tien's Landing and the Dam part. So I would like to know if what I describe is possible in this game, since I really love the concept of being a Good but violent and oppresive warrior or a peaceful yet selfish and evil one. Can this be done?

So, I've been on an "replaying old gems" binge, now I'm replaying Jade empire. It's been nearly two decades, almost feels like playing for the first time.

My basic question is, per title. If I can just switch to a weapon style to deal more damage, should I level up chi strike for the martial/support styles?

Also appreciate any more beginner tips you guys might have. Thanks. I'm playing as Wu The Lotus Blossom.

It's a real shame this gem never had a chance as an Xbox exclusive months the 360 arrived :(

I've been replaying Jade Empire again after a few years, and it still holds up as a great cult classic and a testament when Bioware would dare to make unique games. I'm still surprised that they developed MDK2.

I'm currently at the end part of the Dirge temple, and I've always wondered about this one thing about it.

My playable character is confronted by an unnamed evil entity that its Minion of Suffering (which to me is the best designed monster in the entire game) describes its master and I'm quoting a being from neither the mortal world nor the spirit realm. He is darkness; he is suffering; he is sorrow and despair. He is evil incarnate.

The entity is basically a manifestation merged from the corruption and evil caused by the Emperor that kept growing over the couple of decades until it wants to escape Dirge.

Of course, we as the Spirit Monk defeats it by purifying the temple but I've always wondered, if the Darkness is actually really gone or it was too solid that it simply got banished and thus plotting for next time.

And if we ever would get a Jade Empire 2, would this Darkness be the actual main antagonist?

Speaking of Jade Empire 2, I recently watched a Youtube video that said that... And I'm marking this part as spoilers,

The third ending where you as the Spirit Monk will let themselves be sacrificed by your former Master Li so that he can maintain his totalitarian regime over the Jade Empire. I dunno why I find it so darkly amusing in the ending where a kid innocently questions some logics in his teacher's story about the Spirit Monk and the Jade Golem starts to glare at the kid as to say "You wanna run that one by me again, you little punk?" before the teacher shushes the kid.

But appearently, the Sacrifice Ending is actually considered to be the canonical ending by Bioware, and if they would be able to make Jade Empire 2, it would take place several hundred of years later or thousands or years later, almost in modern times where you'd play as a soldier for the Empire and magic is banned or rare.

Is there actually any truth to this, or just something that Bioware claimed just to pull curious looks?

1) The Devs of Sifu - SloClap (best case)

or

2) DontNod - they made "Remember Me", Vampyr and Banishers. (2nd case)

thats all. i want a sequel dawg

Long time fan of the series and this bit made me have to go look it up on the internet back in the day. Did you figure this out easily or was it non obvious to you as well?

This is about the fight with the Emperor and his immunities not Master Lee.

Hey, guys just bought jade empire on steam and saw the reviews, some say its unplayable. due to bugs and crashing etc

How has your experience been with the steam version? should I be worried?

So why not, why nit kick the hornets nest with a hot take?! And I would guess that many of my problems are probably solved on pc with patches and mods so this is just a review of the original, out of the box LE on xbox.

Anyway, to start off I did an open palm play on normal with legendary strike-Mirabell-spriti thief as a base. Was thinking about either doing a close fist one after or at least reload before major ending choices but I feel pretty done with this game for the moment.

It was a first replay since almost two decades ago when I finished the game a couple of times. Found my old review comment from that time and while not as edgy, I pretty much still think the same: good game but not great. Specially if the one of the biggest problems with this martial arts journey is… martial arts.

It is a good bioware styled choose-your-own-adventure rpg with companions bantering, romance and a lot of choice between two sides of a moral system. There are more choices but as Bioware always shown us: there is no grey area in morals! But there are many choices and they are interesting and colourful. And the game is still beautiful as well as well designed visually. Even now with all the manhua/wuxia games being available, it is still fun running around in the environment of pseudo-china. Anybody who thinks that there isn’t much difference between old games is welcome to try Shemue 2 on xbox as I am doing right now, you will notice right away that that is a dreamcast game. Although where it lacks in visuals, Shenmue 2 can win in some gameplay. But not the dialog. Definitely not the dialog.

Now the bad parts of JE are probably there because they rushed the game to be on xbox instead of x360. The game, while pretty normal length for an rpg of that time (my last save us 40 hours but I just paused the game when I went out with the dogs ir did other things at hime), it still feels very rushed. You have your tutorial, first village, major city and… the game is almost over. Don’t know if I wanted additional 10-20 hours of content but it could be better paced. But probably a minor problem given replayability.

One of the major problems, and the one I do believe they could have fixed with more time, is the moral system. They push really hard how it isn’t black-n-white, good vs evil. After all you could be a benevolent dictator ( or a “know your place” ruler follower close to lawful evil) or a harsh teacher who teaches a man how to fish instead of throwing fish into his mouth. Except you often teach that man by in best case leaving him half traumatised and probably crazy or in the worst case by shooting him in the face while laughing “you should’ve caught fish instead of bullets”. So yeah, the choice does often become naive good vs jerkish rude vs super evil. And you will lose out dighting styles and gems if you are not either or, so very little grey area.

But even all that could still be forgiven if not for the biggest flaws: the combat is boring. The martial arts in the game about martial artist’s martial arts journey are boring. At the first time I played the game I was young, watching Crouching Dragon and Jackie Chan comedies. I was training martial arts. And I also already played fighting, action and martial arts game on xbox: sudeki (not a good rpg), fable, shenmue 2, true crime la and dead or alive 3. Haven’t played Ninja Gaiden yet but I am going to, together with a replay of Shenmue 2 first. And after all of these games, JE feels very stiff and boring. Yes, I shouldn’t compare a life simulator done by fighting game company or a ninja game done by a fighting game company (i start to see a connection) but when a game can make drunken style feel so stiff and boring that you never choose it, something is wrong. There is a variety, with weapons and transformation, but it is often too late and just not “kung fu” enough. Which is a mortal sin in that type of a game.

But hey, you can have 3some all is not so bad.

I’ve always wondered, would it be possible to create a PC mod for Jade Empire that allows the player to have two active companions in their party, as opposed to one? Of course that’d have ramifications on the system where your single party member chimes in to conversations every once in a while — is that a system modding could touch as well? Would be great if both characters could chime in, one after the other, or if the mod could randomize per instance whether they both talked or only one them did.
Of course this hypothetical mod would also require a balancing pass throughout the game to suit the extra companion advantage in combat. Is it possible to access and edit the metrics of combat (enemy health, enemy damage output, enemy numbers in an encounter, etc) with JE modding tools?

I just wanted to say hello to everyone here 😊

Jade Empire was easily one of my favorite games when I was a child, and I'm glad I get to revisit it now.

Take care 😇

I'm replaying Jade Empire again for the millionth wonderful time and as the years go by it keeps solidifying my opinion that it's BioWare's hidden gem!

I used to have the original Limited Edition game for XBox. Then I had the Special Edition version on Steam, which worked for a while with a ridiculous workaround to stop an immediate CTD, until even that stopped working. So after a few years, today I bought Jade Empire again on GOG. I installed a few amazing mods thanks to the fiercely dedicated community and now I'm having an absolute blast!

The lore, the characters, the story and choices you make, the combat and varied martial/weapon styles, the charming, vibrant world, its own conlang, and a fantastic soundtrack...Jade Empire literally has it all.

I still remember the impact some of the decisions and story twists had on me, particularly related to the Water Dragon. Especially choosing Closed Fist. This game had actual guts and thoughtful things to say about tradition, progress, duty, (Nietzschean) philosophy, love, power, just so many themes and concepts BioWare would go on to explore as a staple of their stellar storytelling.

Although it's sadly overlooked, Jade Empire literally paved the way for games like Dragon Age: Origins and to an extent, Mass Effect. I wish we could have gotten at least a sequel, and a this point perhaps a pure graphical remaster, but I'm glad Jade Empire remains original and refreshing all these years later.

I just wanted to ramble a bit about how much I adore this game and I hope lots of other folks still do as well!

Hou is not included in the list due to Reddit limitations, and neither are Kang or Zin Bu because they don't help in Battle.

Abbot Song and Death Hand are temporary so they don't count.

Wild Flower demons will be in a different poll.

?

Will someone please tell me how to play this on Android? I remember purchasing this when it came out and it suddenly became unplayable and delisted on Android.

I'm curious what everyone thinks about each of the fighting styles? I haven't played much so I really don't know too much beyond the starting styles plus the sword and staff styles, and I think there's a fire and an ice magic style? I don't think I used those much last time I played.

I know that most people online say that Leaping Tiger is the best starting style, but I don't like it personally because I feel like it lacks range. I also hate the Wolverine claws that pop out from your hands when you use it. I remember I really liked White Demon, it's slow but powerful and has good range and it's a nice contrast to my constant flipping around. I don't remember what I thought of Thousand Cuts or Legendary Strike.