Few names in gaming receive as much praise and adoration as Bioware, and it's not without good reason. The driving force behind Baldur's Gate 1&2 in addition to Neverwinter Nights, the Canadian developers earned much respect on Xbox for the brilliant Star Wars role-playing game, Knights of the Old Republic (XBW - %95). Finally though, the talented team is forsaking established franchises to delve into an all-new world filled with mysticism, intrigue, and more kung fu chaos than you can shake a Bo staff at. Welcome to the Jade Empire!

Jade Empire is an original creation from Bioware, and as such is a real labour of love for the team, who were free from the restrictions of Dungeons & Dragons rulesets and the minutia of the Star Wars universe. However Jade Empire is not a radical departure from their previous success stories, rather a refinement and modification of the winning aspects from past titles.

Jade Empire is an often eclectic mix of lavish and spartan, eschewing genre traditions like page-long inventories and more statistics than a governmental report to provide a more focused experience. The story, on the other hand, is grandiose and sweeping, combining both high fantasy and Chinese epic in a delicious recipe of gaming goodness. You assume the role of the last Spirit Monk, the traditional guardians of the Water Dragon. All is not what it seems in the apparently peaceful Jade Empire: Lotus Assassins become bolder every day, people are vanishing, and the dead refuse to move on to the other side. As a young acolyte in a remote martial academy, it is up to you to unravel the mysteries, choose your path, and ultimately decide the fate of an empire.

Sounds like a pretty standard fare, but Jade Empire's similarities to traditional role-playing ends there. Orc and Elf free, Bioware's baby has more in common with ancient China than Middle Earth, and you'll soon find the emphasis in this game is not on suits of magic mithril and steel on steel, rather on fists of fury, elemental magic and a whole lot of martial-arts mayhem.

Combat in Jade Empire is more about bone-crunching than number-crunching, and those of you used to rolling dice, working out formulas and accessorising for fractional gains will have to rethink your approach. Fights occur in real-time, and rely entirely on user skill and dexterity rather than behind-the-scenes calculations. There's a fantastic range of combat styles available that will allow you to tailor your protagonist to the way you'd like to play. The variety of styles available is substantial without being overwhelming, and includes martial-art forms like the rapid striking Thousand Cuts, support styles like Paralysing Palm, elemental magics of fire, ice and stone and of course weapon styles, that allow you to engage your enemies with swords and staffs. All these, with the addition of demon transformation styles, make for a great range of options, and within the first few hours you'll already have your favourites.

Each time you earn a level up, your character will gain three points to spend in primary attributes of body, mind and spirit, which in turn affect derived statistics like health, focus and chi, as well as your conversational skills. More importantly however, you'll get style points that can be used to upgrade your preferred professional attributes. Want to be a kung fu master the likes of which could kill Bill in less than 5 blows or engage in Blade-wielding bedlam? How about becoming a powerful demon faster than a woman scorned, or singe your foes with fireballs before you turn them to ice? It's all up to you, and you can become as adept a master as you want, or try to be a jack of all trades.

The actual fighting in Jade Empire is an amazing real-time dance of death, with beautiful choreography and mesmerising movements worthy of films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Of course there's a lot less flying about and far more breaking of bones and kicking of asses, but it's honestly so good to look at that you'll want to drag fights out for as long as possible. There's a rock-paper-scissors dynamic going on, whereby certain enemies may be immune to support attacks or blows from weapons, forcing you to take a more strategic approach in those circumstances.

In fact, the real strength of Jade Empire is that it can be as simple or difficult as you want it to be. Button mashers will be able to get through the game with virtually no finesse if they want to, although it really ruins the inherent beauty of the combat engine to do so. Tacticians however can approach each fight with surgical precision, paralysing or slowing foes so they can attack other enemies, steal chi energy to replenish their reserves, and pull off Harmonic Combos, which are brutal finishing moves that always result in a sweet power-up bonus.

Fighting is an intuitive affair, utilising two primary attacks- fast and heavy- along with a dodge/block button, and the ability to go into Focus mode. Focus mode slows the world down around you, allowing you to dodge deadly blows or unleash your own as you see fit. The D-Pad allows you to have four styles mapped out at any time, and changing from one to the other is simply a matter of pressing the corresponding direction. The triggers allow you to switch between opponents rapidly, and whenever you're locked-on the action will always centre on you and that foe. You can enter a lock-free mode that allows you to fight in any direction you please, but compared to the graceful combat with a targeted opponent, it feels downright clunky. The combat is exceptionally fun no matter how you play it however, and if you enjoyed the style of Sudeki (XBW - %81) you will get a real kick (and punch, and stab and') out of Jade Empire.

Of course there's a whole game going on outside the combative goodness, and it's here that Jade Empire becomes a title you'll either love or hate. Jade Empire takes a very minimalist approach to certain conventions within the RPG genre, most notably in the inventory and item department. You'll never acquire new armour or outfits, nor will you gain any items like healing potions or the like. It's all streamlined into a powerful artifact called the Dragon Amulet, which allows you to utilise a variety of magical gems that can grant you abilities like damage shields, or more commonly to modify your stats.

Speaking of which, there are only three primary statistics that combine to provide your character's amount of health, chi and focus, as well as their conventional strengths. Heavy handed characters will find intimidation an easy fallback, while the spiritually inclined tend to favour persuasion and so on. Number crunchers will find this spartan statistical system a bit disappointing as it eliminates the potential for a really unique character. However it has the positive effect of making the whole experience much more accessible and lets you get on with the most important stuff: the plot and the punching!

What Jade Empire lacks in inventory and items it more than makes up for in character interaction. Along your epic journey up to a dozen NPC characters will join you, ranging from a drunken axeman, a swordsman and a former assassin to a demon, a mad inventor and a heavenly banker. Each character has their own strengths and weaknesses, and only one can accompany you into battle at any given time. They can be either directly involved in the fray, or offer their abilities in a support role, that can provide you with a number of helpful benefits like regeneration, extra damage, or bottles of wine so you too can become a drunken master! The only downside here is that Bioware have streamlined the NPC system to the point where they don't level up and can't be equipped, so you're pretty much stuck with them as-is. Another unfortunate byproduct is that you don't need to worry about keeping your companions alive in battle as they regenerate to full health at the end of a fight, and as there are no items or healing abilities, interaction with your brothers in unarmed combat is nonexistent.

How your compatriots and indeed all the citizens of the Jade Empire react and interact with you depends on your characters moral leanings. Before you groan about good versus evil alignments being done to death, you should know that Jade Empire doesn't perceive the world in clean-cut black and whites- it's much more about your philosophy and ideological view of the world. The Way of the Open Palm is a charitable, altruistic belief that teaches us to help those less fortunate wherever we can, but it does not eschew combat or violence. On the flipside, the Way of the Closed Fist is much more Darwinian in its teachings, suggesting that the strongest will survive and that the weak must either step up or shut up. Moral dilemmas in the game are not always obviously righteous or despicable, and sometimes teaching a person to fend for themselves is the right course of action. This makes for a much more interesting experience, and makes the few wicked deeds feel all the more despicable for it too.

One of Jade Empire's most stunning strengths is the beautiful artwork and graphics. The combat is fast-paced and gorgeous to look at as mentioned, but the real treats come in times of peace. Much like Knights of the Old Republic, exploration of the Jade Empire is quite limited; often through paths so narrow one could almost call it a rail-RPG. But a beautiful world surrounds you at all times, giving the impression of a much larger environment and a living, breathing world going about its business. In a way this is as much a negative as it is positive, because it makes you wish you could go and roam the Jade Empire on your own terms like you could in Morrowind (XBW - %91). Characters also look outstanding, and the lighting system adds a real magical feel to things without being quite as excessive as Fable's (XBW - %82) bloom-lighting.

The designs in Jade Empire are beautiful too, and the Chinese architecture and artwork is painstakingly realised into a form that is at once recognisable to real-life and unique to the game. The locations are varied too, ranging from mystical heavenly plains to the purgatorial underworld, as well as Imperial cities, dank caves and ancient forests. The only real complaint is that the camera occasionally has issues in the smaller indoor environments, and the screen can get a bit cluttered in populous areas like the Imperial City. Likewise with indoor combat, the camera occasionally hinders your ability to fight, but it's rare enough to not be a major problem.

As we have all come to expect, the audio in Jade Empire is of the usual exemplary Bioware standards. All dialogue is fully voiced, with a cast including John Cleese and Nathan Fillion (from Firefly and Buffy!) as well as a troupe of other talented folks. Some of the dialogue is a bit cringe-worthy, but given the obvious kung-fu homage, a little schtick is to be expected. Combat sound effects contribute to this sense of cinematic cheese with over the top punches and kicks that just gel perfectly with the on-screen action. The music however is quite muted, with a lot of bamboo flutes and other reed instruments to lend it an Oriental flavour. It works well when you're exploring or chatting with NPCs, but the up-tempo tunes reserved for battle feel a little weak, and lack the bombastic flair to really get the adrenaline coursing through your veins.

Jade Empire is a singleplayer journey as you would probably expect, and unlike KOTOR there's no Xbox Live enabled downloadable goodies to acquire, so there's no room for expansion. However the sheer variety of conversation options, ideological choices and of course subsequent ramifications are enough to warrant a second play through once you've conquered Jade Empire's 20-30 hour campaign. There are 3 different endings to Jade Empire, which are short and sweet to put it nicely. In a deft touch however, Bioware provide an epilogue summary of what becomes of certain key characters depending on your actions, and while a brief cinematic conclusion for each would've been preferable, it's still good to have those loose ends tied up.

Of course you can always play the Marvelous Dragonfly minigames if you want, which are like the old River Raid games on the Atari, or the 1942 vertical-scrolling shooter at the arcades. There are over a dozen missions to play, and just like the in-game combat of Jade Empire, you can modify the difficulty at any time to make it easier or insanely difficult depending on your preference. Jade Empire's stellar combat system lends itself perfectly to a multiplayer arena mode, or even just a skirmish option to hone your skills, but sadly neither is present. Hopefully a second adventure into the Jade Empire will expand on the wonderfully rich history and include some sort of option like this.