

Like in many BioWare RPGs, your character starts off as something of an enigma, but that just means there's some major history to unearth during the course of the story. Fighting styles are important, but we'll get into those a bit later. Meanwhile, his fighting styles are Legendary Strike and Heavenly Wave. He's not the fastest or the strongest, but he's a good blend of the two, making him versatile in most situations. For example, Lu the Prodigy is a balanced fighter. More importantly, each character has a specialty and fighting styles.

Of the seven, four are male and three are female, but gender mainly determines the romance options in the game. You can rename your character or randomly generate a new name. There are seven premade characters to choose from, including Lu the Prodigy, the Radiant Jen Zi, and the Scholar Ling. You select a premade character, and you can't create your own custom character. Character creation isn't as wide open as it is in most RPGs. The first thing that you'll do in the game is create a character. Jade Empire is a blend of action and role-playing set in a world inspired by Chinese mythology. That's because Jade Empire is as much as an action game as a role-playing game, and the game features an emphasis on real-time martial arts battles.

Jade Empire will also surprise you in another way if you're familiar with BioWare's previous PC RPGs, such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic or Neverwinter Nights. Rather than rely on those conventions, BioWare looked to the Far East, and as a result, Jade Empire takes place in a world inspired by Chinese mythology. Jade Empire takes place in an unusual setting for those used to Tolkien-inspired fantasy worlds that are full of elves and orcs. As its name suggests, this is a bigger version of the Xbox game, and it is enhanced for the PC in a number of ways. However, that changes later this month when Jade Empire: Special Edition ships for the PC.

BioWare's strong tradition of developing PC role-playing games made it a bit disappointing that the company's 2005 action RPG Jade Empire debuted only on the Xbox.
