Custom Characters

One hero is destined to change the course of history in BioWare's Jade Empire™. As the last of the Spirit Monks, you must uncover the mystery of your origins, the treachery of an emperor, and the fate of an empire. Like similar role-playing games, you get to choose your hero before the story begins. Rather than fiddling with complicated statistics, you begin with one of six characters, each with different strengths, weaknesses, and martial arts styles. As the story progresses, you can customize your hero's attributes, fighting styles, and strengths to face the game's challenges with your own distinct style.

Character creation and advancement is remarkably quick. Each hero's strengths and weaknesses are measured by three attributes: Body, Spirit, and Mind. Body is the measure of a character's Health. A hero with a high Body score can survive surprising amounts of injury and keep fighting. Spirit represents a hero's Chi and magical ability. As you become more powerful, Chi fuels magical attacks and transformations. Mind reflects a hero's Focus, which he needs when wielding weapons like swords and staves.

Weapons require Focus.

Each character begins with two fighting styles, although more can be learned through the course of the game. There are five types of styles:

• Martial Arts styles train your hero to unleash a flurry of blows close to opponents. A martial artist with a high Body trait doesn't worry as much when an opponent strikes back. With Chi, a hero can heal himself or increase the damage inflicted by his attacks.
• Some styles deal damage from a distance with Magic. Others allow you to assume monstrous forms with Transformation techniques. Both types of fighting devour Chi as you continue to use them.
• Any character can also learn Weapon styles early in the game. Blades and staves swiftly deal damage, but you won't be able to use them unless you have a high Mind score and lots of training.
• Support styles affect your opponent's abilities, usually through strikes that slow, shock, paralyze, or disorient him. Support styles aren't limited by your Body, Mind, or Spirit traits.

Whenever you're in a fight, your character can change fighting techniques, shifting between Martial Arts, Magic, Transformation, Support styles, and Weaponry. You can select a variety of styles and map four of them to the D-pad. Combat happens very quickly. As your hero leaps and dodges, you can switch styles quickly between different fighting techniques.

As the story progresses, your hero gradually becomes more powerful and can increase his Body, Mind, and Spirit. Money can be spent to buy additional training and magical artifacts, which can also increase these attributes. Part of playing the game is deciding which qualities are most important to you. One strategy is creating a balanced character, advancing all the traits equally. With this approach, you're fairly good at a variety of techniques, but limited in how far you can advance any one of them. A time-honored alternative in many role-playing games is "min-maxing": focusing on one trait at the expense of others. For example, you might decide to raise your character's Body while neglecting to increase his Mind trait (and accepting penalties to Mind). The result would be an effective brawler that doesn't rely much on weapons, but can survive plenty of damage while dishing it out in close combat.

Magic attacks require Chi.

As your character gains experience, you can continue training in different techniques and customize your fighting style. Each time your character gains a level, you can spend style points to increase a style's damage, speed, Chi cost, or other aspects. In other roleplaying games, players often seek out the perfect build of attributes and techniques to create an invincible character. In Jade Empire, however, some opponents are immune to certain techniques. If you focus entirely on one style, you'll be in trouble when you encounter an enemy that is immune to your techniques, like a ghost that isn't affected by your sword blows or a magic-resistant golem. Jade Empire encourages you to master multiple fighting styles. Excelling at one or two techniques should make most of your fights fast and flashy, but be prepared for a challenge if you must finish a fight with your weaker techniques.

After you master the basics of character creation and advancement, you can play through parts of the story multiple times, specializing in different styles of combat each time. Because you can make different choices in resolving the story and training your hero's techniques, Jade Empire can be different each time you replay the title. The game offers many choices; what you do with them is up to you.

By "Ace" Mason