Stylish Martial Arts

Jade Empire™ isn't a game in which you passively watch fights take place. Action scenes move quickly, and during combat, you must rely as much on quick thinking as on strategy. Each time your hero fights, you need to use your attacks, blocks, dodges, and footwork in real time. The most dramatic maneuvers rely on your ability to shift between multiple techniques within the same fight. Your hero begins with two fighting styles, but as the story progresses, he or she can learn many more. No one technique is sufficient for surviving in Jade Empire—you need to master several if you're going to fulfill your hero's destiny. Here's a quick look at 10 of the fighting styles you can choose from, along with some tips and tricks for each one.

You can further customize all of these styles through training. Each time your character grows more powerful and levels up with experience, you can use style points to increase a style's damage, duration, Chi cost, Chi damage, or other aspects. In many of the fight scenes, you can also choose a follower to fight with you. Fighting alongside a companion who complements your own abilities lets you take advantage of clever strategies.

White Demon
White Demon is a thunderous Martial Arts style that plows through opponents "like an ox in a teahouse." It starts out slower than other Martial Arts styles, but compensates by inflicting greater damage. This makes it ideal if your hero focuses on a high Body trait, especially once you train to increase the technique's speed and damage. A character with a high Spirit trait can burn through Chi to increase the damage this style inflicts even further. A hero using White Demon can tank through many of the easier fights, but needs to develop other fighting techniques for situations in which brute force isn't enough.

Leaping Tiger
This fast-moving Martial Arts style depends on quick flurries of attacks and multiple opportunities to inflict injury. As with most Martial Arts techniques in this game, you need to time your blocks, dodges, and rolls when using Leaping Tiger, so that you can leap into and out of fights with multiple opponents.

Heavenly Wave
An excellent example of a support style, Heavenly Wave is used to alter your opponents' abilities instead of your own. With this style, you can slow down your enemy's movement and attacks. You can even learn to slow your opponents for progressively longer periods of time, unleashing a Heavenly Wave early in a fight in order to inflict more damage. Like other support styles, Heavenly Wave can be used to prime a powerful harmonic combo move to destroy opponents with a single finishing move

Storm Dragon
Storm Dragon, a support style you can learn later in the story, shocks opponents and stuns them for several seconds. It combos particularly well with Martial Arts styles, even more so when you train to increase its duration. By using its area effect (activated by using the A and X buttons at the same time), you can stun multiple opponents surrounding you. Although Storm Dragon is devastating against human opponents, ghosts and demons are typically immune to it.

Spirit Thief
This support style steals Chi away from your enemies. You can inflict damage with Spirit Thief, but you must use up Chi to do it. The style can easily turn a lone opponent into a reservoir of spiritual energy. If your Chi is getting low, you can slowly siphon it off a weaker opponent in a prolonged fight, instead of running back after combat to a Spirit Font to heal. If your opponent is blocking, you can power up Spirit Thief (by holding down the X button) to steal Chi anyway. Using Spirit Thief against a more powerful opponent can be tricky, however.

Ice Shard and Dire Flame
Ice Shard and Dire Flame are the first two Magic styles most characters can learn. They are ranged attacks, and they require Chi. If your character specializes in these styles, it's a good idea to team up with a follower who uses Martial Arts, Weapons, or some other kind of close-up style. It's also a good idea to team up with Dawn Star or Abbot Song, as they can heal your Chi so that you don't run out of it too quickly. If your opponents are busy directing their attacks at your follower, you can unleash damage consistently from a distance and not worry as much about defending yourself.

Horse Demon
This Transformation style is available early in the game. With Horse Demon, your character transforms into a fiery demon, and opponents who attack you at close range often get burned when they damage you. Staying in Horse Demon form for a long time can burn up a lot of Chi, however, so if you enjoy using this style, train to reduce its Chi cost as soon as possible. This style can be fun to use against several weaker opponents, since you can damage multiple opponents at the same time if you get hit.

Jade Golem
The Jade Golem Transformation style is available later in the game. Golems are immune to most types of damage, so this form is particularly useful against opponents who rely on support styles. It isn't as useful against opponents who use Weapons. Its attacks are slow-moving, ponderous, and inexorable, and they burn up a lot of Chi. As with the Horse Demon style, if you want to spend a lot of time in your alternate form, train to reduce the style's Chi cost as soon as possible.

Weapons
The first two Weapon styles available in the game are a sword and a staff. Later in the game, you can upgrade either style to increase the amount of damage it deals. Resourceful players can unlock other Weapons in the game, including a swift axe and saber style and a powerful ranged attack. No one Weapon is powerful enough to dominate all fights, however. If you're specializing in Weapons, make sure you put some style points into a Martial Arts or Magic style as well. When you're running low on focus, or when you're fighting an opponent who is immune to your Weapon style, having another strong attack can keep you in the fight longer.

Mastering Jade Empire requires training in a variety of fighting styles. You can choose four styles to map to the D-pad of your controller, which allows you to switch tactics in the middle of a fight. Practice long enough, and you can find ways to create "harmonic combos," which occur when you combine attacks from two different styles. These combos will increase your effectiveness in battle.

Specializing in one or two types of attacks is an effective strategy, but no single fighting style dominates this game. Mastering Martial Arts, Magic, Support, Transformation, and Weapon styles puts an impressive array of stylish techniques at your command.

By "Ace" Mason