Set in a fictional, relatively nondescript asian culture, Jade Empire presents you with options for your character based on what type of fighter he or she will be. By choosing your styles (with names like Storm Dragon and Thousand Cuts), you'll dictate whether you'll be a quick fighter, a slow, strong fighter, a magic user or somewhere in between. Your choice also dictates your appearance, so there's hardly any room for character customization. The character creation process is sparse, but that's the last time the word sparse will come to mind.

As the game begins, you'll find yourself in a compound of small buildings. You're a student in some kind of martial arts school. The view and mechanics of moving around will be very familiar to anyone who played KOTOR. It's all in third person, until you start a conversation. As much as the game feels familiar, it's different. Everything seems a lot smoother. Your movements don't start and stop as dramatically as they did in KOTOR, and the environment around you seems more real. Maybe it's because this is a more realistic setting and not the spaceships and mega cities of Star Wars, but it certainly seems like someone spent some time making the very basics of the game – the feeling you get when moving around an interacting with things – more comfortable. It certainly is more attractive. Everything in the game has pop and style.

Before you have a chance to get going, you'll learn the basics of fighting by smacking around a lesser student. He doesn't seem to mind as you get the hang of using the A button to land blows and string together combos. The B button serves as a block, and the white button uses the bit of magic common to all characters, a heal spell. You've got a health meter, along with one for Chi and another for Focus. Chi is used for healing and magic, while Focus is spent on weapon usage and super speed (everything around you slows while you move normally).

Things take a turn for the worst quickly, as they so often do in games. The Jade Empire is set within a world living under the rules of an interpretation of Chinese Mythology, and the story follows some familiar conventions. The threats to your character's way of life start off big and only grow in scale, sending you from one corner of this imaginary globe to the other. Along the way, you'll engage in dialogue boxes very much like those in KOTOR. The scene shifts from a third person to first person view and you'll have a few response options which are clearly meant for completely different player attitudes. You can be a complete boy scout, a scoundrel, or sometimes straddle the line.

Unlike in KOTOR, where your attitude drastically affected how your comrades reacted to you, most of your choices affect only one particular conversation are area. There aren't the same, extreme affects on your persona if you choose to be a jerk most of the time. But your choices will affect a lot about how the game turns out in certain areas. Some missions will be completely different based on your choices. So in some ways the system is similar to KOTOR's, and in others it's very different. You definitely affect the world around you with your decisions, but you don't end up looking like a Sith if you're a bad guy.

When it comes to deciding where to go and what to do next, well, you don't have to worry about that. There aren't a whole lot of options for moving ahead, just the usual side quests. The strict line of progression is a little disappointing. Your travels from place to place are pretty much decided for you.

But during the journey, it's a relief to see that NPC interactions aren't simply excuses to sit through exposition, as is the case in a lot of RPGs. Your dialogue choices steer the conversation and make the experience interactive. Not a novel idea on the surface, but it's still amazing how rarely it's done in an RPG.

Adding to the fluidity and pace of the game is the transition into and out of combat. So much of Jade Empire happens in real time that, when added together and taken as a whole, it ends up being a very smooth, organic experience. As a fan of the turn based combat featured in KOTOR and some other RPGs, with it's emphasis on planning and decision making, I was wary of yet another fighting/action game disguised as an adventure. But Jade Empire's combat is intuitive and engaging enough that even those who don't demand real-time fighting will enjoy it.

There's really nothing canned about the fighting – no artificial limitations. You'll be able to maneuver around foes, jump, roll, charge straight ahead, and they'll do the same. There are patterns to enemy reactions, of course, but they're not so recognizable to ruin the illusion. Once you get used to the controls and have the ability to take one eye off what you're doing and witness the action a bit, you'll be amazed at how naturally your movements intertwine with the other characters. It's a ballet usually reserved for action games. The biggest difference is that once you get used to the timing of a particular style, the fights aren't terribly complicated unless you let yourself get surrounded. For a fighting game, it wouldn't be enough. For an RPG, it seems just right.

What's lacking, for an RPG, is the amount of stuff you'll need. There's just not much inventory to worry about. For some, this will be great news. For others, collecting cool equipment and saving up for the next big toy is a big part of an RPG. It's not a game that will have you spending lots of time in your menus – the story and action here moves quickly, a lot more like a kung fu movie than a trip to the dungeon.

Jade Empire, on top of the action, layers a character advancement system. You'll earn points to spend on fighting styles, which affect the usual range of things like dealing damage and your speed. You can change styles during combat, so if you've been exhausting your Chi bar with attacks you can switch to something else, when you need to. A lot of your options are influenced by the choices you make, resulting in vastly different characters depending on what you did at the beginning of the game.

The payoff is fantastic. The upper echelon of moves, with or without weapons, is pretty cool. There's nothing like watching your enemy explode and rain down around you in chunks, or pulling off combos ("Harmonic Combos" to be exact) that draw from different styles and send characters right back to their maker.

When you boot up Jade Empire, you'll be on your way to an engaging story, a challenging, rewarding combat experience and an impressive measure of character building. Because your character choices take you in such drastically different directions, you'll also be in for some replay out of curiosity alone – especially when you see what characters can do toward the end of the game. It's not of the same scope of KOTOR, and it's not limited by that game's image. It's one of the best RPG experiences you'll find.