Jade Empire/YMMV

• Complete Monster: There's no sugar-coating it. Bar none, the Closed Fist path is probably the most villainous path a protagonist can take in any Bioware RPG. It's like the writers for the KOTOR series saved up the evil they weren't allowed to put in due to licensing issues and dumped it all in one game. It doesn't just Kick the Dog, it rapes its corpse.
  • As well, the Lotus Assassins specialize in kidnapping innocent people on the slightest pretext from villages too small to protest and then killing them in as horrifically slow and painful a fashion as they can imagine in order to seal their souls in golems. That's just about as vicious as you can get in a game intended for general audiences.
    • General Audiences?
  • Also, literal Kick the Dog moments- if you max your Closed Fist points, you can kill lapdogs for health powerups. This uses the standard "breaking-open-a-jar" animation- a kick...
  • This is lampshaded in the Player Character's conversation with Acolyte Trainer Guang in the Lotus Assassins' fortress. In Knights of the Old Republic, you must infiltrate a Sith academy and it's possible to appeal to the better natures of many students or would-be students, turning them away from their dark path. When you start to ask her about why she joined the group, Guang tells you outright, "there are no Lotus Assassins with hearts of gold."
  • That the Closed Fist path is this way is something of a writing fumble, in that the Low Path isn't evil in the way the Dark Side is - it is often used to motivate evil, but the philosophy as such actually has a 'good' interpretation (let people grow strong on their own but intercede when the odds are too unreasonable, basically), just as the Way of the Open Palm can be interpreted in an 'evil' manner (Sun Li's ideas for the Empire). The game just tends to only give evil Closed Fist and good Open Palm options.
  • Captain Sen. At a young age, he left a boy to drown, saying that he will tell the others what he did. He goes on to commit atrocities as an Imperial Army Officer, and doesn't care whether Fading Moon kills the poor. He shows no remorse for any of those actions, unlike Aishi.
• Crazy Awesome: Black Whirlwind, and how.
• Game Breaker: Quite a few:
  • Mirabelle, a gun in a setting with swords and fists, though its somewhat balanced by the large amount of focus and the time needed to load after each shot.
    • The time needed to load after each shot is significant even when fully upgraded, it can misfire, and it's arguably not powerful enough for its rate of fire.
  • The Jade Golem transformation is completely unbalanced and will break through pretty much anything in seconds while exposing the player to almost no damage, even when fighting the game's final boss enemies. While there is a Chi drain active while using it, battle tends to end so quickly with it active that you lose little Chi (and one of your party members can simply meditate and constantly restore your Chi anyway).
    • Oddly, the Jade Golem is weakest to, well, groups of Mooks. Jade Golem's strength comes from being invulnerable to all status effects and most advanced attacks... which Mooks usually don't have. Groups of Mooks can simply surround you and wail on you, chipping away at your health while you slowly kill them one by one.
  • Before the Jade Golem transformation is unlocked, there is also the Storm Dragon style which has a near ten-second stun effect, during which the play is free to attack away with impunity. Combined with its resonance combo producing an endless supply of Focus orbs, the player can easily activate and remain in Focus Mode for the entire duration of combat so long as the combos are activated. This effect does not work on ghosts, however... and many of the harder enemies cannot have Resonance Combos used against them. The Jade Golem transformation, on the other hand, works on everything.
  • Earlier still, Toad style is pretty unbeatable too.
  • Paralysing Palm. Hit your enemy a few times, go into focus mode, switch to a damaging style, go to town.
  • In-story, the Phoenix Unity style was banned from arena matches for this reason.
  • Hell, at the default difficulty even the sword you get a few minutes in will make you an unstoppable whirlwind through most of the game as long as you upgrade the style and buy the upgrade later. The dual-swords style makes everything but spirit fights from that point on a total joke even at the hard setting. Dual-axes are even worse, if only because it doesn't cost Focus points to use when fully upgraded; however, if you can kill the guy who carries the Tang's Vengeance axes, you probably don't need them anyway.
• Goddamned Bats: Lost Spirits in particular; they have a projectile attack that is difficult to block.
• Magnificent Bastard: Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard seems to think he is one, judging by his name. Sun Li, however, actually is. He and Rommel share more in common then "just" tactical genius.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Sun Li crosses it for the player when he kills them and reveals that he was using them as a pawn the entire time, and then crosses it for Dawn Star, his own daughter, during the final battle when he coldly brushes off her attempts to reason with him and smugly declare that she was "just another tool".
  • Emperor Sun Hai crosses it when it is revealed that he was knowingly responsible for everything the Lotus Assassins did.
  • As a child, Captain Sen let a young boy die to avoid getting in trouble.
• Serial Numbers Filed Off: Jade Empire is not a straight rip-off of Bridge of Birds, but it is certainly heavily inspired by its concept and takes several important character names (Master Li, Henpecked Hou) straight from the novel, although the characters themselves are different.
  • Additionally, "Lu the Prodigy" seems much like Lu Yu a.k.a. Number Ten Ox, and they share a plot point: a flooded city hiding a secret artifact.
• That One Level: Rather late in the game, you are killed, must navigate the afterlife and the defiled temple of the Water Dragon, and face one of the hardest battle in the game against three very tough copies of yourself, in order to be resurrected.
• Too Good to Last: A sequel was in development, but was canceled before it could even be announced. Bioware has said that it would like to revisit the series in the future though...