New Computer Game: Jade Empire!

Three words: graphics, combat, storyline!

 Graphics: 

This is in a demon-sickened forest, with appropriately somber veils of mist, waterfalls, trees, and flowers.  Below is a tiny corner of the Celestial Realm where the spirit guardian of the above forest lives.  I think the mushrooms are a manifestation of the toad-like demon in the wood who is trying to muscle in, but it could just be that heaven is full of giant mushrooms.  You never know. 

My perennial demand that my games be beautiful is more than fulfilled here.  In fact, I'm drooling over the quality of the scenery and the animation, and if I'm not expecting a fight I'll slow my character to a walk and gawk at the scenery as we move around. 

Combat:

A new style of combat for me to learn.  Rather than me controlling everyone in my party's tactics and strategy and strike/block/dodge being all handled by the computerized dice rolling, I have to worry about my own style/attack/block/dodge/run/move-move-MOVE!  I'm much better at dodging than I am at blocking, and I'm still adjusting the control sensitivity.  Also, large melee combat starts to get a bit laggy as my processor struggles to keep up.  My followers do their thing without my input (and I can only have one follower helping out at a time.  Sadness.)  Dawn Star (in pink in the heaven screenshot) is bad-ass with a Chinese-style broadsword.  I use primarily staff or metal claws, but I'm also studying several magical combat styles.  Also I died a lot in the first chapters of the storyline.  The black hooded things that look like No-Face gone beserk (middle-left side of above screenshot, and watch Spirited Away for No-Face) are the worst.  They fire some kind of magic seeker-weapon that can curve and follow you when you try to dodge.   

Storyline:

We're in a romanticized version of ancient China, with magic and spirits and restless ghosts and assassins and primitive rockets and flying machines.  Above is my little gang of outcasts and adventurers.  The guy at the back right with the hat is Kang the mad.  He lets me do the kicking, likes explosions, and gets ticked off if I scratch the paint on his precious Dragonfly flyer while dodging nasties.  The small child is Wild Flower, the spirit anchor for a large guardian demon who is allied to my Destiny (and yes, it is indeed Destiny with a capital D).  Dawn Star is my childhood companion with a Mysterious Past, which said past seems to be related to the pessimistic ex-assassin Sagacious Zu, who is standing next to Sky.  I met Sky while taking down a pirate stronghold: he was out for vengence on the pirates, and asked to join me after we kicked some pirate butt.  He likes to talk and has an eye for the ladies, Dawn Star in particular.  The burly giant and the skinny cook are recent additions.  Burly is a brawling, drunken mercenary who likes to fight, preferably while drunk.  The cook keeps burly supplied with wine.  I would actually have preferred to send them away, but it seems your core cast of characters is not as variable as in Baldur's Gate.  But hey, I don't ever have to take them along for a fight, and they are funny.      

Not visible around our campfire is a celestial bureaucrat, Zin Bu the Magic Abacus, who's in a snit because he got demoted because he couldn't keep up with  tracking my exploits (so my position on the Celestial Wheel can be properly judged.  This takes mountains of forms, in triplicate.  Heaven has a fearsome bureaucracy.)  He's now my personal buyer/seller and is hoping to get promoted again.

Most of the plot is classic adventure fantasy, done with excellent dialog and satisfying side quests.  My favorite so far was the two ghosts of drowned children who are lost and frightened and lonely and angry, and my character was able to give them peace.  We've also saved the village Dawn Star and I grew up in from pirates and then lost it to assassins, crashed a stolen flyer, saved a teahouse for its rightful owner, arranged a marriage, cleared the demons out of the forest and acquired the map we need to head for Imperial City.  Onward!