One of the few reasons my bro and I decided to invest in an X-Box (well after its release) was to get Jade Empire.
The game, itself, has a story that is just what you can expect from BioWare - it won't disappoint there.
While I, personally, have no beefs with this game (I think it's one of the best 3rd person adventure games I've played recently), some people may find the combat too repetitive, as your initial martial art style will be what you use, predominantly, throughout the game, and it'll offer 3 or 4 unique moves/animations. That might irk a lot of people; but, for me, the satisfaction of using a speedy character, and punching an enemy 6 or 7 times before he/she could take one swing at me was eternally satisfying. Still, I can see some people picking Legendary Strike style, and being disappointed to find that their character only kicks the opponent in a few ways, but throws no punches. Likewise, the style I chose for my speedy character (Thousand Cuts) focused solely on punching. You can learn the other initial styles later in the game, but I assure you that you'll likely want to focus on levelling up your initial martial art style by the time you're given the chance to get one of the others. It's much better to specialize than to be a jack of all trades in this particular game, so you'll want to focus on one melee style, one weapon style, one "magic" style, and maybe one or two support styles (those are the techniques that allow you to drain Chi, or stun opponents).
The feel of the game is also quite neat. It's hard to describe without making references that would actually involve you playing the game, but, to make matters simple, it actually has a very good asthetic - at no point will you not feel like you're playing through an (obviously) Chinese sort of legend-type story.
I've played through it with a speedy character, and a balanced one, too. After playing through it (almost) twice, from start to finish, I can safely say that I recommend this game to anyone who's into adventure titles.