Jeanne d'Arc

"A charming grid-based SRPG that's not perfect, but a lot of fun to play nonetheless."

Jeanne d'Arc is a strategy RPG made by Level 5 (Dragon Quest VIII, Rogue Galaxy) that focuses on the life of Joan of Arc. Jeanne d'Arc plays a lot like Tactics Ogre or Final Fantasy Tactics, but has enough variety and unique gameplay mechanics that it doesn't feel like a "clone". The end result is one of the more enjoyable, charming SRPGs released in recent years.

Graphics / Music

Graphics in Jeanne d'Arc are very nice. The characters are very detailed and each one looks unique. The attacks and spell effects are simple, but they work. The anime cutscenes that the game uses to tell major parts of the story look nice, though the voice acting and dubbing is pretty bad. Jeanne d'Arc looks like many of the old grid-based PS1 titles, but with more detail. It's almost nostalgic.

Music is unmemorable, but solid. Like most SRPGs, it's quite orchestral and baroque. I think I like it about as much as I liked FFT's music, but then I never got too much into that soundtrack. The PSP is pretty good on sound quality for a handheld, too. Sound effects are also generally good. All of the screams and spell effects are decent, and none of the other effects grated on me at any point. Overall, Jeanne d'Arc's aesthetic qualities are above average, and while it won't wow you, you never complain about them either.

Story

Jeanne d'Arc is a re-telling of the story of Joan of Arc. The main character is Jeanne herself and it follows her historical story pretty closely at first. In fact, it's like the writers watched The Messenger on loop and told the story verbatim for the first 5 or 10 hours.

It doesn't take too long before the story diverges, though. Jeanne d'Arc is a lot like the Shadow Hearts series in that it takes historical locations and events and rewrites them to fit the game. Like Shadow Hearts 2, Jeanne d'Arc starts out in Domremy. War is waging between the English and the French when Jeanne hears a voice and is given a mysterious power, and your quest begins.

The story itself is pretty mediocre. The dialogue is fairly bad and the anime cutscenes can be brutal. Those things would be so much better if everyone threw away their fake french accents and just talked like they naturally would. On top of that, the characters are pretty bad. There's a couple of characters that you could call decent and a handful that are painless because they're not very prominent, but Jeanne and the other main characters are just bad. It's not game-breakingly bad, but there are far better casts than in Jeanne d'Arc.

Gameplay

Gameplay is the important part of SRPGs, and Jeanne d'Arc delivers. Battles are pretty standard if you've played a grid-based SRPG before. Jeanne d'Arc features an "spirit system" where each character belongs to one of three affinities - sun, moon or star. Damage is governed by which affinity you are in an A > B > C > A fashion. You can ignore it if you want, but if you learn what hurts what you'll end up finishing battles quicker. You can also equip certain skills that will let you do more damage to a certain type (but you'll take more damage of the opposite type back).

Jeanne d'Arc differs from the FFT/Tactics Ogre mold in that there are no "generics". Every character you get is a storyline character, and they never die. Dying in battle just means you're gone until the next fight. Every character has a certain weapon and armour type and they follow that path to a T. There's not a whole lot of customization when it comes to equipment, you just buy your upgrades when they're available or try to beat some optional bosses to get some kickass gear.

The major addition to Jeanne d'Arc is the introduction of "armlets". Certain storyline characters have bracelets on that let them transform into a stronger character for a couple of turns. These transformations are notably stronger than their regular forms, have a lot more HP and a new skill that usually does quite a bit of damage (though it will cost a bunch of MP). That's nothing compared to "Godspeed", though. If you kill an enemy while in this transformation, you'll use an ability called Godspeed and get another turn. If you can draw a whole bunch of enemies near you and plan your moves out correctly, you can pretty much solo the entire battlefield. It's ridiculously overpowered and a lot of fun to play with. You may end up being grossly overlevelled, but that's part of the fun. Armlets add an extra layer of strategy to a game that's already fairly deep.

Skills are another aspect of the game. As you level, you get more and more skill slots for your character. Enemies often drop skills that you can then equip in the menu after battle. Some are stat-ups, some are spells, some are class-specific abilities. Later on, you'll get the ability to combine skills to make brand-new ones. It's very similar to the magic pot from Dragon Quest VIII, and a lot of fun to play with. You can craft some very nice support skills and magic spells for free if you know what you're doing.

Battles are pretty fun, for the most part. Jeanne d'Arc is a fairly easy game and you level QUICK. If you run around fighting randoms, you might end up 20-30 levels above where you're supposed to be. This might dissuade the "hardcore" SRPG players, but I found it rather nice. I don't care for mindless grinding and Jeanne d'Arc doesn't require it. It's not pathetically easy, either - just not as grind-y and difficult as Tactics Ogre. There's a bunch of optional maps with lots of prizes that will appeal to the more hardcore SRPG player.

There's a couple of exceptions where the game isn't very fun, though. One is the idea of a limited number of turns per battle. Every map gives you a set number of both friend of foe turns, and if it exceeds it it's an automatic game over. Usually it's a non-factor, but for the battles where it is a factor it's fairly annoying. There's no rhyme or reason for this limit and it's not like there's any reason to hold you back. Nothing is more annoying than fighting a perfect battle but running out of time because you weren't charging at the enemy at full speed. This only happened to me once, but it still sucked.

The other exception is in the map size and some of the "goals" of the level. Some maps are really, really large, and Jeanne d'Arc doesn't play very quick. You can spend a good 45 minutes on one map without even meaning to because they're so big. It's not the most 'portable' of portable games. There's a quicksave feature that works just fine, but it feels like more of a console game than a pick-up-and-play title. Some people will undoubtedly prefer this and I don't mind it, but sometimes enough is enough and you want to get on with the battle without having to move forward for four turns straight. As for the "goals", there are some particularly annoying goals instead of the normal "kill everybody" or "kill the boss" objectives that most SRPGs go to. There are quite a few "get to the end of the stage without having anybody die" objectives, and given how easy it is for a mage or an archer to die, this can be frustrating. There's also one level where you have to guide this level 1 NPC to safety, all while enemies are respawning all around you and they can one-shot him without a problem. That was a pretty annoying level, though not particularly difficult. There are some "don't let the enemy reach the castle!" levels too, which wouldn't be so bad if your characters weren't scattered all over the battlefield. Again, these aren't hard, just a bit annoying. As long as you've got a good map and a good objective, Jeanne d'Arc is a lot of fun. When things like turn counts and objectives and huge maps get in the way, the game gets a little tedious. Overall though, the gameplay is pretty good. You can nitpick at it for a number of reasons, but battles are always fun, there's a good amount of depth there and the game has a hell of a lot of polish.

Overall

Jeanne d'Arc is a damn fun game. It has its flaws, but none are even close to game-breaking and the overall charm of the game is pretty high. It's a nice, casual, 25-30 hour romp that you can probably stretch to 100 if you wanted to, given all the optional maps and post-game extras. SRPGs have been slowly dying off with the advent of the new generation, but Level 5 shows that portable systems are the perfect place for them. I'm not sure if Jeanne d'Arc is a system-seller, but it's certainly a title worth checking out if you've got a PSP. Jeanne d'Arc isn't some low-budget handheld SRPG; it's a legit game that should be mentioned in the same breath with the other popular SRPGs of the genre. If you like SRPGs, this is a must-play.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/11/07

Game Release: Jeanne d'Arc (US, 08/21/07)