Jeanne d'Arc

"Jeanne D'Arc is a must-have SRPG for anyone that owns a PSP."

Jeanne D'Arc is a grid based strategy role playing game similar to games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem, with its own unique features.

Storyline

The storyline is obviously based on the life of Joan of Arc. The game has added fantasy elements like monsters, magic and characters that are noticeably different than their real life counterparts. The story does keep itself interesting by providing some background on most of the characters (later on in the story), having great boss battles and having a couple of nice cutscenes to go along with it.

Learning Curve

The game starts out easy, giving you a bit of time to catch up. There is only one difficulty level, but it's very well balanced. The main factor in the games difficulty is your characters levels. But you should be able to maintain a balanced party, and if you find yourself too low of a level you can go back to almost any stage and play a replay (without story in it) for experience and some rare items. Overall, the difficulty is really balanced and feels just right.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics are very nice, every character has a good amount of detail and the game is cel-shaded. It looks great, not in a realistic sort of way but more of an artistic way. There are nice anime cutscenes in the middle of a few levels which look fine, and the attack animations are good as well, the magic animations could have been a bit better, but they do the job.

The soundtrack is all right, it's kind of classical, but upbeat during battles, like you would expect in an RPG. The only problem I had with it is that the game reuses music too much. You're going to hear the same background music a lot for the first parts of the game, but it gets a little different later on. The weapon noises, cries during battle and so on are very good. The voice acting during cutscenes is good too, but the French accents seem faked at times, but not everyone has them.

Combat / Gameplay

The game has excellent gameplay, providing good bosses, a good amount of different enemies, and lots of different special moves without making it too complicated. There are a ton of moves that your characters can do with "skill stones" that you get from battle and binding two skill stones together. These can be equipped to your characters and used in battle.

You get around 15 different characters as the game progresses, each falling into different classes such as:

-Mage (staff)
-Spear user
-Sword user
-Archer (bow and arrow)
-Whip user
-Axe user

These classes determine what kind of skill stones your characters will be able to use, what kind of equipment they will be able to equip, and other things like attack range (how far you can attack). The game makes it fun and encourages you to experiment with skill stones and all the different characters. The gameplay almost never gets boring. After you finish the main quest, you will still have side quests to do after the game which pose a nice challenge and give you appropriate rewards.

A big part of the gameplay is the ability to "transform". Only certain characters can transform, and in all a total of five characters will be able to do it. You have to wait a certain amount of time to transform for each battle, and you are limited to a certain amount of transformations during each battle, but as you progress you get to do it more. When you transform, your character gets "holy armor", which means all their stats significantly rise, and they get a skill called godspeed, which means every time they deal the finishing blow on an opponent, they get to move again in the same turn. Transformations are very useful and can really save you during tight situations in the game.

There is a rock paper scissors element in the game that you are not required to use. There are skill stones called "elements". There are three elements, Luna, Stella and Sol. If you equip an element to a character, it takes up one skill stone slot and lets it hit higher on the element weaker to it, but makes it more vulnerable against the element stronger to it.
Luna beats Sol, Sol beats Stella and Stella beats Luna. However, if you do not equip any of the stones on your characters, they will have no disadvantage or advantage over the opponents. You can switch your characters elements at any time except for during a battle. If you think the majority of your opponents on a stage is one element, you can throw a bunch of the right element on your team and have an easier win, but if they are more diverse it isn't always worth it.

Summary

Jeanne D'Arc is a great SRPG for a system which is desperate for some quality RPGS (the PSP). It's simply an all around great game, with no huge flaws holding it back. So, next time you're looking for a good RPG, get Jeanne D'Arc, you won't regret it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/15/07

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