PSP Review: Jeanne D’Arc

Fans of the tactical RPG genre are facing a tough call this month on the PSP. Those who have not yet played Jeanne d’Arc are wondering if they should pony up the cash and take a chance on an untested franchise, or wait a week for the more widely recognized Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions to hit North American PSPs in an English localization. Here to shed some light on the topic, we have a review of Jeanne d’Arc — a competent but flawed strategy RPG from Japanese developer Level Five. Jeanne d’Arc is one of those games that showed all the signs of greatness in previews, but did not quite live up to its epic potential in final form. The good news is that Jeanne d’Arc is still a solid SRPG even if it doesn’t break new ground. True fans of the genre would be well advised to pick up BOTH of these games, but first timers might want to wait for our review of FF: Tactics to find out which one is more beginner-friendly.

The story of 15th century French heroine Jeanne d’Arc offers ample material for a SRPG, with epic battles, an intriguing cast of characters and a medieval backdrop. The developers have spiced things up a bit here by playing fast and loose with actual history and adding some magic and a materia-like elemental system into the mix. For the most part, this all works pretty well and provides a strong foundation for a solid strategy game.

The gameplay is ’strategic’ in a number of ways. The game gives you a large cast of characters, but you must decide how to kit out each of them with magical spells, weapons and special skills. A massive amount of possible skills and a limited number of slots for each character means that there is room for lots of customization, and no two characters will be alike. In-game, the action is broken into turns, in which each side may move pieces a limited number of squares on the board before carrying out an action, be it attacking or consuming a healing item. In some cases, attacking an enemy yields a counter-attack, which helps things stay lively despite the slower-paced gameplay. Battles typically last from 8-12 turns, which corresponds to about 20 minutes per battle. Completing the entire game will take most players from between 30-35 hours, giving the title a good amount of longevity.

The difficulty level of Jeanne d’Arc is something that the developers did not precisely pin down. At the beginning the game can seem punishing if the player does not constantly level up their characters by returning (somewhat nonsensically) to previously beaten stages for training. Later in the game, when Jeanne and some of the other characters attain uber status, players will be able to breeze through levels by blitzing the enemy with these overpowered heroes.

It is hard not to appreciate the attention and detail that have gone into every aspect of the game’s presentation. The most impressive visual aspect of Jeanne d’Arc is undoubtedly the anime-style clips which are played at key moments in the game. It would have been nice to have more of the story told through these hand-drawn cutscenes, but most of the plot events are shown using the game’s 3D engine, which does an adequate job despite looking a bit blocky. The game makes full use of the PSP’s wide screen format during gameplay, and most of the levels are gorgeous to look at, with the exception of a few that are too dark to make out subtle details. Certain menus could have been improved visually, and players will experience moderate load times when changing between the world map and menu screens.

If there is fault to be found with Jeanne d’Arc, it is that the game plays the strategy RPG formula too close to the book. The game re-hashes many gameplay elements — such as the elemental materia system — more or less successfully, but we can’t help feeling like we have seen all of this before. The dialogue has been translated competently, but we suspect that a certain je ne sais quoi was lost in translation, because many nuances in the dialogue are incomprehensible. Jeanne’s character seems to vacillate wildly between being content and being ragingly pissed-off, even within the span of a single conversation. An example of this in-game dialogue might go something like:

Liane: “What’s the matter Jeanne?”

Jeanne: “………”

Liane: “Well, it’s only normal”

Jeanne: “Grrr… I want to protect everyone!!!”

Liane: “………..”

The writing in role playing games has gotten consistently better over the years, so a return to this kind of cliché gibberish is rather disappointing given the pedigree of this game’s source material. Since the graphics, sound and gameplay are all top-notch, snappier writing would have helped pull the game together.

If you don’t really care much for the story and you are really only interested in the gameplay, Jeanne d’Arc does an admirable job of delivering the goods. It doesn’t break too many conventions in the Strategy RPG genre, but it doesn’t have to in order to be successful on its own. Unfortunately however, Jeanne d’Arc is not quite the definitive classic that it could have been if the developers had sharpened up the story and found a way to address the constant need for levelling. So, where does this leave you if you aren’t sure which tactical RPG to pick up this fall? Veteran tactical RPG fanatics should go out and try Jeanne d’Arc immediately, but first timers might want to wait for our review of Final Fantasy Tactics next week to find out if it offers a more well-rounded experience.

Things we liked: