PixlBit

Strategy RPGs have been around for a long time. They come in many shapes and sizes, but “long” and “fantasy” tend to be the operative words. Enter Jeanne d’Arc, a PSP game by Level 5 loosely based on the life of Joan of Arc. With a shorter than typical playtime for the genre and less emphasis on complex systems, Jeanne d’Arc is the low-stress SRPG.

Even though the game is based on a real historical figure, don’t expect historical accuracy in Jeanne d’Arc.  The story revolves around the fighting between the French and English at the time but things get hairy when the Duke of Bedford, the uncle of England’s young king Henry VI, summons a powerful demon named Gilvaroth to help give them an edge over the French. The fiend takes up residence in Henry’s body and begins his plans to conquer France and the world. So yes, by the end of the game you are fighting to save the whole world. While that’s typical of a Japanese RPG, Jeanne d’Arc plays with some genre conventions in unexpected ways. One of your characters has amnesia, for instance, but it’s one of the secondary characters, not Jeanne. It also dabbles in some existentialism near the end of the game, a JRPG necessity, but it plays out as a series of short battles punctuated by brief snippets of dialogue rather than longwinded angsty monologues. And as for the destruction of the hero’s hometown…oh wait, that does happen at the beginning. But throughout the game it subverts your expectations enough to remain interesting.

The story itself does a good job of moving things along, though it won’t have you on the edge of your seat too often. I was shocked, however, by a dark turn of events about halfway through the campaign, proving that the game wasn’t content to pull its punches. A pleasant surprise. The characters are certainly not all developed (and need not be), but each has a distinct personality. Sometimes all you really know about them is the way they talk (e.g., the thief with the terrible French accent, the archer that acts like a ten-year-old) but it’s enough. No cookie cutters here.

Visually the game is somewhere between superdeformed and realistic, though closer to the latter. The 3D characters and environments are detailed yet clean. I never had trouble telling what something was or where I could move. The camera moves around quite a bit during story scenes, which helps keep things visually interesting, and you’re given full control of the camera during battle to zoom and rotate it as much as you want. The orchestral score isn’t all that memorable but is always fitting to the situation, whether that calls for grand bombast or quiet solitude. I did often find myself humming along while playing, though, which is always a good sign.

I didn’t know anything about the gameplay before starting Jeanne d’Arc other than it is a turn-based strategy RPG. I was glad to discover that it’s not a Final Fantasy Tactics clone, which might disappoint some, but give it a chance and you’ll discover an engaging battle system that stands on its own.

There certainly is not the same level of customization as FFT. Each character is locked into a class from the beginning and can use only certain kinds of weapons and armor and you can use only the characters the story brings your way, though you’ll rarely lack choices. New weapons and armor also become scarce later in the game. The strategy comes from what skills you choose to equip on your characters. Skills come in four varieties: red, purple, green, and blue. Red and purple are both weapon skills, special attacks and latent skills, respectively. Green are magic skills and blue are stat increases and supplemental abilities. Red and green abilities cost MP to use, while purple and blue are passive and therefore always active. The higher the character’s level, the more skill slots are available. The weapon skills available to each character vary depending on what weapon they use (obviously) but all the magic and status skills are available to everyone. So if you want to forgo any special physical attacks with Jeanne and load her up with fireballs, lightning, and an HP boost, you can. You get more skills by defeating enemies, though sometimes you can buy select skills in shops. Early on in the game you unlock the ability to combine skills together, which adds a nice crafting feel to the game and makes your skills useful outside of battle.

Adding a further wrinkle to the combat are three elemental affinities—Sol, Stella, and Luna—available as status skills and which work like rock-paper-scissors. Sol is strong against Stella but weak against Luna; Luna is strong against Sol but weak against Stella (I’ll leave you to figure Stella out lol). And you can always leave your characters without an elemental affinity so that they’re not extra strong or weak against anything. Before starting a battle you’re able to survey the field and see the enemies you’ll be facing as well as where you’ll be starting. This pre-battle reconnaissance becomes necessary later in the game as you’ll want to tailor your characters against the opposition.

One last battle consideration is the armlets. Jeanne gets one right off the bat but you’ll eventually come across four other characters with them. Without going into the story reason for their existence, the armlets allow their wearers to transform, which gives them snazzy armor, stat boosts, and a gem-specific special attack. Gems automatically fuse with the armlets as you find them and each gem can be used only once per battle. The transformation lasts just two or three turns before the character reverts to their original state. But the best part about transforming is Godspeed. If you kill an enemy while transformed, Godspeed kicks in and gives your character another turn. With a little crowd control by your party, a single transformed character can sweep through a much larger enemy force and turn the tide of battle.

If this all sounds a little overwhelming, don’t worry. The game does an excellent job of easing you into things. Really, it’s not that difficult if you keep your wits about you. I died only two or three times over the course of the campaign and really didn’t struggle with a mission till I faced Gilvaroth on his home turf. Without the deep (and often time consuming) customization and permanent character death found in a lot of other genre titles, Jeanne d’Arc is almost relaxing to play by comparison. The campaign isn’t too long (took me about 57 hours) but the fun battle system makes plunging into the postgame content an easy decision. Recommending the game to anyone with a PSP is an equally easy decision. Unless you dislike RPGs entirely, you’ll find something to like in Jeanne d’Arc.

Verdict: 4.5 stars