Jeanne D'Arc Review
Have you ever wanted to play a tactics game loosely based on the Joan of Arc story, well I didn't think I would, but I have to say that I was happily mistaken. You will be playing the part of Jeanne, a small town girl that tries to help a fallen soldier only to have an armlet appear on her wrist. Then she starts to hear the voice of "god" telling her what she needs to do with the armlet. You will be playing through varying levels either to progress the story or perhaps level up those characters you haven't had in battle in a while. This is an older game for the PSP, but it does not show its age.
The graphics are right where they need to be when it comes to the capabilities of the PSP. The characters all have a very distinct look to them, and in that you can easily identify who is where. The HUD for the game, during battles, doesn't clutter the screen and gives you just the amount of info you need. The cutscenes are animated and are very well done. My one gripe is that there aren't any sub-titles during them.
The music is fitting, it doesn't take away from the game, and gets you geared up for whatever you're trying to accomplish. I do wish that there were voices during the dialogs, outside of the cut scenes, because they were very well done, but as this is an early PSP game I'm sure they didn't want to test their luck.
The controls are easy to interpret and feel solid. Then again in a turn based game there's not much you can do to not get the controls right.
So as stated before its a Joan of Arc story that gets a little bit of fantasy wrapped up in it with a young king being possessed by a demon and all sorts of demons being under control of the English. You will be gaining many different allies, and they will bring a wide variety of skills and weapons to your group. The game does have its moments of go here, and then go there moments, but that's what you're going to get with a linear storyline, and it isn't a bad one to have to go through. The armlet that your main character has does have some nice powers associated with it that will become more involved on how you conduct battle as you go through the game. In most places that you previously battled you can have a free battle to try to level up your characters. I found that very useful when it came to the battles that I thought might be overly difficult.
This game is why you should own a PSP. The only thing that really did kind of get on my nerves was the shop system. There was no way to buy equipment and equip it and then sell your old stuff without first having to leave the store after purchase to select the equip option, then exit out of that then go back into the store. If you are looking for something that is a tactics game but doesn't have "Final" or "Fantasy" plastered on the side of it, you need to get this game. This is one of the few games that I am keeping after playing it, I give it a 9.4 out of 10.
