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November 28th, 2006, 23:17 Posted By: wraggster
Via IGN
Our story begins long before young King Henry VI finds himself possessed by demons. Years ago, a great war was waged by mankind against the demonic minions of the god of death, who were attempting to enter the human world. Five brave heroes created five bracelets, which they used to seal away both the death god and the king of the demon kind.
As King Henry ascends the throne during the 15th century, France and England have been at war for one hundred years, and Henry's caretaker Beaufort has had enough. He calls upon the power of the death god (the one sealed away by those five heroes of legend), who proceeds to possess the young king.
So that explains how Henry got demonized (this, incidentally, is unrelated to the insanity that would inflict Henry during mid-life). How the British army found its ranks filled with trolls and beasts isn't so clear. One thing's definitely sure, though. Level 5's latest, and its first new title since last year's Rogue Galaxy, may bear the name Jeanne d'Arc, but it's based only loosely on the real life Joan of Arc figure. Change a few names here and there, and few would recognize this game as having any historical background.
The in game Joan, like the real one, hears the voice of God commanding her to do certain tasks, although our Joan appears to be a bit more than 12 years old when she gets her first communiqué early in the game. God tells her to use the power of a mysterious bracelet that appears on her wrist -- one of the five bracelets that were used to defeat the baddies in the past -- in order to defeat her enemies, namely the British army (trolls and all).
There's a lot of text-based dialogue in Jeanne d'Arc, and a surprising number of fully-voiced animated movie sequences, but I wouldn't call the game story-based. In the seven hours that I've managed to play so far, the story has felt a bit disjointed, as if you're checking in on Joan every now and then rather than following her along a continuous path.
The focus with this title is on gameplay, and if you're into Japanese style strategy games, that should be just fine. You'll recognize the grid-based strategy from games like Final Fantasy Tactics. You take turns with the enemy forces, moving your party of warriors across a grid and making use of magic and physical attacks.
The game presents you with winning conditions, sometimes requiring that you defeat a particular enemy or all the enemies, sometimes requiring that you simply get from point A to point B. There are also losing conditions; you might have to make sure that a particular character doesn't die.
Making things particularly difficult is a turn limit. You're required to clear your final objective before your move count reaches a specified amount. This keeps you on the offensive, rather than letting you wait around for enemies to come in and attack. Since you don't have time to double back and take care of enemies in the distance, you might find yourself getting surrounded late in battle if you're not careful. If you're not used to thinking in a Japanese strategy game, you'll probably die a few times with Jeanne d'Arc.
Also unique to Jeanne d'Arc is the effect characters have on one-another during battle. When incurring attack, adjacent party members absorb damage from the targeted character. Position is also important on offense, as performing one attack will leave certain grid positions in a "burning" state, meaning extra damage if you perform your next attack from there.
The game also requires a good amount of planning in the build up to battle. In my play time, I've managed to get thirteen characters in my party, although only five or six can be brought into a given battle. You have to chose wisely between the various classes of characters, which include archers, axe wielders and swordsmen. One thief character even has the ability to erect ladders and bridges, useful for scaling walls and crossing chasms. A few characters, Joan included, can transform for a limited time into more powerful alter egos. You earn new transformations as the game progresses.
In addition to creating a party, you also have to make sure your characters are equipped well for the battle at hand. You can equip swords, armor and shields, but the big twist with Jeanne d'Arc is in its accessory system. Accessories give your characters special attacks, magic spells and updated parameters. The number of accessories you can equip varies by character and increases as you go up in level. At my current point, Joan can equip six accessories, while a few characters are limited to just three slots.
How you equip your character affects their battle performance in ways besides added attacks. Your characters are assigned one of three elemental values depending on their equipment. Enemies also have this property. The elementals are set up like paper-rock-scissors, giving certain characters advantages over others. You're free to survey the battle field ahead of time to make sure you equip your characters appropriately to deal with the current set of enemies. Like the turn count, the elementals are something that you must pay attention to, or you don't have a chance of emerging victorious in battle.
As should be expected from this genre, you don't actually control Joan and your other party members outside of battle. All progression takes place on an over world map which grows with new areas once you've cleared past locations. The progression in my play time has been completely linear, but you're free to go back to past locations to pick up items at a shop or enter a free battle mode.
Jeanne d'Arc suffers from some of the flaws that tend to plague games of this type. Preparing your characters for battle with new equipment and accessories is too much of a chore. This is a problem with many strategy games, although on the bright side, there's a lot to consider with Jeanne d'Arc, so perhaps being forced to take your time is a good thing. Despite flaws like this, Jeanne is surprisingly polished for Level 5's first grid-based strategy title.
It's also the developer's first PSP game. There are some signs of this, with a bit too much loading for comfort, a few visual effects that don't look so hot in practice, and some occasionally slow enemy AI routines, but on the whole, the game's presentation holds up well. The visuals have a solidity to them that's comparable at times to PS2 titles, and the game does something I don't recall having seen in a PSP game before: a load-free transition from a movie scene to an in-game cut-scene.
Jeanne d'Arc may stray a bit from the real story of the heroine that serves as its namesake, but if you're into Japanese strategy games, that shouldn't be too much cause for concern. I've played through 10 chapters and died at least once on most of them, but I keep coming back for more. I plan on continuing, at least until Joan gets executed by British trolls.
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