Sublime Strategy
Jeanne d'Arc is so damn good we couldn't think of a non-retarded headline for the review.
Published: August 25, 2007
When you stop to think about it, a strategy RPGs natural home is on handhelds. The pacing effectively lets you pick up or drop things at any time (especially now that handhelds can sleep instead of outright turning off), and the gameplay works just as well for single battles as it does for hours-long stretches in bed or on the train or mid-flight. In fact, the moment I fell in love with Jeanne d'Arc was when I managed to chew through about three hours of the storyline and battles, bookended by getting on and off a plane and still felt a monumental sense of accomplishment.
There is something particularly special about Jeanne d'Arc, though, and as someone who loves all of the bigger SRPGs out there from Final Fantasy Tactics to Disgaea to Advance Wars (or even its PSP could-be cousin, Field Commander), I've come to accept that each of those games satisfies a different itch. Stylistically, Jeanne is probably closest to Final Fantasy Tactics, but in true Level-5 fashion, the Japanese developer has take the core concepts of the genre and made them their own.
Part of the attraction, too, is the sheer absurdity of the source material. Reimagining the tale of Joan of Arc as Jeanne having voices in her head and being able to transform into a Sailor Moon-style fighter for justice while tearing around France with a band of anthropomorphic lions and dogs all to fight the English who enlisted their own catgirls and lizardmen is just so adorably insane that it absolutely works. And, true to their pedigree, the cel-shaded visuals actually work beautifully on the PSP (as do the awesome animated segments, of which there are a great deal).
It's not so much that Level-5 did anything drastically different from what you're used to, it's just that they did it so damn well, and once again, they deliver a game that's absolutely packed with gameplay; you could easily throw 70-80 hours into the game and still have some grinding to do, that's just how the developer likes to make their games. As it stands, you'll probably notch at least a few dozen of 'em before the storyline runs its course, but at no time does the game ever feel bogged down by the length of the story. There are enough cutscenes peppered throughout, whether animated or in-game, and the localization is done so well that you want to see what happens next, which is the sign of any good RPG.
Jeanne eschews the normal SRPG job system, thereby locking a character into a single role, be it spearman, swordsman, archer or what have you. Rather than being a limitation, however, this actually works to the game's advantage; you always know the striking distances of set enemies and of those in your own party, and the game's handy system for helping characters learn new abilities (complete with an elaborate and addictive crafting system that I'll get to in a bit) means battles are usually a bit speedier than you've come to expect from some SRPGs. Oh, sure, you'll have your hour-long tussles, and some of the final battles in the game may end up being almost twice that if you really, really take your time, but because there's always a ticking click in that you have to complete your objective by a set number of rounds, things are kept urgent and ever-moving.
I never did get used to the time limit, and more than once the battle ended literally just one turn before I could have finished everyone off, but it does fundamentally change how you play the game by forcing decisive, combined attacks instead of being reactive to enemies charging your ranks. This is important, too, because the gems that are buried in the gauntlets of the five main ass kickers in the game (who are slowly revealed to you as you play through the storyline) allow for the "Godspeed" skill, gifting any anime-influenced transformed characters with a free extra turn that round if they can kill someone off.
There is something particularly special about Jeanne d'Arc, though, and as someone who loves all of the bigger SRPGs out there from Final Fantasy Tactics to Disgaea to Advance Wars (or even its PSP could-be cousin, Field Commander), I've come to accept that each of those games satisfies a different itch. Stylistically, Jeanne is probably closest to Final Fantasy Tactics, but in true Level-5 fashion, the Japanese developer has take the core concepts of the genre and made them their own.
Part of the attraction, too, is the sheer absurdity of the source material. Reimagining the tale of Joan of Arc as Jeanne having voices in her head and being able to transform into a Sailor Moon-style fighter for justice while tearing around France with a band of anthropomorphic lions and dogs all to fight the English who enlisted their own catgirls and lizardmen is just so adorably insane that it absolutely works. And, true to their pedigree, the cel-shaded visuals actually work beautifully on the PSP (as do the awesome animated segments, of which there are a great deal).
It's not so much that Level-5 did anything drastically different from what you're used to, it's just that they did it so damn well, and once again, they deliver a game that's absolutely packed with gameplay; you could easily throw 70-80 hours into the game and still have some grinding to do, that's just how the developer likes to make their games. As it stands, you'll probably notch at least a few dozen of 'em before the storyline runs its course, but at no time does the game ever feel bogged down by the length of the story. There are enough cutscenes peppered throughout, whether animated or in-game, and the localization is done so well that you want to see what happens next, which is the sign of any good RPG.
Jeanne eschews the normal SRPG job system, thereby locking a character into a single role, be it spearman, swordsman, archer or what have you. Rather than being a limitation, however, this actually works to the game's advantage; you always know the striking distances of set enemies and of those in your own party, and the game's handy system for helping characters learn new abilities (complete with an elaborate and addictive crafting system that I'll get to in a bit) means battles are usually a bit speedier than you've come to expect from some SRPGs. Oh, sure, you'll have your hour-long tussles, and some of the final battles in the game may end up being almost twice that if you really, really take your time, but because there's always a ticking click in that you have to complete your objective by a set number of rounds, things are kept urgent and ever-moving.
I never did get used to the time limit, and more than once the battle ended literally just one turn before I could have finished everyone off, but it does fundamentally change how you play the game by forcing decisive, combined attacks instead of being reactive to enemies charging your ranks. This is important, too, because the gems that are buried in the gauntlets of the five main ass kickers in the game (who are slowly revealed to you as you play through the storyline) allow for the "Godspeed" skill, gifting any anime-influenced transformed characters with a free extra turn that round if they can kill someone off.
