Enjoy your history lesson! Complete with "Artistic Liberties!"
Worst Feature: You get so many characters that you can't possibly consistantly use them all, so character leveling gets pretty skewed as you get farther in...Frequent Loading...
Now I watch The History Channel a lot, but mostly for U.S. Military stuff and anything having to do with the occult and UFOs. I know the gist of the Joan Of Arc story, but nothing outside of the basics. But the idea of taking actual recorded history and turning it into a game appeals to me, so during my place of work's closing sale, I took this back to my warehouse and hid it till it dropped...to a measly $10-$15, brand new. It's not quite what I expected, but the results are very good.
The game takes the basic idea behind the Joan of Arc story and takes it in a very JPRG direction with villians other then just the English army. This includes demons, dragons and monsters. But you start the game as Jeanne, living peacefully in her home village, when during the town festival the English army arrives with monsters in tow. After they slaughter everyone but Jeanne, her sister Liane and their friend Roger (Pronouced "ROE-JER", remember...it's France) a panicked Jeanne see's a dead French soldier wearing a glowing armlet. Hearing an unknown voice from the heavens telling her to take it, she complies and it transforms her into a powerful warrior with blessed armor. And with her two companions in tow she fights off the English hordes in her town and sets off to liberate France from King Henry's clutches.
One thing I really enjoyed about the use of the story, is rather then simply take that idea and run wild with it, Jeanne D'Arc actually roughly follows historical events as they happened for the first half of the game until the more RPGish plot reveals itself. (It even has a neat little twist on the execution of Joan Of Arc) You as Jeanne and her party, will lift the seige of Orléans and see that Charles the VII is crowned as king of France. Even a large number of background characters are actual historical people. (La Hire though...while a real man...is portrayed as a Lion/man) But about midway through, the plot will take a more RPGish turn, which is vaugely inspired by The Lord Of The Rings. (Which isn't bad, I mean that's a great story to borrow from...)
While most of this story is told through simple text portraits with character art beside them, some if it is told through splendid animated cutscenes. These are done in a Japanese Anime style, and are drawn really well. The voice overs are fantastic, with convincing French accents that fit their characters all around. They add a nice level of visual presentation to the game.
But how is the game itself? Well, it's a strategy RPG in a pretty straightforward sense. You move one a world map and select what area you want to go into, this could be to shop, fight in free stages or go through one of the regular battles to advance the story.
The battles of course take place upon a grid battlefield, with different different conditions for victory. Jeanne D'Arc does throw a few wrinkles into the forumla outside of simply walk up to and kill the other guys. One is the skill system, which isn't unlike FFVII's materia system. You have a number of slots you can equip any skills you like to, for any character. (The exception to this is weapon type. For example...an archer can't equip sword skills) Another quirk lies in the "Burning Aura." After you or the enemy attacks, the square behind your target lights up for a single turn. Anyone who stands on this square catches the aura for that turn, which amplifies their attack and defense to an insane degree. This adds a degree of strategy not only to who you attack, but in what order your characters should attack. You can chain Burning Auras to potentially devastating results. (Especially if Jeanne is transformed)
Speaking of her transformation. Jeanne (and a small number of others) can transform into holy forms that greatly amplify their stats as well as give them a new Coup' De Gras attack...which is usually horribly powerful. They also gain an inherent ability called "Godspeed" which activates every time they strike the killing blow on an enemy. All it does, is give them another turn upon that event. Adding another reason to stratigically order your characters activities. If you use it properly you can destroy an army inside of a single turn, before they can even move.
Otherwise the gameplay is pretty normal strategy fare. This is a good thing, as it plays it pretty safe and is a very solid game because of it. It takes very few outside the box chances in regards to gameplay. But what it does do works for the most part, though the game's difficulty relies a lot on victory conditions early on. It's not until the second half do the enemies start actually getting hard.
Now, being as story driven as it is, Jeanne D'Arc doesn't have as many characters as other similar RPG's, like say...Final Fantasy Tactics. It has a playable roster of roughly 12, ranging from Archers and Mages to Lancers and Powerhouse Axemen. There are certainly enough to pick from, as most battles only allow the use of 4-7 anyway. They all vary in their own ways, like while the Archer's like Beatrix can attack from far off and get attack bonuses for being up high...they cannot counter attack and are incredibly fragile. Some even have their own unique abilities that are required for some battles, like the theif Colet can raise ladders to help you seige town walls. The only problem, is that some characters are in the same class as others and get eclipsed when new better versions show up. I stopped using Bertrand after LaHire showed up to take his place as "The Power Guy" because La Hire is ten times better at it. This results in many of your characters falling far, far behind...never to see action again. I eventually found my core set I loved using...and never went back, this means I have to quickie level them in free combat if I end getting the option to use 9-10 characters for a fight. I don't like power leveling.
Jeanne D'Arc is a fantastic game that uses it's own simplicity in unique ways, and the game does offer a decent and (Suprisingly affordable at $20) challenge for the PSP. My greatest fear for it, is that a great deal of PSP owners missed out on it, as the PSP has no shortage of great RPGs to play, and I'm sure it got lost in the shuffle of much bigger names. (Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, Final Fantasy Tactics: War Of The Lions, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness and that new Star Ocean game) But Jeanne D'Arc does offer it's own unique draw (Being loosely based on a true story) and it's easy to find and affordable. You can find it cheap and used at most game stores...and now that the PSP can access the Playstation Store it is available for download straight to your memory stick, which is proabably better as the game has some brief, but frequent load times (Like all PSP games) and playing it off of the memory stick should curb those. Easily worth the $20 they ask, I would reccomend it to anyone who likes strategy RPGs. Hell I'd reccomend it even to people like me...who don't....