Best PSP (if not one of the best amongst other console titles) SRPG to be released to date! Absolute must have!
The game works pretty much how you expect an SRPG to. But what makes this game so unique is it's smaller, yet prominent battle mechanics. For example, everything in the world of Jeanne D'arc has a spirit stone. (which is more like an astrological sign, if you will) There's Sol (fire), Luna (moon) and Stella. (it's green, so I'm assuming it means Earth, like grass or something) Each type of stone being is stronger against another. For instance, a Luna creature is much stronger against a Sol creature. Or a Sol creature is much stronger than a Stella creature and a Stella is stronger than a Luna etc. But the kicker here is that these stones you can assign and reassign to whoever you want in your party for each individual battle. Which means before you start your battle you should take a look at what kind of creatures are on the battlefield, and how many of each, and assign the proper stones to who you want to attack who and what not. This is a very unique and flexible combat mechanic that I've never seen before and allows you to have any of your characters be used for multiple different situations. (so you're not stuck with say your spearman only being good against one kind of infantry or magical creatures or whatever) This is just one example of how flexible and deep the combat is in this game.
The game is quite lengthy, I've played 16 hours so far (game tells me) and I'm about 1/3 done. Assuming it'll only get harder from here on so we're looking at a 50 hour game. The graphics are anime-style mixed with cell shaded cartoon style, comes together nicely. The variety in characters is good, you will end up with 15 people in your party I believe but for most battles you'll be able to use only 5-7 of them. (Don't neglect other characters and just use the same ones every time! Level all your party equally as it'll bite you in the ass later when you will need them unexpectedly) The weapons and armor upgrades are very standard here, however. I am a bit dissapoitned at this as most of the stuff that you'll get is the stuff from shops and it just becomes available as soon as you get to that part of the story or your guys hit that level mark. So you get tons of gold and just buy the best that you can at the moment and that's that. But the real gem in the outfitting in this game is the skills and spirit stones. However, you will find some rare items from harder foes, and some that are optional battles. Anything with a high HP and big of size if bound to give you something rare. But as I said, most of the stuff your guys will be equipped with (atleast through the first 30% of the game, which is how much I've played) will be the standard stuff from shops. So if you're the World of Warcraft type that loves those crazy Burning Blade of the Monkey +10 kind of stuff, you'll be dissapointed here.
The combat is tough, and pretty exciting. About as exciting as turn based combat can be. And sometimes it is, because if your battle conditions are that Jeanne must not die, and you've been playing a battle for a while and she is getting ganged up on by all the baddies and she has 5 hp left and the baddy has a 50% chance of making this hit (it tells you) and finishing her off then it gets alittle tense as you don't want to start all over. The game also features a locational damage system (which I don't think is new to the SRPG style of gaming) meaning that if you hit someone from the side or back you will deal more damage and have a higher chance of hit than from the front. You can also do combo's with burning aura, meaning if you hit something and it turns around to count, their back will be extra vunerable to another of your allies, and you can create combo's but sequencially doing multiple blows to a single foe in the right order.
If you've noticed I've spent alot of this time talking just about the battle mechanics, mainly because it's this game's gem. All in all, everything else is also top notch, including the story yes, but if I were to give it all this much attention this review would never end. Now stop reading and go get it!