Jeanne D'Arc manages to deliver on all fronts, from the presentation to the fast paced and streamlined open-ended battles and skill binding mechanics. Everything in this game is polished, pretty, highly functional and fun. At the end of the day it's hard for me to complain about anything in this game.
What Jeanne d'Arc lacks in originality it makes up for in its polish. It's an all around solid strategy RPG that anyone into that genre will eat up and enjoy.
One of the best games on PSP so happy I can download it on my Vita! I’ve played over 60 hours on 3 different files. Just so much characters, weapons and attacks to find and use!
When all these ingredients – story, gameplay, and character customization – are thrown together and stirred, the result is an irresistibly scrumptious strategy RPG that would be an absolute shame to pass up.
It's the best SRPG I've played in years and crushes just about everything else on portables, straight up... if you don't get that PSP back and give it a shot, you're missing out, bro.
Easily one of the best titles yet for PSP, Jeanne d'Arc triumphs not just in its fictional reenactment of the Hundred Years' War, but in refining the tactical role-playing genre with rock-solid gameplay.
The storyline, while clearly bonkers, makes a refreshing change to the standard RPG fare, if only because it draws at least superficially, on historical characters and events.
The most awesome game on PSP, period.
Don't believe those who say it's not as good as Final Fantasy Tactics, as it is in fact much better! But don't take my word for it...
Quick question: What do God Of War, MGS, GTA, Final Fantasy, and all the other games that are rated higher than this one have in common? Answer: All of them are part of a franchise that was already massively successful, before a new episode was ported to the PSP.
As one of the few people who tried the PSP versions of the new franchise episodes with fresh eyes, from not having played almost any of the previous instances from these series on any other platform, I can't help but find that scores are massively biased. God Of War, GTA, FFVII, Persona 3? Meh. MGS? Will never come close as its first instalment on PS1. The only title from an existing franchise actually worth its place around the top on PSP is Ridge Racer. If critics were actually objective, all the others would be much lower rated.
But let's also compare with non franchise games: Lumines better than Jeanne D'Arc? Not a chance. The Lumines guys haven't spent 10% of the development time that went into Jeanne D'Arc, and, as addictive as the game may be to some, it shows.
Siphon Filter: very good game, which deserves a lot of credit for managing to be highly playable despite Sony's idiotic lack of insight with regards to the second analog stick. But still a bit too predictable and not as polished.
And then you get all the stuff like Patapon, LocoRoco, LittleBigPlanet, etc., that tries so hard that it actually gets into the way of the gameplay.
Sorry, but this game is miles above the rest, graphically, story-wise and in terms of playability and, what matters most, enjoyment for players. Truly of a class of its own!
Story of this game is absolutely the best part of it. At first the game is really nothing special and it's kinda boring. But suddenly everything is starting to get very interesting and to be honest I didn't expect that at all. For me it was little bit to long and I highly recommend using cheats to speed up the grind for a little. Gameplay isn't really something extraordinary... It's very simple and we've all seen it thousands times before... But the story is really worth everything! Characters are interesting and unique and the plot is just amazing... A lot of memorable moments... Story telling at its finest! Only if gameplay would be just a little bit more unique and if it could have full voice acting Jeanne D'arc could be really 10/10 game!
Not impressed. The graphics are great for PSP, and I love me some turn-based RPGs. However, what's with the super-archaic turn structure? Super slow heavily-armored knights get to move just as many times as my super fast thief guy (with the exception of Jeanne's special ability, which will have her skipping all over the entire level, killing 4-5 guys in a single turn)? Spells and skills don't have to charge at all? Every single one of my units gets to move before every single one of their units does? Forgive me for making the comparison, but this is nowhere near the strategy level of Disgaea or Final Fantasy Tactics. It feels like a beginner's introduction into turn-based games (which never needed an introduction). The whole point of mixing which team moves when (one of mine goes, one of theirs goes, 2 of mine go, etc etc) is to give it a vaguely real-time feel. This game feels like the enemy stands there waiting for all my people to move and attack, until finally asking "is it my turn now?"
Production values are very high (liberties with the story aside), and you can tell it was well-thought out and executed, but given the cons I listed above and the stupidly arbitrary mission-success requirements (ie you have to "escape" your enemies by making it to one edge of the map, but you can still fail even if you kill them all), I will probably never end up playing it again.
I'm about 15 hours in and the game isn't throwing enough new content to keep me interested in terms of gameplay side of things so here's my thoughts so far...
the UI is clunky when combining skills that you find throughout the game, it's practically mandatory to do so in order to get the optimal build for the next mission unless you want to risk failing and losing all your progress in the mission and to keep using the few abilities that you are able to get from drops. There's no way to simply select the menu recipes you've unlocked to just consume the items for the recipe. It would've been much more straightforward if the enemies dropped the items you needed to progress directly instead of this poorly designed UI that you're expected to dredge through between missions (i.e. 1/3 of the game).
I kinda feel like the armband ability is pretty unbalanced as it allows characters with this ability to just sweep the battlefield of enemies and accumulate tons of EXP so i end up trying to avoid using it to not leave the 5 or so other characters in the dust since they are needed to carry your armband wielding characters and to leave openings for chain kills. It's like the game wants to punish you indirectly for relying on these character's abilities too much.
There's a variety of different character classes to mix and match in your party but you'll find that the characters you are able to use don't really change your strategy much since you'll end up using most of the ones you have available to you anyways since the number of characters you are able to use per mission increases, maybe later on there'll be more available characters so that this doesn't remain the case. There also isn't much incentive to take risks besides the turn limit which hasn't really become an issue as of yet, there has been one time so far where i was at risk of failing due to the turn limit but that could've been just because i wanted to clear the level of enemies first. If the game becomes more difficult later on i'd bump my score to a 6. As long as you keep your characters in formation there is little risk of one dying, the enemies will only focus down one of your characters if they are separated from the formation.
Is the game fun? ehhh it's alright. It's engaging at the very least. the game must've been good for 2007 but i don't think it holds up in 2019.
Is the story good? There were some interesting parallels between the first recurring antagonist and the protagonist but i am unsure if this is intentional and would be explored in more detail later, the main big bad guy seems to be the evil dark lord archetype that does evil for the sake of accumulating power except it's under the guise of a possessed child *evil yawn*. Other than that nothing exciting has happened so far, it's just been a power fantasy where the protagonist goes around slaughtering English soldiers and demons with minimal effort. her development as a character is yet to be seen as she hasn't seemed to learn anything beyond "English = bad guys" though there could be the potential for more interesting interactions as the protagonist is so driven to killing without mercy that she may end up slipping towards being a sort of "war lord" and end up killing the wrong people.
The music is heavily recycled so that part of the experience is not worth mentioning.
the graphics and character portraits are not bad especially for the psp.
You may have noticed the words "Enemy phase" in some screenshots of this game. That is because there is no queue to be found, just your turn and the enemy's turn.
SummaryThe Jeanne d'Arc story begins far in the past, when a great war was waged by mankind against demonic armies attempting to invade the human world. During that time, five brave heroes created armlets to restrain the demon gods. In a quest to turn back the rueful army, a young crusader named Jeanne is commanded by mysterious voices to use t...