Somehow, Level-5 has taken a break from their enigmatic White Knight Story and found the time to deliver Jeanne d’Arc, their first effort for Sony’s Playstation Portable. Right off that bat, there’s a glaring inaccuracy with this concept; the PSP has repeatedly proven itself incapable of producing even a moderately enjoyable strategy RPG (seriously, Spectral Souls can be used as a catalyst for suicide while Aedis Eclipse was a brilliant concept wrapped in a blanket of failure). Apparently Level-5 looked at this synthetic qualm and responded with three highly confident words; bring it on. Adversity be damned, Jeanne d’Arc‘s bid to become the PSP’s first must have RPG is a rousing success.
Heroine Dreams
Selecting a female as the main character and choosing to not focus on her sexual appeal usually doesn’t translate to commercial success (which is sad, but I digress). Terra be damned, one could do a lot worse than Joan of Arc for compelling source material. In reality Joan was a 15th century warrior who fought the English during their occupation of France. Though she was eventually captured and burned at the stake, Joan’s legacy eventually turned into the legend of today. Jeanne d’Arc takes a few liberties with the tale (I doubt you’ll find moblins in history books), but, for the most part, pulls a fair amount of inspiration from historical context.
In the prologue, we learn of The War of Reapers, where five gifted humans fought the demon lord and sealed his presence into five jewels. The game begins with Joan Jeanne’s personal experience with England’s invasion of her village during the Hundred Years War. Her alleged visions from God are intact as he commands Jeanne to destroy the demonic enemies and bestows her with a magical armlet, not unlike one worn by the warriors of The War of Reapers. Later we learn that King Henry VI was, in fact, under the influence of the Duke of Bedford, an alleged sorcerer who seeks the return of the demon lord.
Pretty crazy, right? Level 5 has taken a gripping story, and accented it with an absurd amount of supernatural context in manner only appropriate in the world of RPGs. Unlike her mostly solo historical adventure, Jeanne is assisted in her quest by an assortment of warriors and demihumans. Their identities are multidimensional and are developed through rich characterization, but their use on the battlefield is primarily bound to their chosen weapon. Each ally wields a different instrument of pain, which distinguishes their usefulness in battle. All your usual medieval weapons are here such swords, knives, bows and lances. Bound by their inherent strengths and weaknesses (bows, for example, have a high attack range but are unable to counter attack, whereas an axe is extremely powerful but come with low accuracy), Jeanne d’Arc hopes you’ll eventually wind up using a majority of your extensive cast. Bringing everyone to the ballgame usually ensures the RPG anxiety staple of, “what if I need a guy and he’s severely under leveled?” Cast your fears aside; every area you’ve previously conquered can be revisited to unlimited sessions of level grinding. This, of course, brings us to…
The Battle System
Battles begin with the usual SRPG air of familiarity, a floating island in space interlaced with a square grid. An appreciated bonus is that you’re finally able to survey the lay of the land before dropping all of your guys in, a feature strangely missing from most similar titles. Not unlike its peers, the object of the battle isn’t necessarily to annihilate all foes on screen, but to complete a specific task (such as keeping a certain character from dying or defending a section of the map). The turn based battles happen in sequential order, with your side usually completing its round of turns before allowing the enemy to do the same. Adding a layer to the game’s difficulty, there’s always a cap on the number of turns one can take in battle.
The actual battles are ripe with your usual attack/spell/item options, but differ in that your character usually has to move first before any actions can be performed. Accuracy is increased and higher damage is obtained by indirectly facing your opponent when striking. That’s not always the best strategy, however, as counter attacks happen quite frequently. It’s best to place yourself within striking distance of a foe, but still far enough away (or around grid-blocking objects) to keep yourself out of harm’s way. This delicate balance, along with all of the various strengths and weaknesses of the selected members of your party, help keep the game fresh and ensure that each battle will require a new strategy.
Those are all fairly standard elements, but Jeanne also differs from the norm in a number of ways. Of direct interest are the transformations. Once per battle, Jeanne, and a select few others, can transform into an incredibly more powerful version of their previous self. When in this mode, you’re not only granted the ability to wipe the floor with any standard enemy, but you’re also rewarded with an extra turn for every opponent slain. Theoretically this could turn your character into an unstoppable killing machine. On paper this sounds sort of cheap, but, unless you’re ridiculously over leveled, the game has a way of keeping everything in check without making it too easy (or hard, for that matter). To keep things interesting you aren’t restricted to the same transformation for the duration of the game, with several available for each able character.
Another portion of Jeanne d’Arc worth mentioning is the skill binding system. Initially, skill stones are used as equipable items and grant the user a basic array of skills. Though limited to six per character, they can be switched out and changed to your heart’s desire before every battle. Later on, you’re granted the option of skill binding, which allows the mixture of two separate skill stones. Over a hundred (at least that I found) different skills were available, and, thankfully, the game keeps track of your experiments in case you want to create more. It’s not a total departure from Dark Cloud 2′s invention system, but it does add another layer of depth to a game already saturated with content.
The inherent strengths and weakness of your characters are also augmented by skill stones. Each stone is associated with Sol, Stella, or Luna, each of which can increase their damage done to an enemy weak to that particular element. Of course, the downside of this is the equipped stone also has its own inherent weakness. For example, Sol is greater than Stella, but weak to Luna, where as Stella is greater than Luna, but weak to Sol. I know, I know, once again paper, rock, scissors will be used to decide the fate of the planet, but trust me, it’s for the best.
Also of interest are the support variations. First on the line is the Unified Guard, which rewards you for moving your party together. When a character is physically attacked, offshoots of the attacks will fly backwards and the backing players will receive a small defense bonus. The Burning Aura basically functions the same way for attacks. After attacking an enemy, a portion of the surrounding grid will become eligible for a Burning Aura. Should another member of your party occupy this space on the grid, they will receive a bonus in attack power.
Perfect d’Arc?
Jeanne d’Arc also does quite well in its efforts to stimulate your audio and visual needs. Anime cut scenes are sprinkled throughout the narrative to advance the story. Voice acting compliments each from of animation, but is strangely absent from most of the in game cinema. While this lack of cohesion is kind of odd, it doesn’t endanger Jeanne’s enduring atmosphere. The voice acting is competent and accented by a slight French edge, adding to the title’s authenticity. Background tunes are a mixed bag; some players might not prefer the constant presence of an accordion, but it fails to grate on ones ears.
One aspect of the game I can’t get over is how good this game looks. Muddy textures and overly basic polygon arrangements are a staple of the PSP library, but Jeanne graciously overcomes these woes of mediocrity. Everything from the battlefield to the in game cinemas are blossoming with detail. Vegetation overflows the woodland areas and violet lighting dominates the darker, brooding subterranean landscape, the game is simply gorgeous. It’s not only unrivaled by everything in its genre, but well over most of the PSP library. The systems is constantly slammed for it’s less-than-PS2 graphically capability, but titles like this show that proper talent can promote visual splendor in the most unlikely of places.
