Jeanne D'Arc for PSP: Henry the Possessed, I Am, I Am!
Know what's great about traveling anywhere? Two words, or three if you're French -- Jeanne D'Arc. I know it came out last fall for the PSP, but I've only now (finally) had time to play through this pseudo-historical tactical RPG everyone was flipping about last August. If you've already played it, excuse me as I retroactively rave about this loose retelling of the Joan of Arc legend that, to be totally honest, has been tearing my attention away from castles, labyrinths of caves, postcard-perfect bridges, opera houses, basilicas, more castles, spa baths inside ancient structures, "house of terror" museums, fine art galleries, and yes, even more castles.
"Loose" as in magic spells and bracelets and enemies like necromancers and skeletons and orcs and goblins. Oh, and King Henry VI of England's possessed by demons, which, you know, could explain a lot about the Hundred Years' War. Undergirding that's the familiar story we all heard in grade school about a French girl putting on armor and sparring with those poncy rule-it-all Brits.
Jeanne D'Arc employes a 3D turn-based tactical grid that lets players maneuver parties of characters against the forces of the pesky monster-ranked British.
What's great about Jeanne D'Arc, aside from its tidy no-frills interface and cute dipped-in-a-rainbow look, is that it manages to pull off the job system complexity of a game like Final Fantasy Tactics by giving you loads of skill options, then letting you rebuild them between individual battles on a character by character basis pretty much any way you like. And it's pure about it, meaning no superfluous mini-games or whatever else to distract you from the battle-driven bottom line.
All the usual stuff's here, e.g. lateral and vertical terrain distinctions, front versus flank or rear attacks, variable attack ranges for weapons (not just obvious stuff like "melee" versus "missile" either -- lancers can, for instance, attack from two spaces away), stones (in lieu of skills) that you equip to launch lightning strikes and fireballs or improve abilities like attack power or number of hit points. The upside of the latter is that you're not locked into traditional RPG one-way skill growth -- you can entirely reconfigure a character's skills between battles by simply swapping stones. How cool is that?
Like most tactical RPGs, Jeanne D'Arc doesn't let you explore a fully-realized world, but instead sets you jockeying between battle maps interposed with narrative cutscenes (in this case, some pretty impressively produced anime with idiomatic hysterics blessedly muted).
What's more, each character has an elemental affinity (Sol, Luna, or Stella) with incumbent strengths or weaknesses (Sol beats Stella, Luna beats Sol, etc.). Call it "meta-Rochambo," it's played by juggling element-augmenting skill gems in each character's limited array of skill slots. One more thing you have to take into consideration when maneuvering characters, because as far as I can tell, it's totally random, and not a matter of creature type.
On top of that, you've got really original stuff like map-based attack bonuses called "burning auras" that manifest dynamically after an attack. Step into one of these and you'll add extra oomph to an attack, which since these things disappear at the end of a turn, makes getting good at coordinating attacks on the fly essential, especially as the game starts trotting out its enemy HP tanks, who can take a half dozen rounds to slaughter (battles have turn limits) if you're not ganging up. Oh yeah, there's kind of a cool "unified guard" bonus that kicks in whenever one or more characters are adjacent to each other and an enemy attacks. And I haven't even talked about the way you can eventually fuse skill stones together to make new ones, or the magic armband that temporarily tranforms Jeanne into a super-powered Mighty Morphin' Power Ranger.
It's not an "epic fantasy drama" until someone's village burns down.
Anyway, can you tell I dig this game? I won't go insanely out on a limb and call it better than Final Fantasy Tactics (or paint a NORAD launch target on my forehead), but it's definitely in the same league as that game. If you're into tactical RPGs and you missed Jeanne D'Arc somehow because it wasn't called "Final Fantasy: Jeanne D'Arc" or "Disgaea: Henry the VI's a Demon (He is! He is!)" you have the word of a Final Fantasy fanboy that it just might be the best thirty bucks you'll spend in a month. Shy, of course, of the $60 you're already planning to on Grand Theft Auto IV next Wednesday.
Re-Play
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What always amazes me is the fact that the individuals waving the banner of all the reasons young people play the game are from individuals that are no more qualified to judge the game than I am to give an opinion in heart surgery. In a typical fashion, a snapshot is taken from a fraction of the demographic that just happens to be physically and emotionally immature and then uses their words in a twisted context. Here is where the real problem lays... no other game or developer has been able to create the content that allows a player to be fully immersed, period. The game is reveled by so many because of the free roaming ability and vast terrain that can be covered and the ability to stray away from the preconceived plot if you so desire. Not to mention all these things combined add a high "replay" value that gamers look for. When you pay upwards of $60 a game, you do not want to play something that you are bored with in 8 hours of content! Get the facts and play a game morons!