itachi27's Profile

Jeanne d'Arc

Published: Tue 2 Sep, 2008 | On:

I am first and foremost a RPG and recently SRPG gamer at heart.
I found the inital purchase and few levels of Jeanne d Arc to be satisfying in terms of gameplay, graphically crisp and detailed and overall a nice introduction into the world of Jeanne d Arc.

Unfortunately for me this is when I started to expect more from the game and it never delivered.

Jeanne D Arc is based loosely on the story of Jeanne of Arc, however it throws in a twist or two along the way. Namely Jeanne is granted a braclet which allows her given the right amount of skill points to transform into a highly powered being with a number of useful skills and abilities. If you manage to defeat an enemy whilst in this state you get another turn, so it is vital that you use this ability wisely.
The battles are normally very easy when leveled and I found it easy to just place the main character on the map and slaughter every enemy .

After a few main storyline battles you are given entry into a customisation system which combines the skill stones, which you have either collected from defeated enemies or brought from stores.

These skill stones allow abilities such as magic or battle skills to be used and can be equiped to a character in one of the skill slots.

The customisation system works well, and there are many different combinations of skills to uncover, but I found it realitively easy to obtain powerful skills which made battles very easy.

The AI is pretty average and on many occassions I was spared by the AI ignoring my main character (who was near death) and targeting lower level characters in my party (who were at full health.).

My biggest pet peeve with this game is that I felt nothing towards the characters and the development of the characters were non existant. It felt to me that I was just by myself with a number of extras in the cast who I had very little interaction with the entire game.

Jeanne D Arc is a solid SRPG in terms of gameplay, It is a good introduction to the SRPG genre, however for those looking for a really deep SRPG I would recommend Disgaea Hour of Darkness.