Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Surprisingly good"

We've played many, many strategy RPGs over the years, whether it's Yggdra Union, Disgaea, or Final Fantasy Tactics. Each of those games seemingly knew that you need something extra to make the traditional and not terribly innovative SRPG battle formula fun again. Jeanne D'Arc follows in these footsteps with some rote SRPG combat, but also some of the best bits and bobs tying the rest of the game together making this possibly the best SRPGs on the PSP.

Combat almost feels like straight-up SRPG: You select and place your units, equip them, then fight using turn based move/attack/item-use sequences in turn with the enemy. You receive a fixed number of turns in which to win, and you have a specific winning and losing criteria. However, JDA adds a lot of nice touches, including very unique level layouts and widely different victory conditions in each battle to keep things interesting. Also, the battles follow a story line, and each battle scenario makes perfect sense in the given point of the story. Characters of yours can be killed in battle, but magically re-appear unharmed after the battle. If you hit a losing condition (typically all of your party or a key party member getting killed), that's it -- the game is over and you're booted to the main menu, left to resume at the last save. You are allowed one quick save slot in the middle of a battle, though. Level5 did a great job in keeping the 36 main storyline battles unique. Also, you are welcome to play some optional battles, which will grant you bonus in-game items, or just to help level-up your characters. However, I found I had to do very little "level grinding", and was able to mostly stick to the main story combat only, doing about 6 or 7 side battles to gain items.

But it's not just the combat that makes this game great:
* The visuals are some of the most unique in style, and also the best looking, on the PSP. 3d models in battle look fabulous, are detailed, are colorful, and are smoothly animated. 2d models when navigating on maps or through menus are equally detailed and have a fresh visual style.
* The anime cutscenes are also unique in art style versus some of the more generic Japanese animation seen in other titles. They usually have a great musical score, good voice acting, and are well placed throughout the game.
* There are occasional bits of spoken dialog (in cutscenes), and all are well done.
* The music is very well done, offers a lot of variety, and matches what's going on.
* The plot is actually quite a unique fantasy take on the actual Britain/French war. You travel from city to city in Europe, fighting, getting more information about the greater dark forces driving the war, meeting more characters than can fight with you, etc. It's surprisingly a driving factor in the fun of this game.

The difficulty is slightly on the easy side, but again they do offer locations on the map where you can fight without fear of losing the game. You get to practice, gain skills, items, hidden treasures, gain character levels, etc. without worry. (Note that you are auto-leveled -- you don't get to set your level up skills yourself. However, they do have a very rich skill set system that you "equip" on your characters to give them spells and bonuses during combat.)

So overall, while some may play a little bit of Jeanne D'Arc and dismiss it as a completely straight SRPGs, they are depriving themselves of one of the truly unique and fun PSP games.