Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Just plain fun"

Jeanne D'Arc was made by the developers of "Dragon Quest VIII : Journey of the Cursed King" (PS2), "Rogue Galaxy "(PS2) and the most recent "Professor Layton and the Curious Village" (Nintendo DS).

The game is mainly based on the life of Jeanne of Arc, the Maiden of Orleans. But the developers mixed in some fantasy characteristics (like elves, orcs, demons...) but the mix is very successful. The story has some nice twists; they can really surprise you.

The landscapes in Jeanne D'Arc are very different : some battles take place in sewers, others in chemistry labs while others occur in marshes. The entire game is very colourful. So are the characters, they're even very cute. Although they're quite small on the screen, they are all easy recognizable. When you receive a new weapon, you can see it in the next battle (this is not the case with armor).

You continue the main story by completing/clearing stages, 36 in total. There are also some free stages which aren't story related. You can use these stages to gain levels, money, skill stones (more about these later) or items (like armor, weapons and potions). Most of the story driven stages can be played again as free stage, once you completed them in the story. The winning conditions are differently then.
Sometimes the winning conditions are person-bound e.g. you must kill mob 1 without that character A dies during the battle. Other times, you have to kill all enemies on the screen within a certain turn limit.
The battles are turn based but not dull at all. There's a player and an enemy phase. During your phase you can move your characters, let them attack enemies or heal allies. Because the characters are so cute, you really like to see your characters in motion.
What makes Jeanne D'Arc special are the transformations. After a few turns Jeanne can transform into a kind of knight who's much more powerful than normal and gives Jeanne a unique skill. Throughout the game you'll find more transformation gems.
At the start of the story you mostly play with 3 characters, near the end though, almost always with 7. Throughout the game, you'll encounter more characters who will join your ranks. So, before you continue to play, you must make a decision : selecting a group of "main characters" with who you play mostly or leveling all your characters as equally as possible (this is possible because of the free stages where you can freely choose your characters. For some story driven stages, the game forces you however to play with certain characters).
When a character does an action (attack, using a spell or an item), it will be rewarded with a certain amount of experience points (xp). A character needs 100 xp to gain a level. When this happens his/her stats improve.
Each character is bound to use only one kind of weapon. This can't be changed.
But you can specialize a character by using "skill stones". You can buy these stones or you can win them as loot after a won battle. Each character receives an additional skill stone slot each 5 levels (till level 30). These stones are divided in 4 groups : 2 weapon-specific groups, 1 spell- specific group and finally 1 stat-specific group. So, for example you can equip a sword wielding character with the weapon-specific skill stone "blood sword" (you deal an amount x of damage and receive x/2 health points back) or you can also use the stat-specific skill stone "+ 20 HP" (you gain 20 health points). There are more than 40 such skill stones. When you equip a skill stone, it's not definitive, you can change them as many times as you want, only not during battle.

Conclusion : Jeanne D'Arc is an excellent turnbased RPG. It's a great addition to every PSP collection. Everything in this game is so well done. And most important : you'll have fun from the beginning till the end.
Jeanne D'Arc is a real gem!