Jeanne d'Arc

The most awesome game on PSP, period. Don't believe those who say it's not as good as Final Fantasy Tactics, as it is in fact much better! But don't take my word for it... Quick question: What do God Of War, MGS, GTA, Final Fantasy, and all the other games that are rated higher than this one have in common? Answer: All of them are part of a franchise that was already massively successful, before a new episode was ported to the PSP. As one of the few people who tried the PSP versions of the new franchise episodes with fresh eyes, from not having played almost any of the previous instances from these series on any other platform, I can't help but find that scores are massively biased. God Of War, GTA, FFVII, Persona 3? Meh. MGS? Will never come close as its first instalment on PS1. The only title from an existing franchise actually worth its place around the top on PSP is Ridge Racer. If critics were actually objective, all the others would be much lower rated. But let's also compare with non franchise games: Lumines better than Jeanne D'Arc? Not a chance. The Lumines guys haven't spent 10% of the development time that went into Jeanne D'Arc, and, as addictive as the game may be to some, it shows. Siphon Filter: very good game, which deserves a lot of credit for managing to be highly playable despite Sony's idiotic lack of insight with regards to the second analog stick. But still a bit too predictable and not as polished. And then you get all the stuff like Patapon, LocoRoco, LittleBigPlanet, etc., that tries so hard that it actually gets into the way of the gameplay. Sorry, but this game is miles above the rest, graphically, story-wise and in terms of playability and, what matters most, enjoyment for players. Truly of a class of its own!

It took me a while to get into it because of the tone and because perhaps I had overly high expectations for what it ultimately turned out to be, but oh well, it's a decent SRPG, quite well done and accessible even though on many occasions you'll fail 95% of the time and get hit with 5%.

Definitely better than I expected! Really enjoyed the story, only downside was potentially the grinding necessary to tackle some of the later stages and lack of diversity when it came to ability types.

Pros: You can mix different abilities for the characters, making some very unlikely combinations. The mechanic of Transform is pretty cool and turn some characters into a killing machine. Use of Cartoons for the story telling is amazing. Combining Skills system is very fun and makes you want to discover all recipes. Cons: Every match have a turn limit. 20 for standard matches and could get to 40 for some story matches. There is no class assignmnet like FFT or Tactics Ogre. The world stages have predefined levels but there is no way to check what is the level match before entering it. Details: It's a fun and innovative game, but things like limiting the turns on all matches deeply hinders the fun, and it's even worse on end game. In some matches you can be under level and even if you manage through strategy to keep alive, you will not have enough time to kill everyone and you lose the match. Some of the story of the game is told through Cartoons instead of using ingame animation. This idea was great and the Cartoons are very well made and help to give more life to every character. Regarding Stages, if you join a match and you are under 10 levels, you will need to reload. Winning would be very very hard because not only you are underlevel, but you will only have 20 turns to finish. So even if you have strategy to keep alive and hitting the enemy slowly, you will eventually run out of time.

You may have noticed the words "Enemy phase" in some screenshots of this game. That is because there is no queue to be found, just your turn and the enemy's turn.