My mood has increased about 189.3% since I dropped Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari and picked up Jeanne d’Arc. There’s this phenomenon on the internet where whenever you complain about a game someone always pops up and cries, “If you hate it so much, stop playing it!” We all know this is internet code for “How dare you criticize a game I like!” but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
When playing a game that’s not going very well, it’s important to pause to consider whether what you’re getting out of it is worth what you’re putting in. No game is perfect, but I should have known something was wrong when I found myself getting angry just looking at the PSP. Instead of spending those 21 hours being increasingly frustrated, disappointed and infuriated, I should have put it aside way earlier.
Better late than never. Banal Premise Story is going on the shelf until I finish Jeanne d’Arc. It’s possible I will never pick it up again, but I think (or rather I really, really want to believe) that I’m close to finishing it, so I’d like to see it through to the end. It’s not so much a bad game as a one-trick pony with one very boring trick.
Putting that behind me and looking at the present, I’m about 8 and a half hours into Jeanne d’Arc. For anyone who has played it, I just finished taking back the three bastilles and I’m on my way to the Cathedral de Reims with the Dauphin. Even if I hadn’t been starved for a normal SRPG, I’d still think this was a great game. The battles are challenging but not too difficult, your characters are strong but not broken (yet?), and there’s a ton of customization available in the form of skill stones. As if that wasn’t good enough, I recently got the option to fuse stones together to create even better skills. I love item fusion.
Playing with a mentally-unstable main character is a delight as well. Serdic on Rondo of Swords Path B seemed to be going that way before he corrected himself, so I hope Jeanne never gets all sane on me. Lithium hadn’t been discovered in the 15th century, so one second the poor girl is charging maniacally into battle, the next moment she’s upset and depressed for no good reason. And then right back again with the charging. I wonder what the French think of this portrayal of their heroine.
In general I don’t like games based on historical figures, but I make an exception where the gameplay is enjoyable. Not to mention I am a little bit curious about whether Jeanne is going to end up flambéed like history says or whether they’re going to push the une autre histoire thing to the max and let her get away. As long as they don’t go all The Tale of Twin Cities on me and have Liane take her place at the bonfire (I hated that book. I’m still traumatized even now) I can live with it. Historically speaking, I should probably keep Marcel away from Gilles de Rais, just in case…
No game is perfect, as I said, but I’m not seeing any potential deal-breakers in Jeanne d’Arc so far. Sure it’s frustrating that I can only use 5 or 6 characters in battle, and the camera can be a bit wonky sometimes, and the characters are a bit small on the field, but those are all things I can live with pretty easily. Barring any extremely stupid plot twists or spectacularly insane decisions on Jeanne’s part, this should prove to be a delightful experience.
