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The story of Jeanne D'Arc, a young girl who was led by the voice of God, is a 15th century French tale and has been told many times throughout history. This time, developer Level-5 decides to take that legendary story and transform it into a strategic role-playing game. To be honest, I am not fond of S-RPGs. I couldn't even bring myself to play Final Fantasy Tactics, and I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan. However, Jeanne D'Arc managed to suck me in. So few games do that to me these days, but I couldn't put this one down.

Jeanne D'Arc is very loosely based on the real story; about the only similarities is that there is a girl named Jeanne who hears voices. Otherwise, the demons, dark elves and possessed rulers are included for flavor, unless the historians back in the 1400s missed something. The Duke of Bedford, who is introduced as Henry the VI's uncle, tells Henry about the War of the Reapers, which happened in ancient times. The demon causing trouble back then eventually was put in his place by a group of five humans who wore holy armlets with sacred gems on them.

To ensure that England will stay strong, the Duke unleashes this demon again, and it ends up inhabiting Henry the VI, who looks like he should be in kindergarten. The Duke sends forces to trample France, and that brings us to the village of Domremy, where Jeanne lives. Jeanne comes across a fallen knight and suddenly inherits an armlet and a purple toad. The armlet gives her unimaginable power, and she also begins hearing a voice that tells her what she should do. With the armlet and the help of friends along the way, Jeanne rallies the people of France to try and get rid of the English once and for all.

The story is told through anime-styled cut scenes that provide a mystical feel. It's as though this could have been made from a feature-length anime movie or series. The progression of the story happens after every major battle, but there is a fair bit of leveling that is needed in between. The overworld map is marked with the places you can access. You don't really need to talk to people or visit towns like a traditional RPG. There really isn't much exploring involved at all. A majority of the time, you're fighting, and even though I was never a fan of long, drawn out battles, the way Jeanne D'Arc is set up, the battles are easy and fun.

If you're unfamiliar with S-RPGs, fights take place on a board, like a chess board but with terrain and other structures. The enemy and you — as the player — take turns (you have a limited number of turns as well), guiding your characters into a strategic position before attacking. It's like controlling chess pieces, but the game lets you know where you can travel.

A feature of other games I did not enjoy is when the camera starts to rotate on its own. This eventually made me dizzy. What I like about Jeanne D'Arc is that the map is relatively small, and you have control over rotation whenever and however you want. The game also does an excellent job of telling you what to do. Although I already had some familiarity with tactical RPGs, it made the game a little easier.

Each fight is a little different. Some missions require that you kill everyone on the board; some you just aim for their leader; and there are missions that you try to keep one of your members alive and make a run to the other side. This keeps things interesting, especially when you've been leveling.

Some areas on the map offer free combat zones. You fight at these places over and over to level, but the terrain and enemies don't change unless you move to another zone, so this is the part where it could get boring. You can place a set number of units when you fight (sometimes you'll be joined by visitors), but the characters you don't use will gain some experience at the end. That way, you're not always forced to play all the characters, and they stay within a few levels of each other. Leveling characters that fall behind is also easy, because they get a lot more experience when they strike the killing blow.

As your characters level up, you don't gain any special skills. All the skills are found in skill stones, which you can collect during battle and eventually bind to make better skills. This way, any one of your characters can equip the ability to cast spells. The only thing that is set with your players is the weapon types they use. The archer will be able only to use the long-range bow, and your lancers will never be able to use a shield, but they can strike up to two squares away. There also are three elementals in Jeanne D'Arc: Sol (sun), Luna (moon) and Stella (star). These are linked in a triangle in which Sol is strong against Stella and Stella is strong against Luna and Luna to Sol, but if you move backwards, they're weak to that element. Before heading into a fight, you can look to see what elements the enemies are and equip your characters accordingly. Jeanne with her armlet has the ability to transform, Sailor Moon style, into something like She-ra. This gives her an advantage for a few turns by giving her more hit points and a stronger attack. If she manages to finish off an enemy on that turn, she is able to move again.

Your pet toad eventually comes in handy because it chews up skill stones and spits out new ones. I was wondering what I was going to do with all the stones I was collecting, but having the toad eat them was actually more fun than I thought it would be. You only have two slots, and the toad lets you know what can be combined. The result is a surprise unless you've made it before. This makes it much easier to form recipes, rather than putting the pieces together only to find out they don't work. This way, all you need to do is tab through your menus to see if they'd be compatible.

The voice acting in Jeanne D'Arc is also better than I'd expected. The French actors actually have French accents. The downside is that the music isn't very. Other than being incredibly repetitive, it's really lacking in emotional impact that you would normally expect from an RPG or even any anime-based game. It also took me awhile to get used to the character models. The anime cut scenes look great, as well as all the images in the menu and dialogue screen, but the in-game characters were more "realistic" than I would have liked hitting that "uncanny valley". Usually, I'm expecting these cute, almost sprite-like characters, but this time, their faces seemed a little off. I eventually got used to it, so it's not really a big deal.

Finally, here's an RPG worth having on the PSP. Actually, there have been a small handful, but many of them are remakes. Jeanne D'Arc is an S-RPG that can be fun for newcomers as well as veterans of the genre. The story is compelling, and the gameplay is easy to pick up but still challenging enough to keep things interesting.