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Req.: P3 500, 128MB RAM, GeForce 2 / Radeon or equivalent Reviewed On: Athlon xp 2600+ (2.13 GHz), 512 Meg RAM, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro | |||
Intro What's the price for immortal fame? What does it take to have countless books, a handful of movies, and an eventual 3rd person action/adventure, RTS hybrid game all based on you and your life? For Joan of Arc, it took a vision from heaven, a French army, the ear of a King, an Inquisition, and of course a terrible death by burning at the stake. Strategy game developer Trevor Chan has taken a break from his successful Seven Kingdoms and Capitalism titles to develop Wars & Warriors: Joan of Arc, a game that ties 3rd person combat much in the way of Dynasty Warriors together with RTS gameplay and a small pinch of RPG character building. But however cool the concept may sound, Joan of Arc suffers from several major problems that drag the rest of the otherwise cool game down into the level of mediocrity Gameplay: 5/10 For those of you not in the know, a quick history lesson: Back in about 1429, England and France clashed in the Hundred-Years War - a war based in the inter-marriages of English and French monarchies that would eventually give the English total power over the French, making the crown prince of France, Charles VII, almost powerless. After Charles VI died, the sparks were re-ignited, sending the two countries back into war. Then came a 16 year old girl with instructions from the Archangel Michael on how to beat back the English forces - this girl's name: Joan of Arc. Most of Joan of Arc takes place in the 3rd person as Joan and her comrades hack and slash across several English settlements in what could best be described as Dynasty Warriors meets Diablo in France. In fact, the entirety of the 3rd person combat feels much more like a console title, and much less like a computer game. Most of this portion of gameplay is spent running around a map looking for a group of English to fight and then engaging them. Most mission objectives are finished when every English soldier has been defeated, when a certain English commander has been defeated, or when the villagers have been adequately protected (by killing off English forces). As much of the game is spent running and killing English soldiers, most of game's focus is on combat. Joan will have plenty at her disposal, including range weapons, upgradeable swords and armor, RPG-style stat advancement, stat enhancements, and combos galore - she is more than capable of handling the overwhelming 20-to-1 odds the game routinely throws at the player. The combat focuses on the use of combos. With them, Joan can slice through ranks of English like they were some tea-drinking, pale-skinned version of butter, knocking them to the ground 3 at a time. Once on the ground, Joan can execute ground moves to finish the job. With only two attacks, aptly named attack "A" and attack "B" (bound to the left and right mouse buttons respectively), Joan's combos are easy to pull off - usually amounting to hitting A a couple times and then B to finish the combo. But as Joan progresses and grows stronger, she has the opportunity to unlock more powerful combos and attacks that, while slower, do more damage to the enemy. As damage is taken, she can gulp down a loaf of bread to restore her hit points by either pausing the game and accessing her inventory, or using a Diablo-esque healing quick key (F1 by default). In fact, much of the game is reminiscent of the frantic mouse clicking in Blizzard's beloved series. Click, click, heal. Click, click, heal. Needless to say, if the repetition of Diablo was too much for you, the same will be true for Joan of Arc. The game's navigation is one of the most frustrating aspects of the game. Invisible walls combined with a spotty camera make the simple task of running around to find mobs painful and tedious. Despite the large area of many environments, players are forced to walk pre-determined roads. No matter how gradual the slope, or shallow the river, Joan must abide by the programmers' invisible hands. So although you can see those English archers on your radar just over the next hill, you can't necessarily walk up the hill to kill them, instead navigating the long way around via a pre-determined road - very frustrating. To further the agitation is a pretty frantic, spastic, and not particularly reliable camera. In the open, it does fine, responding to every command while not being too close nor too far from the action. As soon as the opening closes into a clustered village or forest setting, the camera loses every sense of smoothness and becomes this twitchy, unpredictable mess of view finding. In searching for the right angle, the camera will unexpectedly and constantly move from angle to angle, making it very, very hard to keep track of the action. Adding to the confusion are solid objects: the camera either shows them as solid, completely blocking off any kind of view of the action, or they make it semi-transparent and then quickly change angles, leaving the player with one course of action - mashing the attack buttons until Joan can hack her way free from the confines of the jittery camera. As the game progress, Joan eventually earns the ability to ride a horse and subsequently attack from horseback. There's no doubt about it: killing enemies while mounted is most definitely cool and a lot of fun…if it wasn't plagued by glitches and camera problems. Because of the invisible walls, riding a horse soon turns into a game of ram the hillside, as the same invisible walls that bind Joan to pre-determined roads bind the horse. Additionally, the camera can never seem to quite catch up with Joan, instead favoring a side view making fighting all but impossible. After approximately 7 hours of play, players can use the game's RTS feature that shows the action from a top-down perspective. This feature is useful for lassoing up NPCs and directing friendly troops to relocate to where the action is. Once again, this is a great feature in concept, but in execution, it suffers from very poor pathfinding that lets your comrades in arms get foiled by the same invisible walls that keep Joan from walking up a hill. The problem is that your friendlies will get stuck on that invisible wall and stay there, never finding an alternate solution, instead opting for running in place against a hillside. The
enemy AI is very poor. Often times, Joan can pick them off with a bow while they
wait stationary like good little targets. Although, once she is in their view,
they and about 40 buddies come swarming from all angles. Boss battles are the
main source of weapon advancement, and as such, one should be able to expect epic
duels with a lot of give and take. Instead, bosses rush forward and pull off the
longest possible string of special moves they have, letting Joan easily dodge
the attacks and counter with her own damaging combo. Rinse, and repeat about 12
times, and that's every boss battle in summation.
Graphics: 7/10 Sound: 7/10 Overall:
5.5/10 [ top ] |
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