Wars & Warriors: Joan of Arc review

The English took canonisation literally.

Even though she was burned at the stake by the English in 1431, at the tender age of nineteen, St Joan of Arc wasn't actually canonised until 1920. Seven centuries seems an unusually long time to take to recognise such considerable achievement. The only two things more bizarre than the unprecedented act of putting a teenage girl in charge of an entire French army, seemingly on faith, was her surprising ability to rout English troops before battle had even begun and, even stranger, her King’s apparent apathy towards her ultimate fate. Why would Charles leave Joan to burn after she had done so much for him?

If Wars & Warriors: Joan of Arc was a film, it'd be one of those Hollywood blockbusters heavy on the gloss and light on the historical accuracy. There is only one recorded instance of anyone resembling Joan engaging in anything resembling direct combat - when an opposing soldier surrendered directly to her. Joan's contribution to the French war effort worked on a very different level.

Holy trinity

Wait a second! Roger Taylor? Wasn't he in Queen?

But don't you worry your pretty little heads about that: it's smashing time. This game's connection to its historical source material is about as tight as Avril Lavigne's trousers; Joan is a claymore cleaving combat queen who would make Aragorn feel inadequate.

The game is split into three core elements, each interconnected with the other. There's third person sword fighting, RPG-style stat and skill advancement and, in later stages of the game, a reasonably simplified bash at real-time strategy. This means that, while playing as Joan and her generals, you're able to physically beat down the English oppressors, develop your characters as you desire from the experience you gain achieving your goals and, towards the end of the game, command ever increasing armies as each engagement becomes larger and larger.

Cut and thrust of it

You never feel like you're totally in control of your combos and critical moves.

The third-person sword fighting, along with dashing about occupied France like a shinier version of Lara Croft solving basic retrieval puzzles, will take up most of your time. Swordplay is not half as exciting as it sounds, not simply because you only have three basic moves, but because it never feels fluid or natural enough. There might be dozens of combo moves and missile weapons to use, but combat tends to degenerate into a mess, your allies being nowhere near as helpful as they should be and most opponents, including bosses, being little challenge at all. It's the sheer number of English pig-dogs that you'll face that causes you difficulty, not their behaviour.

It certainly helps that you can knock dozens of them down with one swing of your sword. The melodrama of this is, of course, utterly ridiculous but the overblown nature of the combat is one of its main draws, it's just a shame that fighting wave after wave of mindless grunts quickly becomes formulaic - even boss battles are basic and most can be defeated with a few set moves.

Cross to bear

See what I meant when I said you'd be slaying hundreds?

This wouldn't matter so much if melee combat weren't the meat and potatoes of the game, but it is. As soon as you switch to other characters or to the real-time strategy control method you miss being able to tear the enemy apart as efficiently as you can yourself, the AI never doing half as good a job. Still, at least it’s keeping you healthy, diving into your backpack and chomping through bread and apples at a rate of knots. Food keeps your health bar topped up and the game has a terrible habit of ignoring you when you frantically stab the inventory key to grab a quick bite to eat; the equivalent of quaffing a healing potion.

Irritations like those above do nothing for your gaming experience; many other such niggles are dotted throughout the game. These range from only some of your companions having French accents (and so each one having his own particular pronunciation of 'Orléans') to the way Joan whines "Argh, I'm being attacked," like a whiney prima donna. Incidentally, in similar situations, Joan's number two, de Metz, always sounds like he's embarrassed to be asking for help from a girl. Should you wish, you could bring a bow or crossbow into the fray, for some (very basic) first person shooter-style action. That's as long as you don't mind arrows apparently emerging at speed from your navel.

Burning desire

Sounds like another fake religious artefact. Better have it carbon dated.

To top it all, after spending a great deal of time battling the hordes of English soldiers (it's not uncommon to personally kill hundreds of them), you can't help but feel cheated as their defeated generals repeatedly flee in front of your eyes during a cheesy cut scene where they complain about how they'd have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids. The game clearly isn't boasting anything in the storyline stakes (gah!) either. In fact, it's not really boasting much at all that hasn't been done better elsewhere.

True, this game has effectively merged three different genres where most developers are content to straddle two, but the end result is little more than satisfactory. There's no fizz, no buzz, no pizzazz, nothing that makes me want to use flashy words featuring the letter ‘z’ to jazz up the review. This is adequate entertainment that does nothing terribly wrong, but never manages to shine in any one particular area. There's not a thing about this game that makes me able to recommend it as anything more than a diversion. On the other hand, the 1999 TV miniseries about Joan of Arc may be a flawed gem, but it's still worth a look. It stars Leelee Sobieski, for a start...