Wars and Warriors: Joan of Arc

Wars and Warriors: Joan of Arc is an action game that combines first- and third-person combat, real-time strategy, and role-playing elements. The game takes place during the Hundred-Years War between France and England. Joan starts off her military career with a lot to prove. Being a woman in this era, it was unheard of that a female would lead her men to battle...Just incase you never took basic European history, Joan of Arc was a 19 year girl who accomplished what many men older and wiser couldn't. France was on the brink of collapse when she emerged into history. Half of the country was occupied by the savage English troops under the Kings Edward V and Edward VI. They took advantage of the civil war that ravaged France. The Burgundians were allied to England and against the dauphin. The city of Orleans was the last bastion to hold the English from taking the other half of France and was under siege for 8 months when Joan arrived on at Orleans. Joans confidence in God and her voices of Saints helped achieve the impossible. She lifted the siege of Orleans, defeated other English forces and paved the way for Charles of Ponthieu, to become King Charles VII. In the end however, she was caught and sold the Burgundians to the English, and burned at the stake.

Fortunately, you don't need to know anything about Joan of Arc or her history to play and enjoy this game. Joan of Arc is primarily action-based, with real-time and lite role-playing elements. The game is played through a third person perspective and you control Joan and a few other commanders, including her real life companion Jean de Metz, leading troops into battle against English. Joan of Arc employs a simple combat system consisting of light and heavy combination attacks. You have two main attack types - a standard attack and a power attack that uses stamina. You can pull off various attacks by doing power attacks during a standard combo. Aside from the use of a sword, you can fire (from a fixed first person perspective) arrows from your bow. There will also be a few times when you will be riding on a horse. There really isn’t much to say regarding the real time strategy portion of the game, because basically there's nothing special. The RTS aspects are action oriented - there is no building of buildings or gathering of resources. You simply command your units (including bowman, swordsman and others). Switching to the RTS mode on the fly (by pressing the F2 key) lets you rally your troops and control them so that you can effectively take down the enemy army. Sadly, the poor path-finding abilities of your troops makes maneuvering in the RTS portions very frustrating. There are also RPG elements, such as character-building, where you can enhance their character's attributes and combos through experience points. Each time you level up you are given a few points to increase certain areas such as Strength, Defense, Dexterity and Leadership. Each level can be quite long with several different goals. After a while, this may become somewhat repetitive. Adding to the RPG feel is a slot-based inventory system, where you store weapons and items you lift from fallen enemies, buy from shops, or take from crates you smash, Diablo style.

In the end, Wars & Warriors: Joan of Arc has a few things going for it: arcade-style hack-and-slash action, 8 huge levels, RPG elements and fairly nice music. However, these features aren't enough to overcome the game's weak AI, frustrating camera and other flaws. In an era of superior-quality games, Wars & Warriors: Joan of Arc is a tough game to recommend. Of course, feel free to download and try this playable demo (325MB).

gameplay movies: movie1 (6.7MB), movie2 (3.6MB), movie3 (3.4MB), movie4 (10.7MB)

System requirements: Pentium III 800MHz (1.5GHz recommended), 256MB RAM, GeForce 2 / ATI Radeon video card (GeForce 3 Ti / ATI Radeon 8500 recommended), CDROM 4x, 1.1GB free HDD space, DirectX 8 compatible sound card; Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor capable of 1024x768 resolution