Wars and Warriors: Joan of Arc Review

Trevor Chan, a prominent game designer and CEO of Enlight Software, takes his first stride into the action genre with the latest 3rd person action/RPG, Wars and Warriors: Joan of Arc. Due to his extensive experience with strategy games (Capitalism and Seven Kingdoms being two of the most popular), Trevor opted to enliven this title with a whole bunch of RTS features. So, when we first heard about the project we were keen to check it out and see if an experienced and skilled designer like Trevor could pull off such an intriguing genre combination.

As one would naturally assume, this game casts the player in the role of the historically famous French heroine Joan of Arc. While the English king struggles to gain control over the whole of France, your task will be to rally up the remnants of resistance scattered across the country. Accompanied by other renowned leaders like Jean De Metz, the Duke of Alencon, and General "Le Hire," Joan will be in the position to retaliate - once she musters enough troops to join her cause. Although the setting and historical background of the main characters proved interesting at times, there's still precious little in the narrative to make you feel as if you're actually a part of the epic conflict. Players will surely fail to find any personal connections to any of the characters presented throughout the game; perhaps even Joan herself.

When it comes to gameplay basics, Wars and Warriors: Joan of Arc appeared to have some serious potential. At the outset, we thought it might be interesting to see what Trevor Chan and his team of designers had done to blend strategy, action, and RPG elements. To our disappointment the game exhibited strong tendencies towards archetypal action-style gameplay which sadly doesn't quite make for a particularly addictive experience. You'll be slicing and dicing through foes more than anything else. Strategy and role-playing moments are minuscule and mostly offstage, while over-emphasized action instigates a somewhat disagreeable console-like feel (hardcore PC gamers will be frowning at the developers for that one). Just so you know, Enlight is actually working on an Xbox version of Joan of Arc which we expect to be released later during 2004. With all due respect to the development team, this seems like an acceptable move, especially if the designers mean to incorporate a multiplayer mode and Live support. We've interpreted this as another huge drawback in PC version though. A game like Wars and Warriors: Joan of Arc has plenty of features, making it an ideal setting for multiplayer matches. Unfortunately, don't expect to find any this time around.

The developers have incorporated some commendable elements, giving a nice flavor to the gameplay. Hero characters (i.e. Jean De Metz, the Duke of Alencon, Joan, etc.) are able to advance numerous fighting abilities, leveling the usual RPG style set of statistics such as defense, ranged attacks, and melee skills. In addition to these, your characters use a variety of special moves, eventually unlocking numerous new combos during combat. Additionally, each character will be able to ride horses, provided of course they possess the appropriate skills to do so.

During the single-player campaign players will face a total of eight lengthy missions. This may not sound like much, but the good thing is that they're huge and crammed with enemies. During each mission you can expect a wide range of tasks which may take you more than several hours to complete. A lot of these scenarios involve assignments where players must lead numerous characters and armies at once, and that sort of makes things a little bit trickier. One time, we were required to infiltrate a powerful stronghold controlled by the English. In this situation, however, you also face an assortment of mandatory side-tasks before you can advance on the primary target. We've encountered a couple of rather annoying camera issues as we went along. What happens is that your troops and hero characters are often overwhelmed by the enemy soldiers, obliging you to be on your guard at all times. This can prove to be quite difficult when the camera harshly switches angles for no apparent reason, leaving the player totally disoriented.

Fighting against enemies in this game is more like knocking down hordes of mindless dummies. We didn't encounter any exceptionally bright behavior patterns... or movement patters for that matter. Don't get me wrong though, the game can be challenging; only if you consider slashing through hordes of dimwitted foes a challenge. The friendly AI can hold its own for a while, but also tends to act strangely at certain points in the game. Sometimes the friendly characters and troops simply refuse to acknowledge orders, both in RTS and 3rd person modes of play.

One of the positive aspects of Joan of Arc is the intuitive interface and inventory system. Upgrading characters, issuing command to your troops, and using items from your inventory are quickly mastered by any level of gamer. The fluidness of gameplay, on the other hand, is significantly decreased due to the faulty camera controls and restrained movement through levels. Some objects like forests, hills, large, rocks, and various structures or buildings, can hamper your movement and will usually require you to take detours just to get to a particular destination.

The graphics appear passable ... I think, but the game kind of lacked any real visual flair, like rich environments, and a smooth frame-rate. Actually, most of the time the game was quite choppy, especially when numerous units and character models march into battle. As you'd expect it, the official site for the game has been promoting the 3D engine as state-of-the-art. State-of-the-art, they say? Hardly! We've experienced some serious frame-rate issues when the screen gets clogged with multiple characters and units - even once we've reduced the details such as dynamic grass and draw distance. (The game was tested on a AMD 2200+/Radeon 9700Pro/1GB RAM rig.) The game obviously lacks additional eye-candy and more details in the backdrop that could considerably improve its ambiance and the overall visual quality. Some of the textures look a bit shabby too, so don't expect much of a visual appeal as you play.