Great game. The gameplay was pretty good, a mix of Triangle Strategy and Fire Emblem: Engage but not as good as either alone, still great. Unit positioning mattered like in TS which I love, the maps use verticality well although not as impactful as TS. The Gem Stone transformations were cool as an "Engage" style mechanic, limited turn use and not super uber op despite how they seem which each one gaining Galeforce essentially.

Maps were overall great, creative aesthetically and utilize the 3D well making no Maps really feel like blank spaces. The addition of a turn count limit on each map seems a little strict at first, but 90% of the time I felt it was all right and easily manageable adding to the strategy you need to take into a map.

The skill merge and build system was cool, buying and combining skills to get improved or random skills was fun. Weapons and armor were simple enough, no complaints there. Low deployment slots on most maps is annoying, but non-deployed units get exp too so it balances that well.

Bosses while they appear to be damage sponges the game gives you ways to deal with them and if you play smart you usually have plenty of turns to beat them, plus a basic axe skill can negate def.

Story, was not amazing for the first half, pretty standard free France from England with some fantastical elements. But the second half I found great, (a fairly decent Spoiler ahead) love a good protag switch, Liane was great and I loved how they showed how different she was from Jeanne, a big arc culminating in Jeanne having to resolve herself after what Liane has to go through in her absence. Didn't want to spoil but that's kinda my main big talking point story wise. It's the only event that left a big impact in me. It affected the only three characters I love Jeanne, Liane and Roger(rest of the characters are fine-good tho). So I really felt I had to talk about it.

The monsters and animal people might throw people odd aesthetically and may effect your perception of the seriousness. But they didn't bother me. The trio I mentioned are all still great and their stories are handled with good respect to intensity and tone.

Voice acting isn't amazing but hearing Yuri Lowenthal do a French accent sold me on it. It's good for clearly non French and English people trying to do those accents, nothing bad, I like Jeanne and Roger.

The 2D animated cutscenes all look great, the designs are cool, especially love how expressive the portraits are, especially Jeanne's, helps convey her emotions well. Her transformed designs are all great too.

Overall great game, certainly enjoyed my time with this. You win this time France.

Replaying this for the first time in years.
While there were some aspects which could've been done better, I still enjoyed this as much as the first time I played it.
As a person who rarely plays SRPGs, the difficulty was just right and even when I first played it, it's pretty easy to grasp and pretty beginner friendly to people who haven't played the genre all that much.

In some instances, the limited turns are a little annoying and could lead to a few potential game overs, but I'd argue they're a necessary evil. The game isn't hard at all and while at first glance it seems like the limited turns make you rush the stages, they're more so there to make you avoid cheesing your way through stages by baiting enemies one by one, kill them, wait a bit, heal your characters, and repeat, thus eliminating all the difficulty and fun.

Sometimes certain characters will leave your party temporarily, which could be seen as annoying, but also emphasizes you should not neglect other characters or over invest in a certain character. This of course also leads to more overall grinding, which is unfortunate. On the positive side, the side content, although more gimmicky in nature was pretty fun and gave some pretty good rewards.

The armlet mechanic was pretty fun to use although it felt like it wasn't implemented in the best possible way. Characters with armlets are way better than those without them, making armlet users pretty much mandatory picks most of the time.

It's a little annoying how certain stages have visibility issues and how there isn't an option to skip animations, but it luckily isn't game breaking.

The setting takes place during the time period of the 100 years war and blends a part of real life history, though it's mostly fantasy. It was good for what it was and I liked a large part of the characters.

An overall pretty enjoyable and fun SRPG, although veterans of the genre might find it way too easy and if you care about historical accuracy, might be quite annoyed at the liberties they took with the story.

Jeanne d'Arc is a solid tactics game with some interesting ideas. I had a good time playing through this, but it drags, gets a bit scattered, and runs out of ideas towards the end.
Gameplay in Jeanne d'Arc is fairly standard Final Fantasy Tactics inspired gameplay with a couple of interesting twists.

The most important difference is the bracelets that the game introduces for certain characters. These allow the character to change into a Sailor Moon-esque alternate form (historical accuracy is discarded pretty early in this game, despite the name) which grants them improved stats and a special ability. Additionally, every character in this mode has "God Speed", which allows them to immediately take another turn after getting a killing blow. This leads to some interesting strategy where you are more successful if you weaken enemies and then finish a bunch of them off with your bracelet wielder. Not only do the bracelets make these characters more powerful in the story, but they also end up being mechanically more powerful because they are getting all the kills, putting them many levels above the rest of your team. This is a cool little piece of narratively coherent game design that I think is pretty neat.
One small critique here is that it really feels like the bracelets should be freely assignable, letting you adjust your character's abilities in a more extreme way, but they aren't. It is unfortunate, because it would open up the combat system quite a lot and allow you to put more focus on the characters that resonate with you the most, rather than making the bracelet wearers the defacto best characters for every map.
Character classes feel very freeform, with the ability to assign gems that give magic and special abilities to a character more or less however you want. Characters do have a specific weapon they use, and some gems only apply to some weapons, granting you special sword or spear attacks, for instance. There is a little bit of weird false choice here, unfortunately, since a character's base stats have a massive impact on how useful they will be at using a skill. Colet the dagger wielding rogue, for instance, will never really be a good magic user, no matter how many spells you give him. The system is still very expressive and character setup is satisfying and intentional.
Beyond the bracelets and the class structure, the game is a standard entry in the tactics genre and goes on for longer than its gameplay comfortably supports. It doesn't introduce new mechanics and even though you get new skill gems, they are never that different from the ones you gain early in your journey.

Jeanne d'Arc looks fine, but isn't super inspired. The graphics are sometimes cute and the character models are large, but aren't very expressive in the field and all look much less serious than their characters actually are.
However, the character portraits are well done (if generically anime) and the animated cutscenes are all extremely cool.

The story in this game starts off as a sort of normal historical fiction setting with light fantasy aspects and quickly goes off the rails. It never really drops the trappings of history though, so you will be fighting to free Paris from the English and deal with political fallout of your actions, but you are using magic bracelets to summon Sailor Scout armor and fighting against a half-man-half-animal army led by a child king (Henry VI) possessed by a demonic spirit. None of it hangs together particularly well, unfortunately. The game can't seem to decide what it wants to be and a lot of the events seem arbitrary and the character motivations aren't clear. Enemy depth leans heavily on the anime-style redemption arcs which are mostly unearned.
Even the predictable betrayal didn't land for me, since it doesn't make much sense and the game doesn't give the betrayer any motivation at all other than a more sinister hairstyle.
I did like that this game is willing to play rough with your character lineup. Without spoiling too much, I was definitely surprised by a couple of the changes that happen, though I wish this stuff was more prevalent through the whole game, rather than relegated to the back half.

Despite the messiness of the story, the setting is very unique and fun. I liked it, but there are definitely many better entries in the genre.

Well-rounded SRPG built on a solid gameplay foundation and guided by an interesting story premise.
+ great skill stone mechanic that enables unit flexibility and is satisfying to progress
+ reasonably challenging difficulty with accessible ways to grind
+ charming characters in both design and personalities
+ unusual setting that blends history and fantasy well
+ frequent animated cutscenes between stages
+ uniquely melancholic soundtrack
+ a small amount of side and post-game content
- some visibility issues in spite of the rotatable camera
- tiresome early antagonists who just won't die
- several slow animations that repeat constantly