Joan of Arc: Siege and the Sword (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
49Joan of Arc was released in 1989 by Brøderbund, and was developed by a one man team. I'd never heard of the game until I found a screenshot several years ago on Lemon Amiga, and then always wanted to check it out at some point.
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Production Notes:
Captured: 4th October 2021
Narrated: 29th May 2022
I saw the comments that it was a bit like Defender of the Crown, only with digitised backdrops, and better arcadey action, so I was looking forward to it. Yet again, without having a clue of how to play the game, I didn't get very far on my first two tries, and had to look up the longplay on youtube. Once I figured out I was supposed to liberate Orleans and then also Reims to crown the king, it was time to play it for real and start the recorder. So I'd say this was my third ever try. On my second try, I was challenged to a a Knight dual in Brittany, which didnt go well, so I avoided this area during the recording.
It is clear from the footage that I didn't have much of a clue about what to do, but I did know that executing prisoners and selling hostages was the way to win the long game. Even if you had the manual back in the day, it only tells you about the game and not how to play it, which gave the drawback of having having to learn how to play a game before you could even enjoy or actually start to play it. I was definitely impressed by the graphics and the atmosphere. I didnt want to record the ending in case you want to try it yourself, but there are no ending animations, just a single page of text.
The game seemed fairly quiet in my editor, and the voice seemed loud, so it took a while to get the volumes balanced. All of the usual images were added to finish the story of history, and I also grabbed a few panels from the manual, which I found on HOL. These are included just for information. I discovered the connection with the French Franc as the Liberty coin, and put in a panel about that, although you would have to pause the video to read it.
Danscore:
Joan of Arc is impressive, and takes the turn-based strategy genre in a new direction with it's arcade action sequences. It is fun but not quite as fun as Defender of the Crown, due to a very drab-looking main map (why not digitised?), a difficult Knight dual section, and generally feeling too easy. With DOTC, it never felt like a formula game, when you could beat it by the book, as there were random elements and side missions, and this meant no two plays felt the same. With this game, it's a matter of waiting around until the right person falls into jail, and then taking out all of the enemy castles with the money you collect. This spoils a lot of the replay value this game could have had, if there were more random elements. The English army can be decimated after a few good defences of your castles, and this is the easiest mini-game of them all, so by half way in the game, it feels like the enemy has already packed up and gone home. I do like the presentation, and will always have fond memories of playing it, but somehow the lack of background music and general variety stops this from being a true classic. There is also the issue of the 'no way back' menu system, where it's easy to click the wrong thing and lose a turn. I'd give it 7.5 out of 10 as a very good try, which really deserved to get a bigger score. This compares better than the creators other game Pharaoh; which is much more difficult to get into, and relies on trading and perfect fighting skills, I'd only give Pharaoh a 4.5 simply because it is not so easy or fun to play.