JOAN OF ARC: SIEGE AND THE SWORD

 JOAN OF ARC: SIEGE AND THE SWORD (JOAN) details the end of the Hundred Years'
War between England and France. As Charles VII, you must drive the English out
and defeat the other French factions. While control of towns is the primary goal
(rendering campaigning unavoidable), there are a variety of other options,
including peace treaties, ransoms, espionage, assassination, kidnaping,
taxation, and the suppression of rebellion. (This review is based on the IBM-PC
version; Amiga version notes follow.)

 JOAN has several strengths. The diplomatic options and the range of characters
are nice. JOAN takes full advantage of EGA graphics, and from the box photos,
VGA graphics appear to be even better. The sound is fairly decent, reminiscent
of BATTLE CHESS, with metal-against-metal clanks and agonized gasps. On the down
side, the "hoo-wah!" of an attacking opponent sounds like something out of Monty
Python.

 Although an interesting concept, and technically excellent, JOAN fails as a
game. For one thing, several aspects of JOAN repeatedly remind you that it _is_
merely a game, rather than a faithful portrayal of the time.

 For example, four actions (field battle, town assault, town defense, and the
Cavalier Challenge) are resolved in arcade sequences, with the difficulty
dependent on the forces involved. These sequences are just difficult enough to
irritate a strategy gamer, but not interesting enough to engage an arcade
player.

 To illustrate, assaulting a town has two parts: taking the bridge, and climbing
the wall. Taking the bridge is trivial, simply a matter of holding down the
"overhand attack" key until the opponent misses. When you climb the wall, you
must dodge oil and rocks. Rocks can be blocked and have a fair warning time, but
oil cannot and has none. Hence you generally stick to one ladder, blocking rocks
and hoping they won't dump oil.

 The Cavalier Challenge is another sore point. This random event occurs after
you move an army; if your contestant loses the joust, 90% of your army deserts.
There is no corresponding advantage to a win. This happens to be the only arcade
sequence that requires any skill, and even so, the correct tactic -- whirling
after an attack pass -- bears no resemblance to reality.

 Another point of unreality of money. Ransoms are the best source of income, by
far. The annual hearth tax nets about 1.5 million pounds if you control all of
France, and you'll get around half that during most of the game. Taxing an
individual province will net about a hundred thousand, requires an action, drops
the province's loyalty, and can only be done once a year for each province. In
contrast, even a minor noble will net half a million pounds. The best tactic to
raise money, then, is to repeatedly kidnap nobles (for which you'll need about
20,000 pounds to insure success) and ransom them back. Properly done, this will
net you 8-10 million pounds before they catch all your agents, which is more
than enough money for the rest of the game.

 The turn sequence is constraining, too. Each action requires a certain amount
of time to resolve. In good weather, you can take two to three actions a month;
in bad, only one, or even none. This means that there's no advantage to multiple
armies, since only one of them can act at a time. Espionage is pointless,
because it consumes too much time, and gains little information. The turn
sequence also results in some silly situations, such as the ordering of an
execution preventing any other action that month.

 Despite all its failings as a simulation, JOAN at first seemed interesting as a
game. The English send out armies of 50,000-90,000 men in the mid-game, which
are hideously expensive in both men and cash to counter. After a few hours of
play, however, I discovered that you don't need to. By simply avoiding these
armies and snapping up towns faster than the English can retake them, you can
easily win. A 4,000-man army with a strong general (Joan of Arc or Richemont)
can take any fortification, and costs little to maintain. Once you hit upon this
tactic, winning is no challenge and requires little thought.

 JOAN OF ARC occupied me for a total of about eight hours. Perhaps four of those
were spent fumbling around, learning which dumb mistakes one ought not to make
(about par for any complicated game). Although no computer game lasts forever,
four hours of play after you have the basics down is a bit slim for a $35 street
price.

 AMIGA VERSION NOTES AND ANOTHER OPINION

 The Amiga version plays identically to the IBM-PC version, and its arcade
sequences are just as difficult (and, seemingly, pointless). However, I think
JOAN is a much better game than the original review makes it out to be. If
you're expecting a strategy game in the same mode as Koei's fascinatingly
complex historical simulations, you're likely to be very disappointed; JOAN
isn't anywhere near as deep as Koei's games in terms of its strategic, tactical,
economic, and diplomatic aspects. In this regard, the initial review is fully
justified in its criticisms.

 But what JOAN _does_ provide is a nice balance between a "cinematic" kind of
game and a boardgame-derived simulation. I enjoyed the Monty Pythonesque quality
of the raids on and defenses of castles, and the Cavalier Challenge arcade game
is somewhat reminiscent of DEFENDER OF THE CROWN. The graphics/arcade sequences
provide an interesting and original multi-media/collage combination of digitized
photographic backgrounds with overlaid cartoon-animated characters -- something
seen in games from Dynamix on the IBM, for example.

 The Amiga version of JOAN comes on two unprotected disks, and uses a
brownish-purple sheet for copy protection (you're asked to match an on-screen
territory with its named equivalent on the sheet, which is not as much of an
eye-killer as more textually dense versions of this kind of protection can be).
The game must be played from floppy disks; it cannot be installed on a hard
drive, and doesn't multi-task at all. Gameplay is managed with a mouse, a
joystick, the keyboard, or a combination of the three. Option selection is
easiest with the mouse; battle and arcade portions of the game are best handled
with either keyboard or joystick. 512K of RAM is used.

 JOAN OF ARC: SIEGE AND THE SWORD is published and distributed by Broderbund.

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