Recently finished
Jeanne d'Arc for PSP
Good:
- Classic japtactical formula (Tactics Ogre, FFT, etc.).
- Devs at least tried to balance shit out this time: no totally OP units, clear and simple rules, no sperg-bullshit (Disgaea). Units have set jobs and THAT'S IT, transformations have limited time and use, etc.
- Clever use of gameplay quirks (using burning areas can lead to epic damage combos).
- Varied winning conditions. Most of the time killing all enemies is easy, but you need to do sth else to complete mission. An underused feature in such games for sure, though you can still fuck this up AFAIK (Square in FFT Advance).
- Quite often you have ~12 turns to complete a mission, so you gotta go fast.
- Very good and creative level design. Some maps are simply beautiful, some are very clever-made (obstacles you need to move around).
- Units are quite fragile through the entire game. Everyone can die from 2-3 hits. Good, since in some such games HP to damage ratio is borked (killing takes too much time).
Ugly:
- A little-bit bare boned when compared to other games from the genre. Think rather Vandal Hearts 1 than FFT.
- Damage is too level-dependant (except magic). So, if unit A is ~5 levels below unit B, it will be able to hit unit B for ~2 HP, with ~5% accuracy. Not as bad as in Tactics Ogre, but still meh.
- Game is too easy, mostly due to no level scaling for both story and optional battles. A controversial choice, since it makes playing optional battles boring / unnecessary (no point of fighting under-leveled enemies). You can also out-level enemies at some point, making story battles trivial.
- Art and FMVs are too wapanese for my taste, not so great art-wise too.
- Element magic work in rock-paper-scissors way, which makes specializing useless (the stronger your fag is when using fire, the weaker to ice he becomes). You can just crank magical attack instead.
- Some enemies' AI is triggered by range. You can pound them with magic from afar, and they don't even budge.
- Skill crafting is too much hassle, with billions combinations leading to shitty skills you can as well buy in shops.
Bad:
- Shitty, pseudo-literary descriptions of skills. Most of the time you have to try a skill to learn what it actually does. The fuck? Esp. shitty with special skills, which lack info if they're of physical type (level-dependant) or magical type (not affected by levels, at least that much).
- One of the most aggravating uses of "Le Olde English / French" ever. Drop this shit, people.
- VOs in FMVs are horrible.
Verdict: decent, but could've been much better with higher difficulty / tweaked gameplay (level scaling / gear scaling / more aggresive AI). Let's hope modders will fix it.
BTW, I've recently started playing my first ever Fire Emblem game (not counting Advance Wars series, which uses similar concept), that is
FE3 for Snes, and I'm loving it. Old but gold.