Player Comments on Saint Joan

This is poorly written and broken links appear several times. 1/8.

This could be an interesting story game if it were more immersive. Right now it reals a little too much like a history report. At one point, the game even seems self aware of this, as after diving into some backstory it says, "now, back to the story..."

It would have also been interesting to have a few more choices on how things turned out. I.e. not make it a literal history (although that could be one path) but see if changing things up might make things different. A great place for this would be her battles themselves. Some choices on tactics might be nice.

Also, Jane didn't have personality or emotion in this. Even though it was in second tense it was just a series of events.

I realize this story was for a school project, and not necessarily intended for general enjoyment. Nevertheless...

This storygame is makes very poor use of the CYOA format, with dead links everywhere, and limited insight into the subject matter. It fails to answer any of the high-minded academic questions posed in the story's description.

I mean, for real. Take the very first option presented to the reader: marry the man found for you by your parents, or "Wage war I guess." Because of course that is the major decision facing every young woman's life. Take, for instance, all of Jane Austen's heroines, who stressed that if they didn't take a husband, they me be expected to go off and slaughter the Turks or something.

The point is, we all get that Joan of Arc led an extraordinary life, but this story takes all that was exceptional about her for granted -- as if she were merely acting out what history expected of her. Since any choice that I made that strayed from actual events led to a page with no links, there is no meaningful way to see how different choices might have led to alternate outcomes.

There is also next to no insight about Joan herself. We are treated to the lurid detail about the vaginal probe to verify her virginity, but the part about leading armies, predicting the future, and all that other stuff is included as a matter of course. I could learn as much about Joan by reading her Wikipedia page.

And then there were lines like this: "Charles VII, who became known as the Dauphin..." Well, actually, we **ceased** being Dauphin upon his coronation, as this was a title bestowed to the heir apparent to the throne. If at some point in your college career you take a course on Shakespeare, this guy is the younger brother of the Dauphin who appears as a character in Henry V.