Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark

WOW! What a NOSTALGIC encounter with this game! It's a LETTER OF LOVE to FINAL FANTASY TACTICS. Some points:
- Good story and characters;
- Decent graphics and art;
- Excelent job system, similar to FFT;
- Excelent battle system;
- Magics and moves with average quality;
- Good system to customize difficult settings;
- Bad camera! It does not rotate...
I had a lot of fun getting all achievements and I hope you have the a great experience!

Game is great on the most important levels which is why I'm recommending it, here is the breakdown:
Pros:
- Gameplay (5/5): It's not an exaggeration to say it scratches that FFT itch without being FFT. It's stayed true to the classic formula for the most part and the variations in combinations of classes is quite nice.
- Story(4/5): As someone who has to restrain themselves from skipping the story in most games, this one held my attention quite nicely with some genuine laugh out loud moments.
Cons:
- Graphics (1.5/5): I cut the developer some slack here as they are an indie team with not a lot of resources to spend on art, although I still can't support the design choices here as I nearly didn't get the game because of it.
The portraits available for your characters are very sparse and don't have matching styles, as well as looking like they were done by an amateur in 2001 on photoshop. I understand you have the ability to upload your own portraits but I just want to play the game.
The sprites themselves all have a skinny tall build of all the same height and build, it's a bit unsettling everyone on the planet somehow looks the same barring monsters. The worst of it is the cartoonish style that looks like a 2001 browser flash game art style. This combined together makes for a cheap looking aesthetic that turned me off buying the game for a long time despite being a massive fan of FFT.
I will say that because of how good the rest of the game is, after a few hours you get used to it and start to forget about how badly done the graphics are.
Other cons: Not being able to spin the stage is a little frustrating, like wearing a pair of pants that are too tight and uncomfortable.

It's inevitable that every review of this game is going to mention Final Fantasy Tactics, and fair enough, as that's basically what this is recreating. However Fell Seal optimizes a number of obscure mechanics that FFT had and I think it might be a better game for it. This does not mean the game is perfect though, although after having played for over 100 hours, I can safely say that it is a game worthy of a lot of praise.
Music/Sound: The music has not gotten stuck in my head the same way that FFT did, but that doesn't detract from the quality that is here. While the number of different tracks and tunes is rather limited, the battle music is catchy and never gets reptitive and annoying. The overworld and menu music all evoke a feeling of classic RPG's and are quite pleasant, if not outstanding. The sound effects are excellent though, each sword hit, gunshot and spell effect sound incredibly satisfying and fuel the addiction to grinding quite nicely.
Graphics/Art: This is always going to be subjective, and I've seen many people comment that they don't care for the art style and graphic design. I will say that I wasn't in love with many of the character portraits but I do think the in game models, monsters and environments look really fantastic. I wasn't a fan at first, but they really start to grow on you the more you play the game.
Gameplay: Ah here is the meat and potatoes. The job system is fantastic and greatly encourages experimentation and character building. Mastering any particular job doesn't take a very long grind to max out a class, and so you'll have plenty of time to switch things up and gain new skills as you play. Stat growths are determined by the classes you master and level in, so some planning ahead might be necessary on hard difficulty settings if you're looking to minmax the game. This really isn't required though, as even on a normal to medium level of difficulty, none of the story encounters and battles are so hard that you need to make broken characters to stand a chance. The game is classic tactics gameplay, movement on a grid, being able to scale up vertically, and having a variety of melee and ranged effects are going to be keys to victory. There is a bit of an over reliance on lethal terrain and pushing characters though, better hope your character can swim or hover or they might be one-shot by falling into water or lava. There is much more of an emphasis on buffs and debuffs compared to FFT here, and while many have mentioned that this might be too tedious or annoying to deal with; I personally didn't have much of a problem with it. The way items and weapons are handles is very nice, with some of the bet gear and accesories being crafted from rare components, or acquired out of a chest. I do wish there was just slightly more options for gearing that didn't simply amount to more stats, but that is a minor complaint over all. Items are not consumables, in the sense that you don't need to waste time buying new potions or phoenix downs after every battle. This is a nice feature, and is actually used in a way that balances the strength of items as you cant simply bring 99 elixirs with you to each battle.
The Story: Left a lot to be desired. Very tropey, and a bit predictable. Nothing can compare to the masterpiece of story that was FFT, but I really was hoping for more here. They give you a lot of plot early on in the game, and then over half of the game is just trailing behind the bad guys and fighting the same braindead group of bad guys over and over until near the end when the story begins to move forward again. It really would have been nice if they fleshed out the history of the world a bit more, have us more insight into the immortals, arbiters and how the world functions. Instead we are just given enough to have a skeletal framework of a story that ends with you fighting a big bad that is just kind of... there?
All that being said, I absolutely loved this game and would highly recommend it to any tactics fan, or even just an RPG player in general.

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is a Tactical RPG with gameplay similar to Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre.
There are a lot of options right from the jump to shape your gameplay experience, which can be altered at any point in the game. There are also many classes, items, and recruitable monsters with their set of classes, all leading to a perhaps overwhelming amount of possible combinations!
However, as you get into the midgame, it becomes tediously clear that many classes have skill overlap, which stifles the desire to learn them all. There are incentives to mastering a class (permanent stat bonuses) but they really aren't at all necessary. And the fact that you have menu options to make the game easier only makes the issue of unnecessary, arbitrary and redundant classes stand out all the more.
The plot is fun and, to my surprise, NOT filled to the brim with prepubescent attempts at humor. It's not nearly as busy as Final Fantasy Tactics or the Tactics Ogre games, but it does have interesting twists. Fans of the genre should enjoy it, if they can get over the barrage of options and classes that can, at times, seem unnecessary.

Was fun enough for me to 100% it. That means it's good. Although rng can induce rage from time to time when you miss several 90+% hits in a row on a guy that proceeds to murder one of your own next. Comes with the genre I guess.

Wonderful game, AI actually uses tactics that a human would use (super annoying to have enemies constantly healing... like a human would do)

I cannot recommend this game enough. I'm only part of the way into the story and I love it. It's extremely evident it borrows inspiration from Final Fantasy Tactics and FFT Advance and I LOVE that. There are many many classes and tons of abilities to learn (and yes, there is some overlap but I think that's totally fine). If you like tactical RPGs with a lot of room for growth, some great systems in place, this is a high, high recommendation.