Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark
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Classic tactical combat in a beautiful, dangerous world. Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is a tactical RPG that follows in the footsteps of venerated genre greats such as Final Fantasy Tactics. Lead your squad of Arbiters through dozens of lush, hand-drawn maps. Customize your squadmates and set them on their path to greatness. With over 20 classes and 200 abilities, every squadmate is unique. Position your troops and choose a strategy that leads to victory!
Steam User 66
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.
Steam User 26
I did 100% this game without break and there is still NG+ waiting for me. Fell Seal is that good and one of the best games in tactical genre as a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy Tactics should be.
Its long, it have complex and varied class builds, lots of items, secrets, crafting and it's hard. Story is passable too for a tactical game.
With the awesome and mandatory DLC you can also recruit/tame all the monster, they have their own skills and evolutions.
Just buy it and play it if you have any love for tactical games.
Steam User 26
I'm not saying this is the best game ever made, but the fact it has mixed reviews utterly ridiculous. This is one of my favorite games I've ever played. It's not super complicated, the plot isn't groundbreaking, the graphics aren't high end, but yet there is an almost perfect simplicity to it. I have spent hundreds of hours on it, but it only feels like about half of the time. There are times where I'm almost convinced the computer and RNG is fixed against me, yet I still keep coming back because it is reliable fun.
Steam User 11
This game is decent.
If you want a turn based thingie where you can develop your characters, it does the job.
Nothing is bad in this game, nothing is good in this game. the story is stupid but at least dialogs go fast, the combat is allright, a bit too simple, but character development is above average.
You can finish it in 30-40hrs, you can have an endless grind too, up to you.
If you need a game, you can buy this one, if you're looking for a mindblowing game look somewhere else.
It's bug free, runs well and demands low ressources to play, all in all it's a game to recommend but not a game to praise.
Safe buy, but not really more.
Steam User 14
If you like Final Fantasy Tactics, get this game. It's not as good as FFT, virtually nothing is, but it's very good. The graphics are...fine, but the game systems (which is what we're here for, right?) are mostly great. Easily worth its price tag.
Steam User 10
Having finally finished the game after bouncing off 3 times, but not 100%ing it, these are my thoughts and critiques based on my experience. I am also leaving part of this review as feedback to the devs in case a second Fell Seal ever gets made.
Let's start with the story: don't play this game for it. It's not bad, like really it isn't, but when you're going up against something of the caliber of FFT, it was never going to be better. But that's okay. This game was basically made by two people. Yet we need to be honest here. I think the story suffered most from a lack of likable characters and time to develop them, but the bones of the plot were actually quite solid I thought.
Thoughts on gameplay:
I think some of this game's problems are as much FFT's as its own. The Speed system in particular is onerous, resulting in weird lopsided initiative cycles a lot of the time that can make it difficult to plan moves in advance in any meaningful way. It also means that inflated enemy stats mean they're literally getting more turns than you. However, I know it worked this way in FFT as well, so that was something they were competing with.
The classes are excellently designed overall. Every class seems to offer something useful, even the basic starting classes, and the fact that there are single-use items that unlock classes is just excellent. This game is a minmaxer's dream and there are many ways to achieve victory. I was also surprised at just how balanced they managed to make this system, where ability selection and synergy between units matters a lot more than raw stats. There are many meaningful choices to make between abilities that will have you thinking for a long time about what would be better for a given unit.
Positioning matters a lot as well, as it should in a tactics game. Units can be knocked around, drowned, and have all manner of things happen to them. In a sequel this should be expanded: more hazard tiles, cover tiles against ranged units, etc. This would fix one of the game's primary issues: the arenas aren't particularly interesting to fight against.
My biggest personal gripe was how in the late game, playing on Hard difficulty, the abundance of ways to heal and revive units made combat tedious. I'm aware I can turn these off with difficulty options, but these are tools the player has available and this illustrates how toxic these systems are for battles. I think limiting things like items and healing even further would be a way to make the game more interesting so as to stop combat from devolving into a potion-spamming fest as it often becomes in the late game. Yes you can inflict Weaken on enemies to stop them from healing, but good luck doing that in concert with the rest of your squad depending on the unit you trained to use that ability.
Also, the ability Challenger from the DLC is really annoying to have appear on random units. This ability can singularly change how hard battles are in the late game depending on which monsters spawn with it, as it prevents 50% of damage from single-target abilities, which is often a large part of your team.
That said, I do recommend this game ultimately. It's a game you love in spite of its flaws, and you may bounce off it a few times like I did, but for its asking price it's an indie gem that does the mechanics of the FFT series honor. I think a sequel could address this game's shortcomings and become a game that stands even taller than this one does among the SRPG landscape.
Steam User 14
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!