Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark

NAH YEAH!!!

This is not so much a game as it is a brain rot simulator. For those who are just starting out and don't want a dead run, go follow a guide. Oh sorry, I mean THE ONLY GUIDE. There is only one way to play this game for it to not be a pain in the ass even on the easiest settings. As soon as you reach the 3rd story fight of the game, they make it abundantly clear that this game is not for your enjoyment, it is for the developer's enjoyment, you must follow in their every footstep. The enemies will always have more units than you, have more advanced skills than you, have more advanced passives than you, have better terrain at the start of the fight than you, have better AoE than you, have better heal AoE than you... Unless you follow the steps below. Buy 10 units at the start, cycle level them to level 4 and then reset their level and do it all over again for 20 hours until you've unlocked the best classes and learned their busted skills and passives, and then reset one more time and pick one main class to stick with for your character levels as your stat gains are based on only your main class.

This is impressively polished for an indie studio. A fun SRPG (if you don't know what SRPG is, think Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem). This game has a marvelous soundtrack. The final boss music really has a "yes, this is where everything comes to an end, for better or worse" vibe. The combat is hard. Sometimes even frustrating. The enemies adjust to the player's level. The build mechanics are quite enjoyable, offering a satisfying depth; though some combinations are a touch overpowered (I'm looking at you, Dual Wielding). It's delightful in experimenting with different variants and mix-and-matching abilities. At least in the early-to-mid game, before certain powerful combinations inevitably come to dominate. The story is also interesting, with quite a bit of twists and turns. And weight. The first quarter of the story is pretty standard RPG plot. Of course, the FBI of this fantasy world has issues. And to be honest I gave up the game at first after around two hours of fumbling. But the story picks up the pace at around a quarter mark. The tension is especially palpable in the 3rd act after returning to the starting city. You know the world is to be saved. This is an RPG after all. But the story is constantly reminding me the cost and what comes after; that ... maybe it would be a bit more complicated than a happily-ever-after? Sure, only the core group get character building, and some plot twists are almost blatantly obvious. Yet, given the length of the game, I still think the story is foreshadowed and paced well enough. And there is something I thought was an Easter egg and a bit of meta narrative joke, which later turned out to be very plot relevant. Surprising!

Blandest story Ive seen in a hot while

I hesitated to leave a negative on this game, because at first I thought my aversion was too subjective or personal. But then I realized, so is everything else. I simply HATE the style and visual design of this game. So much so that it actually pushed me away. Maybe if you're a Tactics fan it's up your alley, but man I hated looking at it.

On the surface, Fell Seal looks a lot like Final Fantasy Tactics. Unfortunately it lacks an enormous amount of strategic depth and complexity that made FFT so good. There are loads of little issues that drag down the experience. With that said, Fell Seal isn't a bad game, it just couldn't meet my sky-high expectations. I am disappointed, but I recognize my disappointment comes from expecting too much - therefore I don't have the heart to leave a bad review. I enjoyed it enough to get all the achievements. The art and music are strong points, as is the class system. The story and characters are good enough but nothing special. Figuring out a good build for my team was most enjoyable to me. Heals and ranged attacks are too abundant - nearly every class has a heal, a ranged attack, or both. Far too many attacks deal percent damage based on current or max HP. Infuriatingly, there are some hidden mechanics altering the numbers in the enemy's favor. I was doing a random patrol battle for EXP when I noticed the enemy was taking a lot less damage than they should. With near-identical stats, my unit takes more damage than an enemy. Compare this: Difficulty settings all set to "Default" My attacker: LVL 38, 315 mind, Thunderbolt spell My other unit: LVL 38, 229 resist, 0 lightning resist, takes 97 damage from the front (less damage from frontal attacks) Enemy unit: LVL 33, 236 resist, -50 lightning resist, takes 70 damage from the back (should do bonus damage from the back AND for the lightning vulnerability!!!) Surely 7 points of resist stat can't account for this difference. Dice rolls are lopsided in the enemy's favor. One battle had me facing 100% identical duplicates of my characters. They had 10 for 10 successful Blind/Sleep powder attacks, but I only had 2 of 10 successful.

I like it, but only because I haven't really seen another studio earnestly try and succeed to make a good Final Fantasy Tactics predecessor. They definitely tried. I would say they succeeded, but didn't really innovate on any mechanics to truly make it stand on its own.

Não vou me alongar, esse jogo é um final fantasy tactics, com uma arte, trilha sonora e cenários deslumbrante, bem como uma porrada de classes e maestria que combinada quebram o jogo, e o melhor legendado em PT/BR, ou seja, para os fãs de tactics é perfeito, pode ir sem medo.

The gameplay is good, there's a pretty scant number of games in this genre, so I do suggest playing it for the mechanics, but the story is....bad. It builds on some things from the original tactics, as well as games like Tactics Ogre, with a hearty roster of classes and ability mixing to choose from. Spoilies next. At best, it's thoughtless writing, at worst, an endorsement of the police state. Stuff happens, for sure, but characters don't learn or grow. That's not a great choice when the framing is "noble police versus objectively wrong rebels". These people live in a dystopia run by immortals - rule legitimized by half-true history - who choose successors via violent hunger games style pilgrimages which sends at least six people (against their will, often) to almost certain death. Corruption is seen as an aberration in this system, rather than the default. The main character only ever follows the law to the letter, which conveniently has any loophole that would let her do exactly what she wants to do anyway, which creates strange messaging such as: "police are allowed to hunt and kill in self defense" "threat of execution and press-ganging are okay and cool" "rebels are just misguided" and "law enforcement is supposed to interpret the law and mete out justice as they see fit." All of these ideas could work well in a game with this setup, but since the protagonists are perfectly good and noble paragons of virtue, their actions are communicated as perfectly good and noble. Now of course not every game needs to have some kind of anti establishment message, but the implications of this world are grim. I would recommend playing it for the game play, but by the end I was really just hoping to get through the slog of a story which did bring down the overall experience.