Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark

This is a great little squad level turn based strategy game. There is a reason it won so many awards on release. I'm playing it six years later after release on a Chromebook - and it runs fine, unlike some more recently released games (ie the newer X-Coms).

This each member of your squad levels up and gains abilities. You can freely change classes in between combats which gives you access to different abilities so eventually you will end up with characters that are hybrids of various classes.

The combat maps are fairly small so combat encounters don't have to take a lot of time. Because the game encourages you to hit foes in the back or sides and there isn't any zones of control or opportunity attacks fights can seem chaotic, and there can be some incentive to turtle up in the start areas. That's not a huge thing since the enemies have AOE damage.

Part of the game is figuring out how to spread out enough, while still protecting the squishies. There are enough classes you should be able to find a squad that allows you to play the style of squad you like.

The controls feel like a chore.

Fell Seal is the closest I ever got to scratching that Final Fantasy Tactics itch I've had for the past several decades. As someone who really enjoys turn-based JRPGs but rather dislikes the Anime style, I unfortunately have quite a few choices of game picks. The only ones I can usually tolerate are the older ones since the aesthetics are much simpler, although they still suffer from that horrible, horrible Anime dialog where every character talks like a 14 year old.

Ranting aside, Fell Seal is really great on the gameplay side of things. There are many jobs and hybrid options, every ability is thoroughly explained and shows exactly which stat affects it and there's fun exploration and extras which aren't super obscure and require a guide. Probably the best part is the difficulty settings which allow you to tweak so many things to make the game much harder/easier. With the difficulty properly tweaked, combat can be very nail-bitingly exciting.

The plot is... well it's there. It is a very by-the-numbers fantasy story with zero twists or turns. This is where it falls short of FFT. The story and characters are adequate enough to keep the momentum going and at least the characters don't talk like 14 year olds (Thank god for War of The Lions re-translation).

I would also like to point out the music which is not bad at all. Music is an important part of games without voice acting since it is what you hear for most of the game and I feel like it is over looked in more modern tactics games - so kudos to the game on that part.

Overall I enjoyed this a lot and I highly recommend.

If you enjoy FF Tactics you will enjoy this title though the story is just average its combat, classes, and crafting add a lot of depth and variety.

Not different or better than anything else in the genre. Boring

A deep and enriching story, matched with an intuitive and well composed progression system.
Fell Seal Arbiters Mark achieves a mastery of the trpg genre. By improving on the elements earlier games innovated. As well as creating a few of their own.

The game can be quite challenging, just as the original Final Fantasy Tactics was. But there's some points in which the enemy scaling is quite punishing.

Id recommend this for anyone who is a fan of the genre. Or someone looking for an entry into the genre. It does a great job of explaining its systems and story.

The one gripe i have is the art style. but it doesnt really matter when everything else is great. It grows on you over time.

Deep, tactical, and immersive! A fantastic blend of classic tactical RPG mechanics with a rich, story-driven world

Everything you could want from a Final Fantasy Tactics spiritual successor: unlockable classes, story classes, secret classes, secret story classes, monster classes, overpowered class combos...

Also there's a council of problematic demigods who think it's really funny to teleport your units into the water when they're wearing heavy armor >:(

TLDR: Fun for people who like the genre. Pretty shallow game play with questionable balance. XP and JP advancements make it more enjoyable, but it's terribly short.

A lot of people seem to enjoy it. I felt the storyh was too shallow to follow FFT foot steps. There are better games out there, but catch this one on sale if you're a fan of the genre.

Has a very Final Fantasy Tactics vibe, which is great. A few differences in how combat/stats resolve and how you progress jobs/classes make building up before story progression sluggish. You are able to reset character levels and get the job point progression on track, but it seems a little unnecessary except when you want to customize the base character stat progression during leveling. Overall, the story is nice and the gameplay is fun. Just beware it's a lot of time involved for the achievement completionist, but the new game plus feature makes it smoother.

I'm only a few hours into the game, but I'm loving the old school FFTactics feel of the game play. The story is engaging and the characters are well designed. I appreciate the customization for the characters and the Guild Quests.

This is exactly what I was looking for... similar to final fantasy tactics but with some updated options for battles & building out characters. I enjoy the amount of dialogue and ability to battle whenever I am ready. I havent been able to play a game solo in awhile and this is the most hours I have found to put into this game. Doesnt take much to run as well. I use my wireless controller and play on my work laptop during breaks for a little mental break. Great game, recommend for those who loved the tactical games of the past and those who have never played one.

Nice and simple, really enjoying it. Loving all the class options and multiclass options.

Fell Seal is an earnest homage to old-school SRPGs, but fails to execute impactful classes, strategic combat or balanced leveling systems.

Let me start by saying Fell Seal is not a terrible game. It actually does most things right, especially where it counts these days (ie, no gacha DLCs, no punitive or predatory live service, no performance issues or game breaking bugs, etc).

I’d go so far as to say Fell Seal is a decent SRPG, complete with an alright storyline that left me guessing when I was actually facing the last boss, with decent main character story arcs and the allure of mixing and matching more than a dozen classes, which promises the experience of making your own ultimate warriors.

And at the best of times, it is FUN and REWARDING to see your leveling efforts materialize as a character who can stomp equal level enemies in one turn. It has that NOSTALGIA factor that made older SRPGs so memorable and innovative.

It’s just that those moments were far and few between for me. The rest of the time, it was a frustrating slog. Here’s why:

CRITICISMS:

• Limited Enemy AI and Team Compositions:
  Despite the vast variety of classes, monsters and builds presented, it always seemed like I was up against enemy teams whose strategy focused on healing, cleansing debuffs and resurrecting their team members ad-nauseum. This team composition also appeared to be designed to focus fire low health, lown DEF/RES characters first, making tanking or defensive strategies very difficult to implement.
  
  Predictably, by prioritizing healing, reviving and cleansing debuffs, they made it difficult for debuff/buff stacking classes to be effective or trigger combos that required multiple turns to set up. It made every combat longer and repetitive if you didn’t prioritize raw damage, range and movement speed.
  
  This is a fine strategy to face occasionally. As it highlights the advantages of certain classes over others, and obviously made me think about the classes and skills I would need to counter such a strategy.
  
  However, it seemed to me that this was the default strategy meta of the AI. So rather than needing to diversify a team of multiple different classes with different strategies, the only real counter-strategy then became front loading damage, range and move speed.
  
  This monotony of strategy, really sets the need to create fast, potent, effective class hybrids, which the game design seemed to resist.
  
  
• Oddly balanced Class Abilities, Passive Skills and Weapon Proficiency:
  I spent a LOT of time looking at each of the classes, excited to make my own hybrid combinations. And the experience was frustrating and disappointing for a few reasons:
  
  
  
  
  1. Classes varied wildly in terms of usability It felt like some classes had just the right combination of features that enable them to have the best weapon proficiencies, the best stat growth rates, the best abilities and the best default skills. Meanwhile other classes were very niche and didn’t have a lot of passive skills or equipment to make them decent Peddler, Engineer,Assassin.
     
     
  2. Not all weapons were useful, or had Endgame level variants:
     This was actually shocking to me. Any other RPG would have a wide variety of weapons to choose from within a specific power tier. I often wondered if the developers just quit building certain weapons halfway through the game.
     
     By having certain weapon classes not have endgame variants, or not having attributes that really fit which hybrid or primary classes that use them, it made optimizing hybrid characters very difficult.
     
     
  3. Stat Growth dependent on Primary Class:
     This was my least favorite design decision. It meant that not only did I have to painstakingly design a new class from scratch, but I”d have to occasionally just change to some other sub-optimal class in order to shore up one of the lower stats or to grow an additional stat.
     
     
  4. Mana System:
     Another questionable design decision- mana starts at zero and goes up by 10 points per round. This meant many casters couldn’t use their spells every round, or had to go idle a few turns to save up for their most powerful spells. Admittedly, there were a few ways to sustainably generate mana every round, but then this took up the passive skill slots that could have gone to other spell casting passives.
     
  
  
  In the end, it became clear that not all the content the game provided was usable in a practical capacity to match the strategic meta. Eventually I was forcibly funneled into a very narrow set of hybrid classes that actually worked, which varied in power from “sufficient” to “overpowered”.
  
  
[*] No Menu QoL or Loadouts:
Additionally, I spent what felt like WAY too much time in menus: queuing and re-queuing DLC Guild missions, manually re-configuring skills, items, classes and load outs for each battle, for each mission, or having to switch a character to another class to grind stats then switch them back to actual play a mission.

In particular, I often had to switch items from one character to another and there is no streamlined way to do this. You must go several levels deep into the equip menu to equip an item, only to get a warning message that it is equipped on someone else, only to have to back out 2 levels, back down two levels on the other character, un-equip the item, then reverse the process to equip it to the originally intended character. Some modernization of the menu systems would have been lovely.

TLDR:

On paper, this is a decent game. It does a lot of things right, or at least satisfactorily. I think the developer wins points for having a bug-free, functioning product and for NOT having any predatory live-service BS, launchers or loot boxes.

But the mechanics themselves were curiously balanced and made creating my own home brew classes frustrating and disappointing. The itemization didn’t help.

The combat was repetitive, boring and uniform, seeming to force a single play style to make it manageable or fun. (I played on Veteran, so maybe that's my fault, but it was still disappointing).

And finally, altogether too much time was spent on micromanaging, fiddling with the menu system and load outs rather than actual, strategic game play.

If you can find this game on sale, I would suggest getting it. I think it may be worthwhile to support a company that is at least trying to do the gaming industry justice at this point. After all, the game did have genuinely good moments.

I just recall a lot of those moments were separated by hours of time spent that was neither fun nor worthwhile in hindsight.

Almost as good as Final Fantasy Tactics A2!

been sitting on this game for over 2 years now. glad i finally played it while im waiting on a refund to drop.

fire emblem through and through, your classes morph into other classes just like fire emblem, you amass a crew of mercs that you can turn into more powerful mercs as you grind away. just no 3d dungeons like on the 3ds, great for 5 bucks and well developed,

if you loved fire emblem this is your game.

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is a fun little time-waster of a game that is rather approachable for a SRPG, following in the foot-steps of Final Fantasy Tactics. Its rather painfully obvious how much of the game's combat systems and character development system was inspired by the old Square Enix title. Though, this isn't a compliment.

While Fell Seal is fun enough, and not something I regret buying, it lacks an enormous amount of polish and fine-tuning that would have taken it from a middle of the road experience with nothing too egregious to something phenomenal. It lacks for anything to really give it an extra punch, and feels like it played it too safe, followed too closely in Final Fantasy Tactics foot-steps, but lacked for the budget, talent, length and vision that the original laid out.

Gameplay wise: it is every bit of an SRPG. You get a grid, varying elevations, characters have a stat that determines how high they can go up or drop, if they can swim, and how far they can move. Your turn order is determined by your characters speed stat. Basically if you've ever played an RPG, you get the six stats you're working with. It's got a decent class system, though by mid-game, you'll probably only be using the "unique' classes or a select handful of "optimal" choices. Certain jobs like Peddler, feel too weak or situational to really be of much use. I see a lot of potential in the system and who it was laid out, but as I mentioned earlier, it lacks polish. Ranged characters (Gunners, Mages, Archers), are not obstructed by anything on the map. A character can be behind a wall and they can shoot them as if there's nothing blocking them. Also, there's no option to rotate maps during combat, which can make them frustrating to navigate in a fixed isometric view with varying elevations (something likely intentional with the number of "hidden treasure chests" later in the game).

Sound design is nice and solid, all the effects feel weighty and add plenty of impact to the combat. Music wise, nothing stands out, but nothing was annoying either.

Visual design: I'm a big fan of most of the monster designs; however, when it comes to the humans, I can't help but feel like I'm looking at early 2000s, Newgrounds character creator for a javascript game. There's a certain lifelessness in the anime-styled creator designer that just doesn't resonate with me. Maps are gorgeous and generally well-laid out. There's a few...rather unfair designs towards the tail end of the game, but nothing that should trip up anyone for more than one attempt.

Story: This is my biggest gripe about Fell Seal. The story is fine, its generic fantasy fare and I love me some generic fantasy fare; however, it is poorly told. Kyrie and her party have interesting ideas behind them; however, they themselves are not interesting because the entirety of the game is Tell, not Show. Obviously, there should be not expectation of a small indie team to do full fledged cutscenes, but when so much of the cast's motivations rely on the actions of past events, and namely one character that binds them together. A couple flash back scenes illustrating the character's actions and WHY they were so important is almost a narrative imperative.

For the story that Fell Seal wants to tell, it didn't give its cast enough time to develop or come into their own. While they're not flat archetypes all around, the player spends so little time actually witnessing them being people, that the story itself starts to feel less like their story and more like: "We gotta save the world. Pick up your toy soldiers and let's go."

I know all of this seems harsh, but the game for its price and development is wonderful, but it could have been so much better with a little bit more time and care. Some extra polish in mechanics and more consideration to how the story unfolds from an outside perspective.

Want to play Final Fantasy Tactics on your PC or Steamdeck? Get this. It will scratch the itch. Very low system requirements and just about max battery life on Steamdeck.

Nothing within this game grabbed my interest after playing it for 8 or so hours. I simply did not find the story or gameplay rewarding enough to continue playing. Another game left partially completed.

for once i am law-obeyer

I was put off by the artwork at first but what a mistake that was. This was a great game. Scratches that itch you have to replay final fantasy tactics but can never get past the first couple levels because its so slow.

One of the best tactical games I played in a while. cool art style and the variety of classes/jobs that you can mix and match will surely eat some time while having fun building your team.

pretty good ,though it has some battle with insane difficulty spikes and some classes are really underwehling

Nice tactics rpg

fun game! if you liked vandal hearts or FF tactics you'll like this one. the story is...meh, but i didnt mind because the gameplay is fun!

AkiaTheRed should play this game

Is pretty good, art style is just about the only thing that threw me off but looking forward to what comes next

Muy buena la historia y las clases, pase la mayoria del tiempo combinando habilidades y probandolas en el campo de batalla

Even as a long-time Tactics player, play it on "Veteran" mode on your first play through... Higher difficulties are brutal... that said, really enjoying this tactics game...

Orphan of Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre:LUCT, i gave it a try once and didn't really like it at all. Decided to try again, tweaked the settings a bit (injury, etc) and it became a good experience overall.

feel like the grandchild of FFT

Slow, clunky, but a good Tactics RPG in general

If you have an itch to play Final Fantasy Tactics this will take care of that itch!

This is a good tactics game with some unique class leveling and combinations.

This game really is a hidden gem. If you like strategy games, and particularly old school tactics like Final Fantasy Tactics and Vandal Hearts, I can highly recommend Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark. While the first impact was not great, particularly in terms of graphics, the game grew on me quickly and within a few hours I knew I was dealing with a very solid title.

The plot is alright, nothing spectacular but good enough for a game of this genre. Characters are overall likeable. Combat is well designed, maps are different and engaging. But where the game truly shines is the class system and the personalization available to the player. There's huge potential in finding combos, mixing abilities and really giving each unit a unique approach to combat.

I'd give this game an overall 8 or even 8.5/10.

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.

Get ready to farm AP for 30 hours to max all the classes.

Got this during the Winter Sale, and honestly would have paid more, great game story is interesting. The mechanics allow for a sold mix of class based characters and classless. Many unique characters to find and many cool items to find/buy/craft.

Itches the Final Fantasy Tactics bug!

I really liked the variety of classes. This game reminded me a lot of FF Tactics and Tactics Advance, which are two of my favorite TRPGs. The environments are very cool and the music was not bad. One of my favorite things in games is being able to customize units. This game has that in droves. You can change the appearance of the unit and even their portrait. I read that you can even import your own portraits somehow.
10/10 would recommend to anyone who likes TRPGs

Some serious balancing issues, often the game is not fun or challenging just frustrating on harder difficulties.
The skills and systems don't mesh well making it only remotely fun even on low difficulties. I think it may have been more tolerable in early access. The level reset function is sign of things not working, it's a band aid and should not be a long term feature. The stages are kind of ass its hard to judge cover, distance and height. Its just frustrating too often for me to enjoy.
However I do like some of the art direction, I found the setting, premise, characters and story to be pretty good.

I’ve never played or owned this game not sure why can can review it so I am.

finished it. quite fun many things to do. cant wait for more

A fun tactics game that I recommend highly. The story may not be the greatest but it's fun enough, I like the characters, and the units are fun to play around with.

This is a cautious recommendation for the game.

Multiclassing right from the start and leveling up is easy. Problem is... you must grind the same spots a couple of times to be sure you are at the right levels to fight the next mobs.

Classes and even the skills aren't that brilliant and unique from other rpgs but I suppose you can't beat the tried and true.

The movements feel clunky and slow. I get that this is not a triple A game but boy is it rough just watching them go through the clunky animations.

Story is fairly good with some twists. Though not exactly at the same level as other big name tactics games, Fell Seal Arbiters yields a fun time.

Like many of the other reviewers you'll read here, I stumbled across this looking for something to fill the gaping hole left by my Final Fantasy Tactics addiction and nostalgia. Stop reading reviews. Buy it. I haven't bought the DLC yet, but you probably should, it looks amazing. I'm 20 hours in and haven't even gotten 2/5 of the way through yet. Class customization is great, the story is good, the dialogue isn't brain rot and random encounters come in the form of "patrols" which make traveling far less tedious and leveling far more rewarding. Sure, the animations and effects aren't super great, but it's all done with love and care which more than makes up for the shortcomings of the title. Difficulty can be customized before the game begins and changed on the fly from the overworld map by pressing escape/start. If you're like the rest of us, looking for something FFT to play that isn't FFT, buy it - you won't be let down.

So far, this is the only game that comes close to even reaching the same level of Class-based Tactics RPG that, in my opinion, Final Fantasy Tactics jumpstarted. It doesn't fully scratch that itch, but again it's the closest I have found after 15+ years of searching. It's pretty good, albeit a bit grindy, but it also has some fun mods that add even more classes. For the most part, I enjoyed it, but I don't know if I could pick it up again.

Great game one of the best turn based tactics games on steam.
Worth every penny.

I got this game on sale for about $5 and am now feeling like I stole this game. I feel like $40-ish for the bundle is also fair.

Final Fantasy Tactics is my favorite game of all time. This game is basically slightly worse than it on every metric (in my opinion) besides the flexibility you have with monster classes. Though I do feel like perhaps I have a stronger than typical bias there, considering FFT was my childhood.

I'm just gonna mention a few things that stood out to me:

Cons:
-I'm so sorry to the character portrait artist(s), but they're so uncanny they often pull me out of the narrative. Some are ok, but many - including the actual main characters! - are just proportionally awkward.
-I dislike not being able to rotate the maps. There is a mechanic built in where you can scroll through tiles to make sure you can reach whatever you need, but I just feel like being able to rotate the map as well would be a great help.
-The class wheel - especially for the monsters - is too crowded. Not a huge problem, but slightly annoying.

Pros:
-You can move to a space and look at your attack options without that movement choice being locked in. Thank you! I now don't have to constantly remember everyone's ability attack ranges before making a move.
-All other art beyond the character portraits. It's actually a really nice looking game! The maps, the character models, the abilities.
-Choosing when to grind. There's no random battles. I always liked them in FFT, but it just feels good to start up the game and KNOW I can do what I was planning to do without having to worry if I'm gonna "waste" 15 minutes on a random battle.
-Sending people on missions actually MEANS something. AND the timer counts outside of the game as well. Again, it's another mechanic that respects the player's time without detracting from gameplay.

General:
-Character development/story is good.
-Pacing is good.
-Leveling and class changes/manipulation feels good.

I feel like I keep downplaying this game because I love FFT so much. But the truth is this game has kept my rapt attention for over 70 hours (and will likely have it for nearly 100 by the time I'm done) and I didn't get tired of it once.

It's a great game and I've had a ton of fun with it.

A fantastic spiritual successor to Final Fantasy Tactics on the PSX. The story is pretty good, but pretty simple. The characters are ok, but what really sets this game apart is the gameplay. The folks who made this game clearly love sRPGs and especially final Fantasy Tactics because it plays very much like it. A small squad of infinitely custom characters using a set of interweaving jobs. Fighting monsters using adjacent systems and men using the same as you. It's challenging and rewarding to play.

If you liked the gameplay of the original Final Fantasy Tactics, get this. It will scratch that old itch well.