評論

• gamedeal user

  Apr 30, 2019

  Estimated Time for a Single Playthrough: 30-50 Hours (Determinant on difficulty, how much side content the player is willing to do, and how much level grinding a player decides to do) [9/10] for those who are familiar, and enjoy SJRP's like Final Fantasy Tactics. [8/10] for those who have a neutral perspective on the SJRPG genre. I highly recommend this title for a variety of reasons such as enticing gameplay, solid replay value, decent music, flexible customization, and fantastic "secret" content. While I personally would consider the story slightly below average - I still found myself occasionally captivated by the narrative being presented and invested in some (heavy emphasis on "some") of the characters presented. Whether or not a story is a determinant factor that makes, or breaks a game for you, Fell Seal offers cutscene skipping which is complimentary to those of us who would rather focus on the gameplay aspects of this title. The gameplay is incredibly fun, challenging, rewarding, flexible, and I would 100% encourage anyone even slightly interested in strategy RPG's to give this a try. [PROS] • High amounts of customization with a multitude of different classes, and abilities that can be mixed to create builds. Experimentation is highly encouraged, and pulling off a good build to clear difficult content feels very rewarding. • Different difficulty levels. This is great for replay value. • Some music tracks are very good. While admittedly not all the tracks acquired my intrigue, I would rate the soundtrack in positive light. • Unique classes to certain story characters, and secret classes for non-story characters only that adds to the overwhelming variety of build options. It also encourages players to level up generic units since some secret classes are exclusive to the generic non-story characters. I found this to be a great incentive to keep going forward in the story out of curiosity to see what the next story character will be, or secret class I would find. • Mod support (Unfortunately there is no steam workshop available, and I read that the developers were considering it. Although manually downloading mods hasn't been a very difficult endeavor for me so far) • Usable items in battle are low in quantity, but replenish every battle. This allows players to fully utilize what they have available to them without the feeling of "wasting" an item that would be better allocated elsewhere. This is also complimented by a crafting system that expands on the potential of usable items. • Generic character appearances are customizable. While the options are limit, it is still a nice feature to see. • Level, and class progression can be quick although it is still a grind to "master/max" all classes and levels on a single character. This provides a sense of "pacing" that you aren't powering up to slow, or to fast. • Equipment is flexible. You can decide to not equip a shield in exchange for an extra accessory, etc. • No random encounters. Instead you can choose when to participate in a random battle for when you want to level grind. • Skippable cutscenes • Developers are currently very active with the community, and take feedback into consideration. [CONS] • Story is nothing groundbreaking, but not completely bad. It definitely picks up during the second half of the game, but regardless you can always skip cut scenes if you just want to focus on the gameplay aspects. • Accuracy may invoke feelings of being "cheated" at times. Many attacks will project between 80%-95% chance to hit which would make misses feel very punishing, and discouraging. While I believe this is the nature of the beast in regards to this genre, I can definitely understand how may serve as an angering factor for other players. • There is a very defined difficulty spike that occurs during the game. • Art style is subjective to individual taste. I personally didn't like it at first as it looked akin more to a "internet browser flash game", but it grew on me the longer I played. Although I can understand the criticisms associated with the artistic design AND understand the developers decision for employing the art style as well. [Things I would Love to See Added] • Steam Workshop Support (Easier modding) • DLC Unique/Story Characters and Events • More classes (the amount of classes in the game is satisfactory, don't get me wrong - but who doesn't want more?) - Modding classes helps scratch this itch ALOT! • More appearance customization options • Alternative appearances for main characters (potential DLC?) [Conclusion] In conclusion I highly encourage anyone who loves strategy RPG's to give this game a chance. I would advise you to not look into this game just thinking of it solely as a "successor" or "replacement" for Final Fantasy Tactics. Fell Seal should be looked as its own entity that does some things better, and worse than previous titles that may have already seeded themselves deep into our poor nostalgic hearts. While I would consider this a "complete game" I still found myself certainly wanting more - and wholeheartedly hope that additional content is released whether in the form of free patches or paid DLC. I commend the development team for what they have accomplished with the resources they had, and consider my desire for even more content to not be a flaw but rather a testimony to how much I enjoy this game. While Fell Seal may not be for everyone - I would encourage anyone to look into this game. EDIT: 04/30/19 - Fixed a formatting error.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 3, 2019

  I'll start by saying I really like this game. At least on its surface. BUT, there are a lot of things I dislike. This recommendation is, on the fence. I really could go either way. What works: Choice - There's a lot to choose from. There's tons of classes, weapon types, weapons, armors, and abilities. You can build a lot of things in this game that will be fun, and frankly broken. Which I think is a lot of what I like in FFtactics. Tactics:(Once you get to a certain understanding and skill level, you can just break the game through lots of skills and understanding of the mechanics, this is done through very careful, meticulous crafting of very different feeling classes and what I'm guessing was hundreds or thousands of hours of testing.) And Fell Seal does manage to capture the essence of that. Art - I like the monsters and sprite art. I also think the characters themselves are distinctive in their look. Overall the game's art when looked at individually is actually quite nice. Story - The story is serviceable. While I do think the story is somewhat mundane, and feels longer than it really actually is, i've definitely been part of worse. The world building is there, even if some aspects of the story just don't resonate with me, or seem padded. But the lore is actually decent, and has potential. Difficulty settings - I like the ability to fine tune the experience and remove or add features to suit your playstyle. But I will expand on this in the other section. 3/4 tactical grid and familiar battle system - it feels familiar for TO, FFT, and other Series' fans. And it belongs. It is somewhat limited, but at the very least it incorporates height, falling, liquid, and trap mechanics. It also uses a speed based system for turns and not a team turn system, which I find more dynamic and strategic, it also allows you to specialize characters in different ways, and makes the turn based battle system a bit more chaotic. Character customization - As somewhat limited as it is, I appreciate it, and love that you could add further portraits. As someone who commonly creates specific, themed characters being able to upload images adds a lot of touch to finish them, and allowing even limited armor, hair, and other choices is great. What doesn't: Most Classes - While the game gives you a ton to choose from, nothing feels especially unique save a few outlying classes. To put this into perspective how you use a monk and a ninja in FFT is honestly very different. But even so each have abilities which allow multiple ways of playing the classes and then those classes can bleed into the others through the usage of the included abilities system. Which Fell Seal has, BUT, it doesn't have the somewhat unique feel to each class. Some classes are simply Hybrid classes by default. Something like druid will incorporate multiple classes' spells to create a unit that offensively or defensively will operate poorly in comparison as if you had combined the generally 2 classes yourself. There are exceptions. But in general, this is how this tends to work. While this IS still serviceable. Classes are essentially move lists. They aren't really classes. Quite literally, some classes unlock abilities that make your characters operate at about 75% efficiency while in the "wrong" class. I was expecting my magic mains to suffer during their non magic class stints, they really don't. While characters have 4 abilities (2 from main class and 2 you choose yourself) A Reaction (you get to choose) and 1 Support, and you'd think that much customization is a good thing, it ends up making the classes just a blueprint to build on to make something as broken as possible (crit builds for instance) with little else unique about them, OR the other abilities from the far better classes just completely outshine the class you're in and essentially overpower it, removing the entirety of it's uniqueness, if as I said it even has any, because many classes are somewhat inefficient combinations of other classes, really only valuable if you were to want a reaction, support, or conventional ability for a build. Sure, FFT had this on Ninja for Dual Sword, BUT, being a Ninja in itself was valuable, as they were obscenely fast and could move extremely well. You could also build really stupid things like a thief ninja who throws weapons they steal back at opponents, because it's funny. Character classes in FS don't feel this unique, nor stupid. But in that same vein, it makes them much more bland. Art Mismatch - The art, while great all apart, is weird together. It's kind of jarring. The portraits have a classical painted anime feel, the maps look painted out of a children's story book, and the characters themselves are sprites. It's just odd. The game would look far better if it was cohesive. Each thing looks good, just all 3 together is strange. Poor Writing - The story, while ok doesn't cover new ground you haven't been to before, nor does it really do much. It says you're saving the world, but let's be honest, as you do, Kyrie and crew never really feel like they're in it. The entirety of the character set grows very little if at all, and for what they do manage to advance in themselves, it's generally fleeting or resolved in such short order the point comes across as plot padding. Which is tragic. Kyrie herself I think mirrors Ramza from FFT in some ways, but if Ramza had remained his naive, noble justice seeking noble self from the beginning of the game, and not coming to understand that Justice is hardly so black or white and becoming much more of an antihero as the game progressed. And it's sad, because there is a lot here, but just feels wasted. The difficulty settings - While great, I think rather confuse me. While it's nice to on the fly adjust the game's difficulty, there's little reward for actually doing it. What it really does is make the game more grindy, just often giving the CPU a numbers advantage. The AI's never obscenely complex on strategy. So with 9 enemies as opposed to 6, the AI has more chances to kick your teeth in. But if you're sufficiently overlevelled this becomes a trivial obstacle. So you can in combination make the AI always match your level, which basically defeats the point of grinding at all. So you'd mostly do this on endgame when your builds are more final. Then there's the injury system which while is great in thought, without the permadeath stuff enabled, simply becomes an annoying chore of rotating out your units or heading to a low level area and nuking it from orbit, then going back to whatever you were doing. A lot of these are great on paper, but only really work when you've enabled most of them in tandem. Otherwise they just add tedium, not difficulty. Map Design - Finally the grid is familiar but it's 2d, it's not a 3d rotatable map. And since FFT managed this like 20 years ago, I have to admit I'm somewhat disappointed, since I'd really like to rotate the map on more than a few maps. The battle system works I think fairly well. Save one thing that bugs me. (Removed this aspect, correction in the comments by a user. Units can swim or not based on class. Good to know!) Fell Seal isn't bad, far from it, it just feels like it's going through the motions a lot. And it just doesn't need to, I hope the sequel if made adds much needed personality. I still think it's worth playing though. Just, probably not more than once.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 7, 2019

  People compare almost every tactical RPG to Final Fantasy Tactics where it's pretty much a cliche. In my book most games don't quite scratch the same itch. NIS's games like Disgaea are more about grind than combat tactics, Fire Emblem plays more like a strategy game with the lack of character customization, and most indie titles I've tried have trouble walking the line between having enough interesting options to build characters around and not having anything obviously broken that dominates the gameplay (to be fair, FFT is crazy broken as well). Of all the tactical RPGs I've tried in the past decade+, Fell Seal has done the best at living up to this comparison, and in many ways improves on the classics' formula. The core mechanics are a mix of FFT, FFTA, and Tactics Ogre. There's a similar speed system to all three games. MP starts at 0 and ticks up like in Tactics Ogre. There's a job system with characters having a primary job plus a secondary skillset and you earn ability points to buy new abilities for your current job like the FFT series. There's even shared learning across characters; if you bring your Wizard and Ranger into the same fight, your Ranger will get a few Wizard points and vice versa, just like FFT. That's not to say it's a direct copy -- Fell Seal has its own ideas too. Every character (including enemies!) has access to Items like Potions, and you get a fresh stock each fight so you're encouraged to use them instead of hoarding. There's tons of character customization options since each class has two innate passives and two slots for cross-class skills which enables a lot combinations. The balance is also well done with each class having its own niche and feeling reasonably unique. Whether you have the Peddler which lays traps on the battlefield that trigger on enemy movement, War Mages which can imbue their attacks with spells, or a Knight which doesn't even need a weapon since they can use their Defense as their attack stat, every class makes you think about how to build a character around their skillset and what passives complement it. The game is also delightfully transparent with things like stat growths and formulas for abilities available in-game and easily accessible in the UI, even during combat. Customization extends to other parts of the game as well. Difficulty can be tuned in a wide range of ways, be it affecting how enemies scale, what items they have available, and penalties for characters falling in battle. If you want more options, the game has modding support just by modifying a few .txt or XML files. Modifying basic game mechanics like MP per turn, tweaking existing abilities, or even adding new classes are all options. That said, I haven't had much urge to mod since the base game has tons of content and is well balanced already. I also want to mention the art because it doesn't exactly make a strong first impression on most people (including me). Honestly, the art is half the reason I felt like writing this since I'm worried people will skim past the game since the art makes the game look less polished than it is. All I can say here is that it grows on you over time. There's also a good amount of customization in how you can dress up your non-story characters which is fun too. The game has a free demo available on their website so give it a try!
• gamedeal user

  May 24, 2021

  They tried to make story a selling point. I saw the devs on the forum talking about this, they kind of turned their nose up at FFTA, saying that it was too many sidequests, and they wanted to focus on writing some kind of shakespearian thing. Boy, did they overestimate their writing abilities or what? A 'epic, mature story,' they wrote as a selling point. Here's the problem with that: FFT opens with a young lord who puts down a rebellion of disgruntled veterans who were going unpaid. There are somewhat modern specific historical events that this draws from, which grounds the story in reality. The writers were brave enough to make the protagonist unlikeable enough to be real, but not so much that he's an outright psychopath, conflicted enough to make him relateable. His allegiances change over time. He does bad while he was naive and young, develops as he grows older. It also starts out with an act of injustice--black and white injustice, but care is actually given to describing the situation and motives of all involved. It's rich stuff. Fellseal opens with a rich person being obnoxious and cliche, murdering someone for no reason and going on and on about how rich and important he is, just in case you couldn't figure out that he's the villain. Your motive is simple, and the villain's doesn't exist--there are no interesting adversaries and the protagonists never develop. They don't grow. You can see every beat coming from a mile away. The twists are boring. It doesn't feel like they really knew what they were doing, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but the developers seemed a little full of themselves in the forum when it came to their writing skills. I'm only going on about this because they make story a selling point. It's a solid tactics game. None of the classes feel very unique, but mechanically everything works. Just don't go into it looking for an 'epic, mature story' or whatever because you're going to be disappointed. It's not even remotely as mature as they think it is and every single character is a cliche.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 20, 2020

  Short review: The game is a fan-funded love child of Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre, and if you want a game in that tactical grid-based turn-based genre, this will satisfy you. Longer review: FFT was maybe (probably definitely) the epoch-defining tactical RPG before the turn of the century, and has remained solid in the twenty years since in its place in gaming history. But, since the release of FFT, very few games have tried their hand at that same style of formula--the Disgaea series, while great, utilizes more than just skill and ability use from your squad, and instead places a large focus on positioning yourself and displacing your opponents while using the "trap" system to flip colors and score massive damage combos... it's not exactly FFT, is my point. And while several other games have tried their hand at taking the FFT formula and advancing or adding to it, very few have returned to a more faithful version of that game's system and tried to tweak it only slightly instead--even the Game Boy Advance sequels to FFT strayed away from the first game's immense depth and complexity for a simpler system, much to my chagrin. Enter Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mask. This game is about as close as you can get to an homage to FFT without infringing on copyright. I'll get to the individual aspects, but in nearly every way FS:AM takes the FFT formula, eschews one or two of the more arcane parts, and expands just a bit on some of its thinner spots, and adds a bit more of a linear pattern to character advancement that's easier to grasp but retains most of the complexity. Overall, I'd say the game falls short on the story (and who's going to blame a fan-backed game for that--the writers of the Final Fantasy franchise are among some of the medium's most skilled storytellers), but if you're able to overlook a slightly underwritten story you'll find yourself enjoying this game. As this game is basically an update and reskin of FFT, I’m going to shift the review from this point to comparing and contrasting the two games’ systems, and try to point out what about all that works or doesn’t. If you want this game rated on its graphics, sounds, etc., as they stand on their own by 2020 standards, you won’t get it here—most of these elements of the game are made to be reminiscent of FFT. Anytime a character crosses their arms in a dialogue scene expect to hear the same “leather crunch” you heard so often in FFT. It’s made to be nostalgic, so I’ll judge it as such. The job system is back, and it’s bigger. Your non-story recruited characters will have access to 26 classes, and each story character gets one special class plus 20 of those 26; the other six are reserved for non-story characters and can be unlocked with the use of a consumable item after meeting the level requirements. There is also a character who has access to the monster classes in the game, and can master its own 19 jobs for that system. (DLC is announced at this writing to add two more classes to the human characters which have more interaction with taming & summoning monsters as pets, and even making your own customized monsters with skillsets of your choosing.) Characters get a skill set from their equipped class, and if they have learned them they also get 2 passive abilities. Abilities for a job are learned via a tree system, where each level requires learning one skill to unlock the next level branch. All levels of each tree have one or two skills, allowing for at least a little variation when leveling a character in a particular class. Mastering is still the same, as you need to unlock every skill on the tree, but in this game your characters will get a permanent stat boost for mastering a class, which you can see on the class change screen in greyed-out text before earning it. Instead of JP, this game has AP for accruing the ability to learn skills in a class. When a character does an action, they gain AP for themselves and for the entire party in what’s called a “Shared learning” bonus applied at the end of every battle. Your entire party has one set pool for this shared AP, and upon unlocking a class, every character will gain the AP in that class’s shared pool. By the end of the game, you could have a character master a class simply by unlocking it with enough shared AP built up over (a lot of) time. All characters will also gain a small amount of AP for whatever class they are in after a battle completes, whether they were deployed or not. The brave and faith system along with the zodiac compatibility system have been tossed out completely. All characters’ chances of doing a thing is determined by their stats and their equipment and their skills. The game does have a system of control above the RNG system, for example usually a character will only get attacked three times in a row on the “Default” difficulty, but there is some control available for those systems too. The game has an entire menu of difficulty and new game plus options for the discerning player, offering everything from a super-easy nerfed-enemies option all the way to ultra-punishing permadeath mode. Typically the game handles death through an “Injury” system that requires you to rest a character for a battle to recover. You can control the RNG system’s oppressiveness, the stats of enemies, their tendency to use the more annoying abilities (Revives, ganging up on one ally, items, etc.). Overall this level of control gives the gamer a kind of debug/admin access to the game before launching into the game itself, and is a very welcome addition. Speaking of items, that whole system has been changed. No longer will you be buying and restocking potions and phoenix downs. This game has you craft your items and makes them available to your entire party in a limited but shared pool that is refilled for every battle (and your enemies will have their own item pool). You gain “Components” for crafting upgrades to your items stock and potency over the course of the game, and eventually you also get access to a class that can use items to greater effect. Again, to me this is a welcome change, as the ability to get one or two chemists in FFT with throw item gave many battles a kind of cheese aspect that could be abused, and while you will see the enemies in FS:AM abuse the cheese if the difficulty allows it, it’s never so egregious or drawn out like you might see in some levels of the Deep Dungeon of Tactics. As I mentioned, there is a “New Game+” mode, where you restart the game with your levels, items, etc. carried over, or not if you choose. There are a whole set of options to carry over or perhaps reset your levels, AP, inventory, items, and control the max level of monsters on the map. Each location on the overworld map has something happening at that location at least once, and upon returning you can use shops at cities, recruit new members from the guild, or maybe use the arena to fight level-balanced enemies to whoever you deploy. Other locations have the option to patrol and initiate a battle—no random battles here just for moving around. Each location typically has a level range for monsters, but on NG+ some of those level caps go to 99 immediately, if you choose the setting, so your subsequent playthrough isn’t just mindlessly squashing battles to get back to the endgame. The game’s stat system has been somewhat simplified from FFT—there are the basic number-based stats like ATK and DEF and HP, and there are magic resistances to each of the 6 individual elements in the game. In addition, the MP system works a bit differently—characters start battles with 0 MP and gain it as the battle progresses at a flat rate of 10/turn, up to their maximum MP value (many abilities can be used to gain mana in other ways). Stat growth works exactly like FFT: when a character levels up, their stats increase by a base amount determined by which class they are in at that time, allowing you to focus a character in one of the higher-tier
• gamedeal user

  Nov 7, 2022

  Fell Seal is a FF Tactics successor in mechanics only.

  While there's a lot of improvements in terms of customization and build theorycrafting, the game is bogged down by its uninspired writing. If this game wasn't graciously saved by its mechanics, and sold at discounted prices, I would not have recommended it. I will discuss the bad, the good, and the great of Fell Seal.

  The Bad: Writing and Narrative Consistency

  If you find the intro sequence/first battle awkward and a bit immature in setting up the tone of the game, the bad news is the writing won't improve for the rest of the game. The good news is if you don't like it in the first sight, you can directly refund. The game's biggest flaw is in its characters. The three mains are wooden dolls of morally uptight respectable mentor, the naive student, and the jokey reliable uncle with a disturbed past. They stay that way for the remainder of the game despite the crisis, challenges, and events that turned their realities upside-down. The big baddies are, well, big baddies. They are corrupt, selfish, and morally wrought. Sometimes also arrogant. The lackeys are typical dumb henchmen incapable of coherent speech. Trope is one thing; lack of character development is another. The only thing that change is the writing of their wits: in one instance, the main can quickly discover the ploys of the villains; in another, it would take them a few turn of events to discover a bad guy's motive, because the plot wills it. Dialogue is written pretty poorly in particular. There is one instance when a villain threatens their incompetent henchman that they would "retire" them if they repeat the same mistake. The villain then adds, and I quote verbatim, "In case that is too ambiguous for you, by 'retired', I mean 'slain.'". Uuu. Scary. There's a whole lot of similar dialogues in the game, where the writers seem to struggle to sound smart or scary or whatever they intent to do with the characters. Strangely enough, the first half of the game seems to embrace a faux-Shakespearean writing in the vein of FF Tactics War of the Lions. Then in the second half suddenly they just drop the writing style. Last, there is a tonal inconsistency that fails to blend seamlessly with the game mechanics. At one point of the game, you discover a grim past of a character and find a way for them to cope. Then the character unlocks a special class named... Spymaster, which has nothing to do with the character's story.

  The Good: Music and Streamlined Gameplay

  While much comments have been said about the graphics - which I don't really have any opinion of - the game's better artistic aspect is the music. It doesn't hold up to FF Tactics' remarkable composition, but still manages to give a distinct character and leave memorable impression during more important battles in the game. The game streamlines consumable a few aspects you typically see in tactical RPGs. Instead of having to micromanage items and end up hoarding too many potions, consumables here replenish after each battles. You don't have buy potions or revivals or remedies; you have a fixed amount of them and if you want more or stronger ones you need to upgrade through crafting. Crafting here is not a huge element like you see in Monster Hunter series, but it helps the flow of the game as an alternative to buying things outright. You can get some better gears earlier before they're available in shops by crafting, and some items (upgrades, consumables) can only be acquired by crafting.

  The Great: Customization

  Fell Seal is really saved by its excellent customization, and you can see them right after you start the game. You're offered customizable difficulty settings in the beginning where you can configure the enemies AI (their combat decision-making such as use of items, revive, etc), enemies gear and attributes, level scaling, and a couple others. There's a preset if you're too lazy to decide yourself. If you want to customize even more, you can go to Documents\Fell Seal\customdata_examples to extensively tweak the game config yourself - from EXP gained to damage output. Then after your first battle you're introduced to guild, where you can not only recruit but also visually customize your non-story characters: their unit models and portraits. Of course this is in addition to the usual class and abilities customization, just like in FF Tactics. Speaking of class, you have one main class with a subclass, with stat growth and various abilities you can mix and match, so you can theorycraft the perfect build to your liking. The great thing is, the game doesn't penalize experimentation if you go crazy trying out different classes. There's no "wrong build" - even if you feel so, there's an option to reset the character to level 1. With the DLC, you can use AFK-timer missions to send your non-story units to gain EXP and Ability Points (as well as money and items). You don't have to turn on your game all night because the time counter works outside the game. If you like tinkering further with class, modding this game is extremely easy. You can download class packs on Nexus Mods (I recommend the most balanced Simon's Class Pack) and/or you can make some yourself through editing the XMLs in Documents\Fell Seal\customdata_examples.

  Verdict

  Fell Seal, like the inspiration it cites, similarly inherits the game's failing at balance. Some classes are awkward to use or downright useless that you'd get them only for their passive abilities. At certain level too you'll slaughter your enemies in seconds just like you'd do in FF Tactics even when playing in the harder difficulties. And as already mentioned, the writing is completely forgettable to the point it ends up dragging the game, making optional battles and one-off sidequests more enjoyable than reading the character's interactions. However the extensive customization and seamless gameplay really saved Fell Seal. I suggest at least you try this game (at discounted price) once and see if you like it.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 11, 2020

  This game is to Final Fantasy Tactics what Stardew Valley is to Harvest Moon.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 25, 2020

  By all accounts, Fell Seal is a solid game that's a definite spiritual successor to the Ogre Battle series and Final Fantasy Tactics. Many gameplay elements are ripped directly from these games; the magic system, for example, is a carbon copy of Knight of Lodis. Beyond this, several musical tracks are quite obvious homages to past titles, and the job/class system is a well-composed merger of its predecessors. Unique to this title, though, are several clever changes to the old, through use of design features like an original item system, that helps to address of the flaws of the older games. The aforementioned mana system, for example, has items, passives, and counterattacks that let magic users "ramp" up their mana pool under certain conditions, stepping beyond Knight of Lodis' flaw of needing a unique character to act as a mana-bot for your casters using fluid magic. At this point, I have completed the game once and enjoyed the gameplay enough to purchase the DLC full price to support the developers given that they are such a small team. I rarely ever do this. Balance of the maps is very well done on very hard mode such that I screamed profanities many, many times at my screen before getting the satisfactory feeling of pulling off a solid strategy to complete a difficult map. Very hard mode is challenging all the way through, with only a handful of maps being nice "breathers" to give you a break from being thwomped. The AI has access to every tool you as the player do, from buffered items to unique pieces of gear to complex class/sub-class combinations that make some maps an absolute pain to complete. Each class has its own unique talent tree with interesting features, with each having a minimum of two passive abilities that can be learned and a set of active abilities sometimes complemented by a counterattack. Your main class gives you access to all features of that class along with its stat growth pattern when leveling, and you may select a sub-class that gives you access to its active ability set. To round each character out, you may mix and match any two passives from any other class you've learned, and select one type of counterattack that ranges from a simple auto-attack to casting buffs to flat out evading certain types of attacks. This creates an interesting tactic tree where you have a ton of individual freedom and creativity to design your team however you choose, with a backend class-experience sharing feature that helps minimize the grind of leveling classes from scratch. Thus, from a purely technical perspective, Fell Seal is outstanding. However, my one major complaint is that the seminal games in the tactics genre had something more than just solid gameplay: they had incredible stories. In Ogre Battle 64, you started as a graduate from a military academy who unknowingly gets caught up in the foundations of a rebellion against the crown. What follows is genuinely epic journey of politics and betrayal as you turn your rag-tag band of soldiers into a genuine army, growing in power and prowess as does the scope of the enemy you're facing. You shift from band of rebels to civil war army, causing such chaos as to have your nation's occupying empire re-invade. Hell, before the game is even halfway done, Magnus is forced to strike down his own father in a war of ideals. Behind all this is an intriguing dark current in the form of the Infernal Aura -- something Fell Seal in many places absolutely attempts to emulate in feel -- that culminates the story in truly memorable way that still has left and impression on me 20 years later. Indeed, look at Final Fantasy Tactics itself, whose story is an exploration into a war in which history has been rewritten to erase its true heroes and cover up the catastrophe of the Zodiac Beasts. Fell Seal decidedly lacks any such grand narrative. The story, the characters...all of it feels quite shallow. The opening cinematic sets the stage something akin to: "A powerful monster, the Maw, was defeated centuries ago by seven great heroes who became the ruling class on the continent. Now, this council and its system have become old and corrupt." Unfortunately, this is all the story really is. For the vast majority of the game, we simply go through the motions of Kyrie and her squad discovering that everything is corrupt. Yet, at the very beginning the dialogue indicates she has her concerns with the current system already, so this is not some grand revelation slowly revealed. While there's still enough substance to carry it from start to finish, you really never develop that grander "tactics-genre" narrative feeling to your endeavors. At no point in Fell Seal does it feel as if the story reflects the growing strength of your party, nor does it appear as if you're really engaged in any great power struggle. The villains are as cookie cutter as they come with non-existent motivations outside "I'm evil because," and the hints of an insidious force behind it all -- akin to the aforementioned Infernal Aura -- randomly vanish from the plot for no real reason. As such, each plot point just seems to come and go as if ticking a box to move you to the next area. Length is no excuse, either, as I still remember Knight of Lodis' pivotal twist where you're forced to choose between your allegiance with your homeland and your ideals...to bloody and emotional consequence. In context, Knight of Lodis has 2/3 the missions Fell Seal does and a fraction of the gameplay depth as it was released for the GBA in the early 2000s. The end result is that, despite the superb gameplay, Fell Seal just feels narratively uninspired...which is pretty disappointing. All the parts underneath the hood have all the makings of a fantastic spiritual successor to the titles of old, and yet the game invariably feels like "just another good game I've played" with characters who are well-written but fall flat against an empty backdrop. There are several minor-but-obvious social justice inserts into the game here and there which are not particularly intrusive, but really make me wonder if there was a conscious effort to cheapen the narrative to try to create more "widespread appeal" or something like that. For example, many missions seem to focus strictly on character development, as if blatantly trying to prove to the player the Kyrie is a strong female lead through "here is scenario 'x', and look at how Kyrie handles this like a man!" Unfortunately, without a deep and riveting story to back her, this really just makes Kyrie unable to stand out against a field populated with a Ramza, a Magnus, and an Alphonse. Despite the stellar gameplay behind her, she's a B-rate actor on a B-rate stage, trying to stand toe-to-toe with the A-listers and just not cutting it due to the script just being so poor. A cut of the cliche villains, and challenging her with actual and substantive moral dilemmas, would have been a world of improvement to the narrative. All that said, regardless of my major narrative gripe, this is a technically and mechanically solid game for all tactics fans that should make it on your list. Recommended. And a word to the devs -- don't be afraid to go big next time guys, you have the talent to do so.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 25, 2019

  Final Fantasy Tactics is my favorite game of all time. I've waited two decades for FFT2 to come out, and been kept waiting. Even games like FFTA and Tactics Ogre, while good in their own right, never really filled that hole in my gaming library. I've found a similar tactical joy in the XCOM series, but those games are simply too different to scratch that itch. Let's be clear, Fell Seal is NOT Final Fantasy Tactics 2. The characters all have noses, for one. But it differs in a lot of other ways, and actually feels a lot more like FFTA than FFT2. But the devil is in the details, and Fell Seal is executed masterfully. I've yet to see a class or ability that makes me think "What is the point of this?" Everything seems useful, even if only in a niche sense. The game not only has multiple difficulty levels, but customizable difficulty, which means you can make use of the more interesting class abilities by adjusting the enemies as close to your perfect point as possible. The Injury and benched AP systems encourage you to keep a larger roster than you can actually field, encouraging that you shake things up, rather than go through with the same 6 characters all playthrough. The presence of so many classes, all of which have value, also encourages you to branch out. What's more, while the story characters get their own unique classes, there are special classes only available to your generic units, meaning that they can do things your special characters can't. Not to mention your ability to customize their appearance in detail, and have them keep that appearance regardless of the class their in. There are two minor complaints, however. First off, the maps cannot be rotated. While they are all designed to have the battle field visible from the one fixed angle you look at it, it does sometimes make it hard to see whats going on behind some of the few view-obstructing obstacles, or other units. It also means maps are all designed with this in mind. The closer to the top of the screen you get, the higher the elevation, and you can't have central hills or high walls in the middle of otherwise low ground. Second, I have never seen a game that has such incredibly okay art. It's not bad, but it's not particularly good either. It looks fine, and has just enough character to not call it bland, but I won't go farther than that. The character portraits are pretty mediocre too. There's something not quite right about them (and I don't mean the presence of noses) I can't put my finger on, and they look like they come out of a computer D&D game, rather than match up with the style of the games art itself. That being said, maybe it's all your style, watch the game videos and images and find out. I have not yet beaten Fell Seal. But with all of it's extra features, quality of life enhancements, adjustable difficulty, and the work of two people who really knew their stuff... this game could very well be the superior game to Final Fantasy Tactics.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 25, 2019

  Before I go on, I just wanted to say I was teetering back and forth on recommending this game. Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is a Tactical Role Playing Game (TRPG) in a fantastic realm filled with bandits, monsters, and boiling political instability. The game is made by 6 Eyes Studios- a game studio comprised mainly of two people: Pierre Leclerc and Christina Leclerc who are both professionals in the video game industry. Fell Seal is their first project under the 6 Eye Studio banner. I'll go over three points in the game; story, mechanics, and the senses- visuals and sound. In Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark you play as a group of Arbiters- fantasy style police force who are judge, jury, and executioner for the Council of Immortals. The Council of Immortals are a group of long lived former adventurers that watch over the county with unwavering law and their crazy wizard powers to keep people in check. One of your Arbiter members, Kyrie, is made a marked; a person chosen to succeed an incumbent Immortal once the marked completes a continent spanning pilgrimage. As you progress in the story you become more involved with the inner workings and secrets of the council as well as those who wish to depose of it. Over all, without too much spoiling, the story is alright and does its job. It keeps the player somewhat interested and has many twists and turns. Many of the characters, however, can come off a bit flat; they almost seem like their job personified, especially Kyrie. While there are a few points that help show these arbiters more human side, its not enough to really flesh them out. Mechanically Fell Seals plays like if you described how a TRPG is played to someone who never played one before and the they went, “Oh that sounds cool, lets build that.” without further elaboration. And to 6 Eyes Studios credit, the foundation is solid. You have a squad, you upgrade them, you move, you attack, you deal with terrain, you have special moves and items. BAM. That's an TRPG on the short. But that same strong foundation is shallow. When it comes to extrapolating from the base things get weak and repetitive. The vast majority of encounters involve your six unit squad, six to eight enemies, and a map that favors the enemy- but only if you go on the aggressive. Not to say such battles don't have a place as filler between more intense stuff, but in Fell Seal you play one encounter you've played most of the encounters available in the game. Another problem is just the amount of skill and class bloat. Beyond the baby beginner classes (Which, oddly enough, have some of the more useful kits) things start to get stale and quick. Most classes might have one or two spells/abilities out of list of ten to twelve that you'll use more than once. Many classes' specialty seem to be a variation of attacking while sowing status effects. As a result there isn't much difference going on between a lot of the classes- just some do it better than others. However, one thing I like is that gaining all the abilities in a class does give that particular unit small permanent bonuses. The visuals and sound are pretty darn good for the title. However the art style is oddly varied. The portraits have an organic western-fantasy flavor. The sprites have a sleek early 2000 anime-pixel doll look. The background/maps looks to belong in a children's book. Especially the trees. Again, all made with professional talent, just not synergistic. Jan Morgenstern's music is outstanding and nails everything from thrilling battle themes to quite and playful downtime music. Even if you don't get the game, the soundtrack is worth a listen. If you're an absolute hard nose TRPG fan who likes Final Fantasy Tactics, Front Mission, Fire Emblem, Soul Nomad, Ogre Battle, XCOM, Disgaea, Stella Deus (shout outs to all 14 of you who remembered that game), so on and so forth you'll still get your kicks. These kind of games aren't exactly hanging off trees so we take what we can get. In the end I just feel like I'm playing a mobile TRPG where everything is stripped down and battles are just made to grind. (Notable exception are the maps just before the third relic.) Overall the biggest flaw dragging Fell Seal down is that the mechanics are well conceived but poorly utilize. This cripples Fell Seal's enjoyment factor and sense of wonder of what's going to happen next. If you're starting out or casually interested in TRPGs you'll want to step around this game. If you're veteran of such titles avoid unless you are absolutely famished for a new TRPG on your plate. Here is where I offer my opinion to improve the game, so skip this if you're not interested in this stuff. A few quick ways I would improve this game is to first get more brains on the development cycle. With so few people (only two) wearing so many hats it can be easy to get tunnel vision and unintentionally ignore other aspects of the game. This tunnel vision is expressed through the same-y classes and repetitive encounters. Not to say these two can't think of exciting scenarios or cool classes, its just that I felt they may have needed to pour their time (the most important resource of all) in other areas in order to get the product on the shelf. Even adding two or three more members with larger roles can go a long way. Next is going with a unified visual look. Anime, western, and story book styles all have their purpose to help breathe life into a story and lay a foundation to the overall tone. By going with one (my choice would be western) you get a far more polished product. Finally find a few ways to give the characters a bit more life. The players spend a long time with these people after all. Give them flaws, quirks, roles outside of combat, and hobbies to show they more than the sum of their profession. Reiner is an example of one of the more believable characters in the game. He's got a purpose, he's got a past, he's got a bit of humor, he's got beef with another party member, he likes to cook! Can't say the same for the other characters. But in the end a slightly bigger team will go a long way into make an even more memorable and sharpened game.