Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark... turn-based tactical RPG

Games
#1

I’ve been giving this a try and definitely had a good first impression. So I came here wondering what others thought and was surprised to see only a couple comments about it in the Little Indie Games thread.

I never played FF Tactics, so I do not know how close the game is to that, but gameplay strikes me as promising. It is clearly a linear story with set piece battlefields, but the focus seems to be on a wide array of classes and abilities, both for your party and for the enemies. I have not figured out all the the mechanics yet (particularly treasure chests), but battles are interesting and quite challenging. Difficulty is adjustable and can be fine tuned.

Not surprisingly, planning your class unlocks and character development requires a lot of attention. More surprisingly, “consumable” items are made to be consumed each battle – they replenish at the end of each battle, with crafting improving their quality and number of uses per battle, and at least in the early going this is very important.

Visually, I am good with the look, but I am an old guy. I gather it that it is not to some peoples’ tastes.

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#2

I’ve completed the game on normal.

It’s fine. You shouldn’t try to unlock too many classes, you can only use 5 class abilities at any given point (main class, 2 different passives, 1 active skill and counter). There’s grinding in the system - you often have your characters injured after story mission and then have to fight some easy battles while they rest. Money is no issue in the game, all the optional stuff is truly optional on normal.

It was fine but in the end it didn’t feel that tactical really. Each of your characters have a lot of abilities and you can never make a proper defense line. Yes, you need a proper item-focused character to use items full strength but in the end you can still revive or heal any status effect as any character. I also didn’t see much of interesting class combination or various characters interacting. Like you have mass defense buff and ony class can attack using defense stat, so it works well, but it’s probably the most complex interaction I have ever used.

So it’s fine but outsays its welcome a little.

#3

It’s so much like FF tactics, I didn’t feel the need to keep playing it after about 10 hours or so. A lot of stuff is directly lifted from FFT (not a bad thing really), but for some reason it just didn’t grab me the same way. A lot of the fun in these kinds of games (for me at least), is discovering the different class combos you can make. I put hundreds of hours into FFT unlocking and trying absolutely everything, via multiple playthroughs. I wasn’t motivated to go through the grind to find out in Fell Seal for whatever reason. I think the story in FFT is much better as well.

A decent game, certainly worth a look if you like tactics based games. It’s well done, there isn’t anything particularly wrong with it, but it does feel like a zerox that missed the real soul of the thing it was copying.

#4

Can you tell what are examples of FF class combinations and how it works? I only played FF Tactics Advance. As far as I can remember it the character was mostly defined by their current class, you only had active abilities from your current class and all others were passives.

Here in Fell Seal it felt like every character is too much. Almost every class already has a variety of active abilities and you can equip abilities of two classes. I gave every fighter Scoundrel secondary ability because it has attack from the back and movement buff, so you have something to do in almost every situation. Of course it may be a noob tactic only working on normal but it worked well. You can also give people, say, Templar class abilities which give healing AoE, ranged attack and melee AoE; Gambler who is a buffer, a debuffer, healer and damage dealer; Plague doctor who has healing, buffs, debuffs and pretty strong poison attack.

#5

Your main skills were the active class you were playing, but you could slot secondary skills and abilities from other classes you had unlocked those skills on…stuff like…being able to use a shield regardless of class…or auto potion…ability to dual wield etc. Mixing and matching those was great fun. I don’t remember all the particulars of it, as it’s been quite a while, but there were some really powerful combos you could make.

#6

Have this on my wishlist, I’ll see when I get around to it.
I did play FFT, but it’s been so long ago I don’t even remember the class system, so this should be pretty fresh for me ;)

#7

So far, I am finding it highly entertaining. But I am not doing well figuring out the treasure stuff.

#8

Don’t worry about treasure. It’s not that important.

#9

When I saw ‘Fell Seal’ this is all I could think of:

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#10

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#11

What is a ‘Fell Seal’ exactly? And what is being arbited?

#12

It’s Bergmans 7th seal, as told by the cast of Friends.

#13

You know, I’ve finished the game a week or two ago and I don’t remember already.

Arbiter’s mark though is simple. Arbiter is fantasy cop, the mark is a sign that he’s on a piligrimage to join the council of long living rulers.

#14

I picked this up when it was on sale a week or so ago and fired it up over the weekend. I put in 8 hours so far and I really like it, but I can understand the comments here about some of the issues. I’m finding that my best characters are those who started as scoundrels or mercenaries and then branched out into specialized classes like knight and ranger. Once I unlocked some of the classes and made characters that started as those classes, their usefulness isn’t nearly as good as my guys who started as other classes. For example, my knight is a total wuss for damage output and kind of lackluster on defense (even when fighting low-level monsters), but my mercenary-turned-knight is comparatively much better. I like how my characters learn vicariously from other characters on the field, so that my ranger gains scoundrel XP just from fighting with my scoundrel. It makes unlocking specialized classes a lot less grindy than it could be. I also love how they handle item use… no longer do I feel the need to hoard potions. I also find the story pretty interesting; not really epic, but not bad either. Let’s see how I feel after another 8 hours of playing.

#15

I finished this recently on the Switch. It was fine as far as being a 15 minutes here and there kind of game to work through the battles. I used it as kind of my mini-commute mental separator between home-home and home-office.

It has a whole host of classes and abilities but so many of them are clearly filler. You can probably sort out some fun synergies if you really devote effort to it, but there’s absolutely no incentive as there’s a few just clearly obvious straight forward skill sets that will melt everything and leveling up a ton of extra classes is a time sync.

I do like how the maps are generally compact and they do a good job of making positioning a mini-game around when you want people together for group heals and buffs and keeping them split up to avoid multiple-square enemy attacks. But about half way through the game you will have done it all and the story is genre mediocre.

Overall if you’re going for a straight path FFT style SRPG then you will get exactly what you think you will.

#16

I went back to this, and actually got really hooked on it. There are some really crazy overpowered combos you can make, which is pretty fun. I actually got into the character combining once I put enough time into it to figure out how I could abuse it lol.

There are some really absurd parties you can make, in a variety of ways, if you sink some time into this. I found it pretty worthwhile in the end, and devoted quite a bit of time just unlocking all the silly party combos I could.

Just one example…Werewolf has the highest quickness stat growth, and decent other stats. If you make an entire party of dual wielding WW, and level them enough as WW, you can kill pretty much everything before the other side gets a turn. There is a ton of stuff like this, which I found very entertaining. It is in no way shape or form “balanced”, but I really like games like that.

#17

This is on sale at Steam for $7.50. Worth it, do you think?

#18

Its worth it at full price - One of the few games I completed, and actually started over in as well - such a great, great game - get it!

#19

I had a lot of fun with this once I got into it. It’s more or less final fantasy tactics, so if you like that sort of game it’s a pretty good one.

#20

My thoughts are up a few posts but if you like tactical I think it’s worth playing.