Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark

The story and character sprites are very amateurish, but this game was clearly made with a lot of love. If you love Final Fantasy Tactics, then this game is the closest I have found to reliving that feeling. In fact, I think the game's systems are better than FFT. The Ability Point grind is very friendly - you get a bunch for completing story missions, patrols, hunts, it spills over to your entire roster, you can idle grind AP/items/GP from the missions and monsters DLC - perfect for a gamer who doesn't have a lot of time. There is enough depth in the combat to make you think about your builds and what you are doing (at least, until you get Warmage afaik...), and even on the easy difficulty setting, if you play recklessly, you will get punished! Environmental hazards are meaningful and to be taken advantage of (or to get abused by...) Tons of improvements over FFT as well. Look at the map as you deploy. Re-equip and re-assign your units to counterpick before you deploy! No random encounters - you either want it and activate it, or you don't. The music is surprisingly good, considering my negative judgment of the story and character sprites. I cannot recommend this game enough if you like strategy tactical RPGs.

This is just really well done. It set out to fill a void, it did that well enough while also elevating it. Pretty much giving what people want, and then some. I would love to see this game get another release with a final fantasy sized budget. It really does classic JRPG+Tactics better than anywhere else ever. Even the writing is pretty good. This is one of maybe 5 games I'd say are either perfect or as close to possible as it. The only thing that held this back is it's derivative nature, it's clearly trying to be some other franchise, but that's just a consequence of them realizing there's a void for retro of this quality. It's not just some cookie cutter JRPG thing. This has some deep and unique systems that can be explored for a long time. It's got pretty good AI systems that understand these complex abilities and set ups pretty well. Deep mechanics to explore, the ones you expect and some new tricks here and there. It's just perfectly addicting. This company makes kinda discount games, but really complex, thought out, and well done ones. If they turned this into a mobile game or made a version, I'd be down. If they multiplied the budget and made it a triple a, I'd be down.

It's fine for what it is, but I'm struggling to think why I shouldn't just play FFTA or Fire Emblem again instead. Both are better versions of the same game and they look significantly better despite being GBA games.

I love this game! It is a great SRPG with compelling tactics, great class selection and skillset customization, and endless builds to try and mess with. The map design is fun and keeps you on your toes. I also really like the customizable difficulty modes. I have played this game many times (mostly on the the Switch version, which is why the game clock is so low), but I feel like I never run out of ideas of new builds. If you are a fan of SRPGs, especially FFT and Tactics Ogre, you should pick this game up! Pros: Great gameplay, customizable classes, good maps, nice music Cons: Plot is only okay

Each second I was playing this, I wish I was playing FFT. I hope someday SE will release it on Steam. These copycats won't do the trick, steer away from this piece of garbage, not worth it

tl;dr - Loved the game and hope there will be an expansion or DLC in the near future. A straight forward story that wont surprise you but there's a lot of great jobs and combinations to try out that'll keep you busy for hours. Well worth the price, especially on sale. If I had a gripe it'd be for the Lich class. When summoning undead, they should immediately have their turn next instead of going to the bottom of the queue. Their AI is a bit iffy and wont always just charge towards the enemies. So it feels like a wasted action with very little in return. They can sometimes feel like a detriment if they allow the enemy to target them with Area of Effect abilities and hit any of your characters that standing near them.

Dated mechanics make playing this game very frustrating. Might be a bit biased since I'm playing at the hardest difficulty, but it seems like there are issues with the core design of the combat system that will apply regardless of the settings. - Accuracy of the attacks and the applied effects is just too swingy. Not only are you punished by dealing less damage when using most skills with additional effects, but there's also a high chance they won't actually be applied. It's difficult to plan and reason about the turns if a key ability like movement impairment is locked behind a coin flip. 99% accuracy misses are a cherry on top. The way randomness is handled is just frustrating: less like mitigating danger, more like gambling with the odds. - Waaay too many heals with not a lot of ways to deal with them. Heals are not lowered by resistances, so it's not uncommon for the same character to be deal half or less damage that they are able to heal with a single action. Enemies can use items too, so characters that you least expect can heal self and others. Dealing damage does not lower max health, so you could technically have an infinite battle if neither team passes the DPS check. It just makes the combat tediously long. And for goodness sake, if I'm already outnumbered and at a stat disadvantage, don't give the NPC opponents revives too! - Abilities are nowhere near equal, yet you can only do 1 action per turn. More often than not I found myself not using certain abilities that seem OK on paper simply because they don't deal or heal damage. And when everything's a stat check, you can't afford not to. - Class system seems confusing and rigid. There's not a lot of meaningful choices within a specific class, and you end up unlocking all abilities anyway. You can set a primary class and spend the entire fight spamming its abilities only to gain 0 XP in it, and at the same time gain XP in a class you're not even using at all. I'm sure it's more fun further down the line where you get to combine more passives and get to choose all abilities from your classes of choice, but early on it's just another source of frustration as to why the XP feels so random. I'd very much prefer a system where you allocate points into classes based on the character level rather than trying to figure out why two characters trained from the same level have vastly different XPs gains in their respective classes for no particular reason. - The depth of the tactical combat is only surface level. A lot of abilities are simplistic and redundant. The enemy AI fumbles a lot and is only carried by higher stats and bigger numbers. The game ends up grindy without being satisfying. I never felt like I started winning because my strategies improved or my team synergy just clicked, it always just comes down to passing the stat checks with an ever increasing number of opposing defensive and healing abilities you have to plow through. - No saving mid combat. Now, imagine that with the BS random crits or misses that can literally make or break the fight. I might give this another go since it works decently well on a Steam Deck, but overall it feels like going backwards in time without the nostalgia to back it up. It ignores decades of game design that made modern tactical games fun, and just throws DPS and RNG checks at you posing as difficulty. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it's a test of patience, not tactical prowess.

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.