Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark

This is a solid strategy game. You essentially get 6 characters per map (some allow for more; others less). There is a great deal to do with your characters. You have the story ones and then you can create/recruit others. Each character can access various classes to train in for new abilities. You also have plenty of equipment to handle. There is no absurd permadeath at all. If your character gets killed, they receive an injury that lasts one battle. Then it's gone, and they're back to normal. Not bad at all. The difficulty scales as you move through the game. You can replay most of the maps to gain experience, gold, etc. These maps will have new enemies, so there's some replay there. There is an annoying mechanic that can instantly drown characters, but this can be countered with items/abilities or disabling it in the settings. There's not much to dislike here. The graphics and sound are solid. The controls are menu driven, so that's not an issue. The story is stand RPG stuff complete with a secret better ending. If you want a solid turn based strategy game, I'm not sure what else you could ask for.

(Purchased on Steam) Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is a Tactical RPG with gameplay similar to Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. There are a lot of menu options right from the jump to shape your gameplay experience, which can be altered at any point in the game. There are also many classes, items, and recruitable monsters with their own sets of classes, all leading to a perhaps overwhelming amount of possible combinations! However, as you get into the midgame, it becomes tediously clear that many classes have skill overlap, which stifles the desire to learn them all. There are incentives to mastering a class (permanent stat bonuses) but they really aren't necessary. And the fact that you have menu options to make the game easier only makes the issue of the unnecessary, the arbitrary and the redundant classes stand out all the more. The plot is fun and, to my surprise, NOT filled to the brim with prepubescent attempts at humor! It's not nearly as busy as Final Fantasy Tactics or the Tactics Ogre games, but it does have interesting twists. Fans of the genre should enjoy it, if they can get over the barrage of options and classes that can, at times, seem unnecessary.

Fans of Final Fantasy Tactics will enjoy this. Fans of Divinity: OS and X-COM may enjoy it too. I played about 60 hours for my first playthrough and loved every minute of it. It is heavily influenced by Final Fantasy Tactics in almost every aspect, and that's a good thing. There are many improvements over the original formula. There are plenty of classes and skills to experiment with so you can find your favorite party composition, most of them seem pretty well balanced. If you want to fight extra battles to do some level grinding then you can choose when and where to do them, they don't show up randomly when you least expect it. There is plenty of treasure to find and items to shop for. Your items replenish after each battle so you don't have to keep buying health potions over and over. There are some secrets and special characters to unlock. There are several options to adjust the difficulty. Unfortunately the battlefields were not rotatable, but I quickly got used to that. The story is decent and provides a good pace for the game. There's a competent tutorial/help system to get you playing quickly. And a big thank you to the team for providing support for so many extra languages, especially Portuguese which is what I chose.

As mentioned in many previous reviews, the gameplay in Fell Seal is very close to the original Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT). You control a group of heroes on a grid, mix and match classes and skills, fight monsters and humans, and lead an idealist on a journey to expose the corruption lurking within a respected institution. There are differences, of course. Your crossbows don't have a minimum distance; obstacles like trees don't block your shots; there are no one-hit kill spells or abilities. As such, the basic gameplay is a bit easier than FFT; however, there are numerous difficulty settings that you can adjust to make the game more or less challenging. You can turn off permadeath, stop enemies from hitting a level cap, and things like that. Story-wise, and without going into any spoilers, you are playing as the female captain of a group of law-keepers known as arbiters, who works with her team to unravel the corruption that is plaguing the arbiters and those who command them. Over the course of your playthrough—40+ hours if you want to grind or do end-game content—you can unlock secret classes and companions, craft strong weapons, participate in fighting contests, and experience multiple endings. The release I've been playing (1.02) is polished, and delivers consistent gameplay throughout. Overall, I'd recommend buying it. Frankly, I can't wait for DLC.

If you enjoyed playing Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre read no further, this is the worthy successor, that you've been waiting for for years! For those still unsure: - The deep combat+charater buildung mechanics are quite unique to those games. There's both a heavy emphasis on tactical turn-based combat and strategic development of your party. There's a ton of customization options+room for experimenting with different team compositions+battle tactics. - The story is nothing extraordinary but pretty solid and more importantly diligently written with vivid and lovely (though quite archetypical) characters that I got attached to through my campaign. The sprites and character models, the nicely drawn scenery backgrounds are well done and please with beatiful details. I probably spent hours customising my generic characters. At times during story driven scenes I catched myself being astonished by butterflies flying around or tired owls hanging in the trees..=) - Core of the game is combat itself of course. There's a ton of different options to choose from, classes to unlock, items to craft and gather. The AI (at least on normal difficulty) is not as merciless as it could be, but good enough to provide a challenge for experienced tacticians. The game encourages you to experiment with different solutions and party compositions, which may vary according to your task - Grind: Yes, there can be grindy passages, if you want. The game is probably playable without, but again the game encourages you to revisit areas, which might have treasures or gatherable components, new dialog, which may unfold certain aspects of your main characters - What in my opinion really makes this one special is what it does different from its predecessors, which it is heavily inspired from. For me it was especially the relative abundance of "secrets" you can find and the exceptional love for details in so many aspects of the game. Strong recommandation for patient and slow paced tacticians!