Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark

This game has everything JRPG should: cute graphics, very good music, many classes, lots of micromanagement, childish-like story, crafting, many items, lots of side missions (with the expansion) and great tactical combat. Combat is actually my favourite part of the game: its quick, engaging, very tactical, with big and well designed maps, lots of difficult terrain that should be used to your advantage, hidden treasures and some very interesting enemies. The overall package is a pleasure to play really. JRPG aren't famous for grown-up stories, and Fell Seal isn't either. It's story is just middle of the road, it has every element that convention requires, it just lacks this "special something" that separates very good games from perfect ones. My rating is more along the lines of 4,5/5, because while every single element of this game is at least good, the package here isn't perfdct, aka: it still isn't FFT. But it scratches that same itch, and that's good enough for me.

For fans of turn based tactical RPGs, this game fills the niche nicely. The visuals are colorful and maps are hand drawn and look great, but this comes with the disadvantage of not being able to rotate the camera in battles. There are some nice additions to the game like custom difficulty settings and scalable spell/movement speeds. Little touches for quality of life and most can be changed during the game. Shows the devs really put thought into it. The story is pretty bland, but servicable. If you're a fan of FFT then you'll find a shallow narrative that doesn't come close to the depth of Tactics. You get a pretty standard adventure story, but with a protagonist that is older, wiser and cooler than her predecessors. This is rather refreshing, but because of this there's never really a sense of tension or danger as she's too smart and savvy. Again, servicable, but not memorable. There are dozens of classes to choose from to create your party of choice. Mastering a class gets your character a permanent stat boost so there's incentive to stick with one, but this also creates an issue where you want to switch classes and so you might need to grind a bit to make the new class functional. In normal difficulty, all classes are viable, but in harder difficulties most fall short as they simply don't have the damage to break through all the excessive healing. This brings up the other issue is that there are way too many AoE and mass heals. Nearly half the classes have some kind of healing and every class can use items so fights aren't so much harder as they are longer. It's not deal break since you can play on normal difficulty, but it's a bit dissapointing. Combat is mostly fine, but the lack of LoS makes the maps feel very flat. Hiding behind a giant rock won't avoid arrows or bullets which is lame. The DLC ruins the balance of the game. It adds a bunch of changes and makes the AoE and healing even more excessive without adding much to the game. You can skip it.

I bought the game based on a high score and reading a few (positive reviews). I will not finish the game. I went through may be 10-15% before confirming the overall concept, while good, is very much flawed. + Nice beginning of a story + Nice art The rest is much less enjoyable +- You can insta-kill a non swimming monster (and I assume non-swimming enemies wearing chainmails?) by pushing them in water BUT you can't push them in a bottomless pit on the map. - "Cutscenes" are really slow. You can skip them but won't have the story - elevation is meaningless with respect to range: no range bonus is your character in elevated (I tried at + 5 or +6 height), or even positioning: no damage bonus if you strike from above. - there is no "control" on the tiles around the location of a character or enemy. You can go around anyone without any penalty or damage. Hence, this makes tactical positioning of a character or group irrelevant. This goes both ways, of course, but is very detrimental of the gameplay - Complexity of classes and their relationships: I am not sure to understand their usefulness (but maybe I have not seen enough). - Managing your roster's equipment is a mess (equipment slots are not even named) - Some enemies can spam you with poison (zombies are so smart, their AI detect that your healer has just removed poison from the character).

Many hours to play and fun story. Has a good dificulty curve making the game interesting and chalenging. If you want and old school turn based rpg with team elements this is for you

Really well made Strategy RPG game.