Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark was a very pleasant surprise of the year, after a rather mediocre year for AAA games outside of maybe a couple exceptions, in which a friend of mine gifted me an extra copy of the game after I was looking for another good single-player game to play. The game is marketed as a tactical, turn-based RPG, drawing inspiration from games like Final Fantasy: Tactics, and while I have not played that game specifically, I am familiar with the genre, having experience with that gameplay loop with the XCOM and Fire Emblem franchises. After sinking 30+ hours into beating the main campaign, I must say Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark is a brilliant game, offering impressive complexity and a fun combat system, while telling a competent story. If you’re looking for a good indie RPG to play, and enjoy titles similar to what I mentioned above, it is certainly worth giving this game a shot.
Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark focuses on an Arbiter named Kyrie, in a world where these Arbiters are basically considered society’s police force. The game starts off with her and a fellow Arbiter witnessing the murder of a man, and her attempt to deal justice ends up getting her involved in a much larger, more sinister plot at hand.
Gameplay:
Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark draws a lot of similarities to a lot of the more famous strategic, turn-based RPG’s, so for anybody who is familiar with games from the XCOM or Fire Emblem franchises will pick up the basics very quickly. You have a party of units that include Kyrie and other story-essential characters, though there is the ability to recruit other characters from guilds that can be freely customized. Customizing party units and trying to figure out how to build them properly is probably one of the more difficult parts of the game, due to the somewhat complex class/skill system that can be a bit daunting to get used to initially. There are multiple classes in the game, and each class has access to its own abilities, which are split into active and passive skills (active being skills you have to actively use in battle, and passive being basically stat bonuses). However, characters are not restricted to a single class, and can freely switch between classes as more are unlocked through gameplay progression. So to properly build up a character, you first want to see what classes have the abilities you would want, then level up abilities in whatever required classes are needed to unlock them. Some classes are focused on dealing damage via weaponry, some prefer to cast spells, and there are plenty of classes that go for a mix, and that’s a very broad generalization to say the least. Story-specific characters also have access to their own unique classes, but custom characters recruited from guilds also have access to classes that the story characters can’t use, so there is good reason to use both story and non-story characters in a party composition.
The combat system itself is a fairly straightforward turn-based set-up, where party members and enemies take turns. For anyone who has played the games from the franchises I mentioned earlier, a lot of the same fundamental strategies apply: keep your units in good positions to prevent them from being swarmed by enemies, focus on taking out high-priority enemy targets, etc. A lot of the maps in the game have varying elevations, so as the wise Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi would say, keeping the high ground is also very useful for your units, especially if any of those units have ranged capabilities. Overall, the gameplay’s great, and it scratches that “strategic turn-based RPG” itch very well.
Writing:
The gameplay was definitely the main factor that drove me to give Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark a try, but the story is no slouch. While I won’t say it is the most compelling narrative ever spun, it is certainly competent at the very least. The story introduces new characters at a good pace, and the characters feel relatively grounded even if they are slightly one-dimensional. Kyrie is a straight-edged protagonist who is one of the few Arbiters who is very devoted to her job, and despises those who do wrong or abuse their positions of power. Despite that, she doesn’t give off the impression of having a stick up her ass like those types of characters tend to, as she is shown to be fairly relaxed when conversing with other party members and is surprisingly lenient with her justice dealing if the bad guy happens to not be a completely lost cause.
The flow of the narrative is fairly well-paced too, there weren’t really any moments where I felt like the story either dragged or rushed. There were also a few twists at certain points in the story that did just a good enough job of not making the narrative feel too linear, though those twists don’t feel that surprising if one has been paying close attention. Overall, the narrative is pretty decent, and I felt it was a pleasant enough experience that supported the core gameplay well.
Misc/Ending Thoughts:
Another thing I want to shout out is the soundtrack, which goes way harder than it has to, but I welcome it because who doesn’t enjoy listening to good music, especially in a game that can easily stretch over 30 hours. Most of the tracks are fantasy-themed but they are well-composed and varied enough that I never felt tired of listening to it.
Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark is an excellent indie game, and I would highly recommend it to anybody who is a fan of turn-based strategy games like XCOM, Final Fantasy: Tactics, or Fire Emblem.
Rating: The game goes for about $30 retail on Steam, and considering it took me about 30–35 hours to clear it, I would say that is a pretty good deal.
