Real Gud Reviews: Fell Seal Arbiter's Mark

How Narrative Elements Ruin a Good Game

How I came to play Fell Seal Arbiter’s Mark

Turn-Based Tactical Role-Playing Game. For most people it’s games that look like Final Fantasy tactics, Tactics Ogre, or Xcom. Growing up I was especially fond of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. It has great characters, solid gameplay, great design, and overall, very fun. And I love the Xcom series.

So, imagine my excitement when I see Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark on the Humble Choice. It was very reminiscent of one of my favorite games of all time! I was excited to get my games for the month. Then I forgot about it until a year later when I finished Xcom 2 and wanted to continue scratching that itch. I looked through my catalogue and saw Fell Seal and decided that it was time I try something new. I was particularly excited because it reminded me a lot of Final Fantasy Tactics. Ultimately, my experience with the game was underwhelming and the reason was surprising. It wasn’t the gameplay I had an issue with (well mostly), it was its horribly simple and predictable story, and its boring run of the mill characters.

What Others Say

After playing the first act I wanted to stop, nothing about the game was appealing at the time. However, I didn’t want to be quick to judge. Therefore, for the sake of fairness, I decided to trudge forward and finish the game with an open as mind as I could have.

There are degrees of difficulty in the game that makes it challenging, and it will either make you feel up to the challenge or really frustrated. In my play through I experienced both sides of this coin. I didn’t play on a high difficulty, but I also didn’t choose the casual settings. Some enemies were challenging, and others were easy. I can see some strategy game zealots having a decent time with this. But seeing as I’m more of an enthusiast than a zealot I decided to look at different reviews of the game hoping to find one done by a guy that regularly plays strategy games. Its reviews ranged from positive to mixed, with a few negatives.

One review stated that they were impressed with the quality of a game despite coming from a two-person team. I went to their website and verified it, though they did have various contractors that helped with development. As much as I’m impressed that a small developer made this, it also doesn’t matter. There are plenty of examples of games with small teams that are considered masterpieces, like Undertale. The fact that the development team was small is not a good argument of whether the game is good. I will give them credit for being hard workers. Pierre and Christina Leclerc hustled to make this happen, and I appreciate the passion.

Regardless, one critical review went into how the AI starts cheesing Healing and revives at the mid to late game and how it created a dull, repetitive, experience making battles last longer than they should have. Though that’s one person’s opinion. I wanted to see for myself if it was a flaw of the game or the individual’s poor strategy.

Mechanics

Before I continue further let me explain some of the mechanics of the game. The gameplay goes very much like a final fantasy tactics game. Each class has unique abilities and specific equipment, you need certain levels in one or more classes to have access to another class, you can mix and match two classes at a time as well as mix and match the passives and reaction abilities. The battles are turn based, on a rectangular grid of squares, and occur across a decent number of maps of varying geography. You strategically move your characters and use their abilities to defeat your opponents and aid your allies. There is also an overworld where you move between specific points on a map to travel. That’s pretty much the core of final fantasy tactics and they just copy-paste it to this game. Here are the differences:

1. The Injury System

If an ally falls during battle they may incur an injury. Injuries are system in which if a character falls in battle they are usable with a 5% stat debuff in the next battle, or they can skip a battle and recover returning them to full strength. However, you can adjust the injuries system to your preference, to even having permanent injuries, permadeath, or having no injuries at all. If you decide to put an injured character into battle, they will not recover and if they fall in that battle, they will incur another injury and will have to be benched for the number of injuries they have. For my playthrough, I had it at default settings for most of the game.

2. The item System

The item system is surprisingly unique, instead of buying items you craft them, and once you craft them you have an unlimited stock but limited number of uses during battle. Any character can use items, and they’re useful throughout the whole playthrough of the game. It adds an enjoyable layer of strategy to the game, as it virtually adds a few reliable support and attack abilities to your characters. That also applies to the enemy however, as they also use the same items, even monsters do. As for equipment, its virtually the same as in final fantasy tactics, except that you don’t learn skills from them. You can get equipment from shops, find some in chests scattered through the game’s various battle maps, and some are craftable. Some equipment does provide significant stat buffs and passive abilities.

3. Abilities

As mentioned previously, instead of learning skills from equipment, you learn them based on Ability Points gained through battle to use on a skill tree. This is a welcome change, though it means the best abilities are locked in the advanced classes which can take a little while to earn, making your team seem a bit underpowered when you’re amid trying to learn abilities and facing off against strong opponents. Also gaining AP can be cumbersome; I’ll explain why soon.

4. Patrols

When wandering into new territory you will most often automatically enter a battle and they may or may not tie into the campaign. You can also revisit these maps in the form of “Patrols”. Patrols are optional battles you can engage in on previous maps you've fought on, the enemies will be on a specific level range until you reach the endgame where some areas get new enemies. This allows you to do some leveling, gain some AP, open treasure chests you missed, and to recover allies' injuries. I mostly found these a waste of time. I hated having to do these, but if you’re playing with injuries turned on or want to open chests or unlock secrets you’re going to have to.

Grinding

Let me start off by saying this, I usually hate RPG grinding. I hate it so much. You know those moments when you come to a boss or a difficult part of the game, but you can’t beat it because you’re under-leveled so you have to double back and grind on some random enemies just to have the necessary amount of arbitrary numbers to be able to pass that part of the game. I loathe that. That’s why I like Darks Souls and Skyrim, in Dark Souls you just need the skills to pay the bills, and in Skyrim most of the enemies are scaled to your level (though it makes the game a bit dull). I hate the fact that I can’t get through certain areas based on numbers and not based on skills. That is how I felt in my playthrough.

I hated having to grind, but I had to because going through the campaign too quickly can leave your characters under-leveled, under-skilled, or with injuries. You’ll have to go on patrols to level up and/or recover your characters. And they’re just so boring. In Final Fantasy Tactics advance, you could send characters on special missions, and there are plenty of optional battles that were fun that acted as opportunities to level up, gain skills, and get special items. There are ways to make getting stronger fun and this game doesn’t have any. The “Patrols” feel just like how they’re called, like work. The only person I can see enjoying this are people who like the combat enough to where they don’t mind having to do these battles. Another reason why I hated these patrols is because most of the time, the enemies were either too weak or too strong. If they’re too weak, then you don’t get a significant amount of AP to gain skills. If they’re too strong you risk incurring injuries on your characters and must engage in more battles to recover them. I understand that you can use the low-level areas as an opportunity to level up low-level characters and recover the higher-level ones, but most of the time they also acquire injuries and they don’t get enough experience to catch up to your higher level characters. It feels like an artificial way to extend the amount of time you play the game instead of natural progression. You won’t need to do this, however, if you’re playing on the casual settings.

The Story and Characters

The new Star Wars Trilogy faced criticism for its lead character, Rey Palpatine. Rey was seemingly introduced without flaw and able to solve every situation she faced. People equated her with a typical Mary Sue character, a female lead that can handle every problem thrown at her despite not making any sense that she would know how to solve it. Whether or not you agree with that assessment of Rey, our lead character in this game is 100% a Mary Sue.

The main character is a woman named Kyrie, she’s an arbiter, a law enforcer empowered by a council of heroes who defeated an ancient evil monster and in-turn received immortality. And she’s so gosh-darn righteous. She is the stereotypical lawful good archetype. Not a bad thing, good stories can be written with this archetype as the lead. There are a lot of Superman stories that are very well written, All-Star Superman is one notable example. Kyrie’s backstory is well written too. Her Mother was a well-known arbiter and it inspired her to become a champion of justice despite the deep-rooted corruption that was allowed to infiltrate her organization. It’s a good backstory. However, it ends there. Kyrie throughout the game comes across as flat and predictable. Bandits are letting you pass because they don’t want trouble, well they’re bad guys so they must be stopped. A noble is being corrupt and brags about influencing local courts, well he’s gotta have a fair trial so we gotta take him to headquarters even though the arbiters have the authority to execute criminals, it’s the right thing to do. Go after the bad guy, he's so bad! Everything Kyrie does is run of the mill and she encounters no morally challenging situations which is part of what makes stories with static leads interesting. And because the story requires the player to win every encounter, it doesn’t really feel like she faces any real adversity, she handles every enemy with a calm and cool demeanor.

Speaking of enemies, they’re so bad. The first villain you meet is cartoonishly evil. We meet him when he kills a man in cold blood, a Nobleman who calls Kyrie a “wench”, and then brags about he will get away with it. And wouldn’t you know it, gets chosen as one of the specially chosen “Marked” to go on a pilgrimage to replace one of the immortals. Speaking of which one of the immortals is so clearly evil, he’s a pale Dracula-looking dude with red face paint, and rude attitude. The other notable immortal acts too nice and becomes really involved to the point where you can sort of guess he’s one of the villains, he was. You meet an obviously corrupt arbiter, who then confirms that Dracula (not his name but let’s call him that) is conspiring against the council, so that removed any benefit of the doubt. Man, Dracula was so obviously evil that I told myself “The devs must be trying to fool us, it can’t be this obvious.” I was actually really shocked at the gall of making a villain so predictable and cheesy. With the immortals being so fishy and clearly not immortal it signaled to me they were hiding something, they were. The only villain that had some semblance of depth was the guy who was orchestrating some of the events behind the scenes, but he gets teased with no context, and the big reveal is that he’s someone from Kyries past, however it was really difficult to emotionally connect with that moment. Nowhere did the game hint or talk about this guy, and now we’re expected to care about Kyrie’s past. It would’ve been so easy to include something quick too. The tutorial could’ve been Kyrie in the past talking with this guy, learning from him, boom, we learn about him, there is some attachment and context, and when he shows up, we can gasp. Instead, the reaction to the reveal is “huh.”

Almost all the other characters are cringe-inducing stereotypes, an air-headed non-human companion, a dashing rogue, a naïve new recruit, and a cute little mascot guy. The villains also have nothing interesting about them. It starts with the first guy, Alphonse, and his release immediately that tells me that the immortals are probably phonies and hiding something, and it came as no surprise when that big reveal happened. And It’s the same with every enemy you meet: Typical Bandits, obviously corrupt officials, and a rebel faction, Sigil. Sigil could’ve had some nuance with how they were handled, and it seemed like they were going in that direction, but they ended up just being enemies to fight. Even when demons started being summoned from their side, they were still adamant about fighting you, not one person from their camp was like “I’m obviously on the wrong side of things.” There was a mercenary character that ended up joining your cause, her arc wasn’t bad, a redemption arc which I like, but she already had shifty allegiances, and it was pretty obvious she would’ve joined you at some point due to her unique character design. The dashing Rogue was also a character that was somewhat enjoyable but that’s because he was the only one that had any character development and backstory (all of which was optional content by the way). He was one of the only characters you can emotionally sympathize with.

As for the overarching story, it’s very by the numbers. You get sent on a mission, fight baddies along the way, try to uncover the truth, learn the truth, then fight the monster that was alluded to in the beginning of the game. Very few twists and turn along the way, some character drama, but most of it gets quickly resolved, or it doesn’t affect the game all that much.

The Worldbuilding also left a lot to be desired. There’s not much internal explanation of how the world is how it save, save for the lore surrounding the immortals. But the more it tries to expand the less sense it makes. For example, one of the villains was a noble, how do nobles exist in a legal system that is run by a council of immortals? Do the immortals decide who is and isn’t a noble? Did kingdoms exist before the bid bad monster destroy everything? Then there’s the whole arbiter organization. The intro cinematic says they’re judge, jury, and executioner, but there are courts and trials? And how could immortal beings not figure that giving that kind of authority to people could lead to corruption? In one town, a mayor mentions they’re not allowed to arm themselves (yet they have explosives). Is that true for everyone in the country or just for them? If just them, why? It is a bit nitpicky to pick at these minor details, but details matter. Even if they don’t expand on these little details, it still has to make sense, otherwise it feels like they wrote what was convenient for them and didn’t put effort into it. Take the Soulsbourne series of games, most of the time nothing is explained and often your character is lied to and misled. Yet the world is constructed in way that can be explained, and it feels like every enemy and item placement was intentional and meaningful. I don’t feel that from Fell Seal.

The Gameplay

Here is what I do feel though. This game does have several layers of tactical depth. You don’t see it much in the beginning as you face low-level, low-skilled enemies. But as you play, battles become more difficult. Enemies buff themselves, heal themselves, revive themselves, and use some of the same cheese strategies that you can use. You will have to really plan out a strategy when facing certain enemies. A high Damage party with a healer/buffer or two will clear most maps, but not without difficulties. Going for the enemy healer first will usually result in casualties or the healer being revived immediately after because of the items. In the mid and late game, enemies will buff themselves always in the beginning of the battles and a lot of them will either have some form of status immunity or will be buffed with “barrier” which is an ability that protects a character from the first status they encounter. So you have to make sure you have debuffers, buffing cleansers, make sure your party has the right equipment and the right abilities. You can muscle your way through, but it’s difficult to pull it off unless you have access to the advanced classes. Also the story characters cannot learn the special classes, but they do have their own unique classes. Certain enemies have elemental resistances and weaknesses, some use a lot of status effects, some can teleport, fly, or swim. I can tell at higher game difficulty settings; battles will require quite a bit of strategy and planning. The cherry on top is that game’s difficulty is very customizable, even in the middle of the game you can customize it to your heart’s content, not many games have this level of difficulty options and it’s nice to see. The combat at the mid late game is solid, I would even call it fun, but the fun gets stripped away when I realize that I’m fighting to protect a world I really don’t care much about.

Conclusion

That is the main flaw of the game. It provides few reasons for players to care about the world, the characters, and what happens to them. The characters are bland archetypes, the villains are comic book characters, and they rarely do anything interesting or noteworthy. It’s no wonder half the players stop playing after the first chapter. You can base this off looking at the steam achievements. It takes around hour and a half to get to the first temple. The game loses half its players after an hour and a half. That’s a bad sign. I understand this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but most of the people buying this game are those that like TRPG’s, so it’s not just random people buying this game. And the developers could’ve done simple things to make the game more enjoyable. They could’ve done the tutorial in Kyrie’s adolescence, get to know her motivations, see her interact with characters we’ll get know more later, build bonds with the characters. That alone would’ve improved the game dramatically. They could’ve added little snippets of lore here and there. I’m sure the devs did some world-building before writing out the game’s story, it would have been easy to include discoverable pieces of lore that a player could read that would expand on the game’s lore. I think that’s what bothers me the most, there were simple things they could’ve done to make the experience better but instead they rushed it to release. And it’s not like the devs were inexperienced, they were involved in other projects before.

I don’t recommend this game, unless you really like TRPG’s, and enjoy a customizable experience. it is sad, they really had something here, but its difficult to care about it.