We’ve seen a lot of indie strategy titles popping up lately. From the excellent Mutant: Year Zero to the reimagining of the Battletech franchise, solid, detailed strategy games have been dropping like crazy. It’s honestly one of the best times to be a strategy gamer ever, and it’s hard to even choose what to play these days, especially with the quality of the releases. Certainly it’s a far cry from a couple of decades ago when strategy titles were few and far between. Ironically, that’s exactly what Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark by 6Eyes Studio is reminiscent of; a game from twenty odd years ago, namely Final Fantasy Tactics.
Fell Seal is basically a love letter to Final Fantasy Tactics and the complex three dimensional grid based strategy games of the 90s like Tactics Ogre. In addition to powerful and captivating storylines, these games all boasted some of the best strategic turn-based play around, and have been essentially mainstream ever since. It’s hard not to love the genre if you have the patience to play it and learn its intricacies.
Funded by Kickstarter (and sadly with only one stretch goal), Fell Seal hands you control of an Arbiter named Kyrie. Arbiters are the vassals of beings called The Immortals, and as such are literally their arbiters of justice in the world. Unfortunately, as the centuries have passed, the Immortals have become lax, and the Arbiters as a whole have become corrupt and lazy. Kyrie however, takes her responsibilities seriously and our story begins with her and her trainee, Anadine. It slowly unfolds to an epic journey with spectacular confrontations and excellent gameplay overall. Suffice it to say the plot, character development, and overall approach to storytelling will leave most players more than satisfied. Pretty impressive for a two person team, but I’d expect nothing less from a duo that worked on the rather obscure but much-loved DS game Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled, an utter classic in its own right.
But let’s take a look at Fell Seal, shall we? In addition to an excellent story, Fell Seal sports some of the most comprehensive customization options around for a turn-based SRPG (that’s Strategy Role Playing Game for the uninitiated). You can modify pretty much anything about your character’s visual appearance, and tweak most anything about their classes in a heavily FFT (Final Fantasy Tactics) inspired job system. It’s honestly too much to go into in a short review and would require a detailed FAQ to fully explain (sadly, one does not exist), but suffice it to say it’s a tactical gamer’s dream with virtually every option considered. I particularly liked the push mechanics, which were well implemented and the interesting side effects of magical attacks, namely the fact that shooting a fire spell for example hits your characters as well as the enemy because, fire and whatnot. Of course you can upgrade your characters so this doesn’t happen, but it’s not an instant process, so you definitely need to plan all your upgrades and equipment well, along with your character choices, which matter greatly from battle to battle.
Not every battle is equal and you’re pretty much guaranteed to get hammered by the enemies. I played on default recommended settings and Fell Seal is a challenging game at that level. You are going to lose a character here and there for sure, especially if you go in poorly outfitted. Fortunately there’s no permadeath in Fell Seal as it would make the game unplayable. You do sustain injuries however, and healing necessitates your characters stay out of combat to heal up. This makes it sensible to switch out characters constantly, keeping your rotation fresh and interesting rather than pimping out a few ridiculously overpowered characters and breezing through the game. Across the board, balance is a primary consideration for Fell Seal and the care that the developers at 6Eyes have put in shines at every turn.
Visually, the game is excellent as well, with beautifully hand-drawn portrait art and excellent pixel-based backgrounds and animation. While looking similar to all those fantastic 90s games, Fell Seal still manages to find its own identity visually in terms of both art style and character design. It’s definitely nice to see a game that manages to be fresh and allow for reminiscing at the same time. The music is also surprisingly deep as well, with an exquisite soundtrack composed by Jan Morgenstern. In fact, if you don’t believe me, you can download a 7 track EP of the game’s powerful music on MP3 right here for free! It’s well worth taking a listen!
Everything about Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark simply oozes a loving attention to detail as well as a noticeably independent development process. It’s amazing to see something with a small Kickstarter like this turn into a fully developed game that really hits every single mark across the board from story to music to gameplay to graphics. If I had any gripes at all, they would be that some of the attack animations, particularly for the early level magical attacks, are less impressive than perhaps they could have been and that I’d really, really like to be able to rotate the battlefield in combat due to the elevation and design of some of the boards. With a ton of combat and a handful of optional side missions, Fell Seal pretty much has everything a serious tactical gamer could ask for.
There’s really not much else to say about Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. The gameplay is excellent, the storyline is compelling, the graphics are well done, the level of tactical challenge is high (and adjustable for those of you who just want to play through the story), the music is great, and the game itself is a pure joy to play. Coming in at a reasonable $29.99, you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck with Fell Seal. Honestly, this is one title that deserves a physical release, so let’s hope one of those limited print run websites manages to strike a deal with the developers! But hey, don’t take my word for it. Go check out Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark for yourself. You definitely won’t regret it!
This review was written based on a digital copy of Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark provided by the publisher. It was played on a PS4 Pro in 1080p on a Sony 55” TV. My characters are still recovering from injuries sustained via enemy fire during the course of gameplay.