Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark Review for Nintendo Switch

A modern take on classic fantasy tactics games, Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark punctuates an era of indie development that has witnessed classics re-imagined, hybridized, and uniquely birthed. Turn-based and customizable RPG tactics combined with compelling world building is developer 6 Eye Studio’s bread and butter with Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark.

Marked for Potential

For JRPG fans and spreadsheet powergamers like myself, Fell Seal has much to offer. And on top of fascinating combat synergies, the game’s narrative kicks off with a bang and continues to frustrate, intrigue, and surprise as more and more sprites fall victim to your oathkeeper warpath for justice.

Well within the genre conventions of hard fantasy, magic is built into the character dispositions, societal rituals, and the setting at large. The main protagonist, Kyrie, along with her supporting cast of characters are a great bunch of conflicting personalities to experience both the world’s grandeur and finer details. Despite the game not exactly delivering on what is promised in its opening act, the narrative is gripping throughout.

Venturing from cutscene to cutscene is well enough a reason to come back to Fell Seal over and over, but the real magic of gameplay is its vast customization options. Developer 6 Eye Studio fully gives the players the reins. The ability to create combinations of any sub-class, each with their own branching skill tree, kept me locked in for hours just plotting unforeseen combos. Pair that with custom player characters and a robust item system makes Fell Seal’s combat system feel boundless in its variety.

Melting Wings

As empowering as the combat customization is, I couldn’t help but lose interest and actually start to dread the required and repetitive fights. In other words, I spent more time and had more fun in the character loadout screens than I ended up having in the heat of tactical turn-based combat.

All is not exactly well in Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark, and it comes not from gameplay or mechanics, but from its aesthetic feel. On its exterior, its artwork has a charming appeal, but as soon as a sprite moves across the screen the artwork’s immersive element immediately fades as unpolished and unsatisfying animations strip the setting’s enchanting element. 

Now, I understand not every game can have punchy responsiveness for every animation, but for a game so reliant on its combat for its core gameplay loop, Fell Seal falls well short of evoking visceral moments of life and death. Grand hammer claps turn into whack-a-moles, boomsticks turn into pin-shooters, and magic incantations turn into half-chortled hymns. 

Sadly, Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark shows basically everything it has to offer in its first act, and grinding through the rest of it becomes just that: a grind. Storywise, what was compelling about the plot erodes away, chip by chip, by contradicting rules and overall tone of the dialogue. And its main draw, the combat customization, requires a party of 15+ characters because of the injury system which works counter to building relationships between the main cast of characters through shared adversity.

Thankfully, Fell Seal comes with many difficulty options, so I eventually turned on the setting which allowed me to bypass normal injuries for the sake of caring about the main characters. But despite my attempts to cushion the game from itself, Fell Seal insisted on breaking itself down the more I played.

Final Verdict

Pros

• Innovative class combinations
• Custom difficulty and gameplay flairs
• Stats, stats, and more stats–classic RPG combat customization
• Interesting worldbuilding/premise

Cons

• Becomes grindy
• Narrative contradictions
• Lacks evocative game feel

While not a perfect experience from start to finish, for what it’s worth, Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark accomplishes many of its aims–it is difficult and, therefore, rewarding to put together custom tactics combos, its plot and characters elicit emotional responses, and it does so via the passion 6 Eye Studio’s has for classic JRPGs. 

Score: 7.5/10

Take a Look at the Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark Video:

Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark is now available on Nintendo Switch, Steam (Windows, Mac, Linux), PS4,and Xbox One. For more information on the game, visit 1C Entertainment’s game page and follow 6 Eyes Studio and 1C Entertainment on Twitter.

Kyle Burke

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Recent Michigan State University grad and current Game Studies researcher who plays fantasy RPG's to escape, Smash to compete, and Stardew to chill. Also have a +1 to rage/toxicity resistance due to the many hours sunk into WoW, R6, and LoL.

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