Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark

Review

The Immortal Council of the land has ordered all Arbiter’s captains to attend an important meeting in the temple located in the town of Illuster. One of the Immortals is stepping down (really!), and it’s time to find a new Immortal to replace him. Several people have been chosen by each of the remaining Immortals, and sent on a pilgrimage to visit the four temples of the land and interact with the magical relics within them. Only the marks (the ones chosen to go on this journey) can learn from them and understand what it is to become Immortal. Nonetheless, this impromptu stepping down is somehow intriguing. Especially if one of these marks’ individuals was arrested moments before for murdering someone in front of one of the Arbiter’s captains! This is Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark!

Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark is a turn-based strategy game developed by 6 Eyes Studio and published by 1C Company, currently available as an early access on the Steam platform.  In this game, you’ll take control of one Arbiter named Kyrie.

At the start of the game, Kyrie and one of her trainees witnesses a murder in broad daylight, on the street of Gelligh. The killer is one of the Lords of the land, Lord Alphonse. After arresting him, she will be told to move to the capital to attend an important meeting.  This is where the fun starts!

A fairly large map of the land will be displayed on your screen. As the story progresses, your character and her party will be notified of where to go. New roads will appear on the map with large dots on them; red dots represent areas that were not visited, green dots are areas that have been visited and may be patrolled for enemies if you choose, and blue dots are towns or camps. In towns, you can purchase new items at the shop, such as weapons, armour and other items for all your characters.  You can also recruit new members to join your party, as long as you have enough gold coins.  Before moving onto the next red dot (triggering your next battle), you’ll have the option to open the troop menu tab, where you can select characters, upgrade their weaponry, learn new abilities, craft objects and even change your characters’ classes if you want.

Each time you move your party to a red dot, it will automatically initiate a battle. In each of the battles, you’ll be notified as to how many members of your party can join Kyrie in combat. The next step is to carefully choose which members will fight alongside Kyrie.  It could take between 15 and 30 minutes to win a battle; it will really depend on what type of enemies you’ll face and which members you pick. However, if all your members die, unless it is specified at the start of the battle that a particular character must not fall, you’ll have to restart the encounter. Within the battles, each of the characters will earn different types of experience based on which actions are activated. To give you an example, melee combat will go towards increasing the experience in the mercenary class, while healing will go towards the mender class. The fighting will not be easy, and your party will come across stronger enemies as you go along. Some will fall during battle and the only way to get them back into the fight is by having a revive potion or an active mender character during the fight. If you don’t manage to revive an individual back into the battle, don’t worry, you won’t lose him/her, but they will carry their injuries towards the next battle.  Assuming that you don’t have many fighters in your party, rest them for a while so they can heal their wounds.

After winning a battle, you’ll receive extra gold coins, various items, and you might even have additional bonuses towards some of your characters. Make sure to open the troop menu to learn more skills before your next battle.

Nice graphics and soundtracks. The interface is straightforward and easy to use, which is always a bonus for this genre of game. Great character customizations and the story is well-structured. In terms of controls, you can use either your mouse and keyboard or your gamepad.  There are a few spelling mistakes here and there, but that's about all!