It’s safe to say that I’ve been gradually falling out of love with Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark as it continually introduces new statuses, classes, and abilities that enemies—and thus far, only enemies—have access to. However, just prior to the third temple area, the gameplay suddenly settles in and feels balanced again. Out of nowhere, my units seem to be gaining more class experience than before, and Fell Seal has taken enough of a break from introducing new twists to allow me to catch up and plan around those already introduced. That makes a pretty significant difference.

The underlying problems are still present, of course. At one point, my trap-laying character meticulously boxed in an opponent, only for said opponent to walk over those very traps thanks to a skill hidden away in his stat screen that you could only know about by slowly checking every single opponent’s skills one by one before the battle and keeping track of who is who. But credit where it’s due, the gameplay has improved.

Having a character who can put down traps makes a pretty big difference because traps don’t have friendly fire and immediately end the turn of whichever enemy steps on them. That’s huge in a game where you can frequently funnel enemies into areas that are 2-3 squares wide. It doesn’t make much of a difference when enemies can effectively teleport around like the monsters in the embedded video, but that’s where another big difference comes in: ranged weapons. The same claustrophobic level design that makes traps an effective tool make it difficult for every character to get in position to attack, so having several characters who can attack at range using magic or a bow/crossbow can maximize your damage output. Additionally, resurrection items and abilities currently raise opponents with a small amount of health left, so ranged weapons sometimes allow you to finish them off again before an ally can fully restore them. And bows are great in mountainous terrain that limits your movement.

Traps and ranged weapons both fall within the purview of “rogue” classes, meaning that my two units who specialize in them are currently thriving. Units who have naturally transitioned into more melee-focused classes like main characters Kyrie and Anadine can do a lot of damage, but getting them in position to be effective can be rough. Magical classes, meanwhile, have plateaued; magic was the best option for damage early on, but the paucity of meaningfully different spells compared to the numerous different types of physical attacks has reduced their tactical value. Right now my starting wizard is classed as a physical unit in the hopes of having a rounded, just-in-case unit for later, and my other two magic-users are mostly just around to heal everyone and inflict small chunks of damage whenever enemies are tightly grouped together.

Magical classes appear to be an investment for later, and not just because full-screen magical attacks are apparently a thing. One of the most annoying things I’ve encountered is enemies with abilities that force damage to come out of their MP first, meaning a blow that does a bazillion points of damage will do zero actual damage if they have at least 1 MP remaining. MP regenerates every turn, too, so this could open up a whole bunch of interesting new strategies. I just hope that Fell Seal continues to hold off on the status effect bonanza it started to lean into a while back.

Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark – Day 5: A slight course correction first appeared on Killa Penguin