While I normally aspire to figure out everything on my own rather than relying on internet guides/wikis, the amount of non-obvious busywork required to obtain Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark‘s good ending is so overwhelming that I’d have wasted 10 hours blindly trying things before succeeding. The game’s bad ending is falling all over itself to recommend the good one, as the dialogue engages in the sort of “if only there was a better way, wink-wink-nudge-nudge” so lacking in subtlety that it practically counts as a fourth wall break. If node colors meant anything, locating which specific nodes you need to interact with would be easier and render this ending more logical, but you’re left with guesswork since any color can be anything. You never receive enough information to know what to do without just looking up the requirements online. That gets under my skin.

I’m not going to spoil the ending, but suffice it to say that playing normally and defeating the final boss nets you the bad ending unless you collect the four fragments required to open a portal. And where do you find these massively important fragments? Two are dropped by enemies, including an optional boss that you can only find by stealing something from a random zombie and then crafting a specific item out of it. The other two require visiting areas long after you’ve exhausted any story reason for going there, at which point there’s something new to be seen or done despite the node color remaining identical. I’m not going to let this node thing go. It’s nonsensical to the point of becoming a problem.

And once you run around finding all of this stuff, you have to visit another place to learn how to use it. And then go somewhere else. And then steal something from one of the backup enemies during the final boss encounter. All of that for a short ending that ends on a slightly more positive but nevertheless unfulfilling note. For a game that revolves around politics and opposing factions, Fell Seal appears to be allergic to complexity; most of its characters are likable, but the storytelling doesn’t aspire to be anything beyond a generic hero story where a ragtag group overcomes an impossible evil. The premise could have allowed for some truly interesting double-crosses and moral ambiguity, but random characters who you’ve only seen once or twice instead show up to announce that they’re murder enthusiasts and that’s all there is to it.

No one gets enough time devoted to them. Minor villains in the middle of the game show up 2-3 times, just like the big bads do. When everyone is disposed of so quickly, it’s hard to consider opposing viewpoints or be surprised by a sudden betrayal (which isn’t to say that I’d be any happier with a game where a recurring villain continually warps away after being curb-stomped by my team, but more story cutscenes fleshing out who everyone is would have established some much-needed stakes). You see some characters so infrequently that I could barely differentiate between villains and had to check my screenshots to figure out which generic character was suddenly cackling like a cartoon robber baron.

I love strategy RPGs, so the ones I don’t end up enjoying hurt. The ones that have the potential to be amazing and squander it hurt even more. With better balancing, a less clumsy UI, a node system that isn’t entirely arbitrary, some quality of life features, and the removal of some of the more tedious aspects that turn late-game maps into battles of attrition, Fell Seal could be a really great sRPG. As is, it quickly devolves into an exhausting and unrewarding run through poorly explained mechanics and “gotcha” moments designed solely to waste as much time as possible.

Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark – Day 8: Finally finished first appeared on Killa Penguin