50%PC

Technical Issues...

60%PC

I get the comparisons to Final Fantasy Tactics. It gets close in terms of gameplay. My problem with it is in its presentation. While there's effort in its design, story and graphics included, I'm finding the battles boring, I just can't wait to upgrade my characters and for some reason that's also a bit boring.

I may come back to it. For now, each time I play I wish I was playing something else and I usually like to finish my current game before going to the next.

65%Nintendo Switch

I can't talk about this game from a FFT fan's perspective, but i love turn-based JRPGs. I can say that SPRGs are not my forte, but i played Triangle Strategy and i was instantly hooked, not only the story is great but the gameplay is really engaging, the combat itself is really interesting and plays with the environment itself sometimes to turn the tides of battle. Fell Seal just felt like a good character creator with really boring and repetitive dungeons. I don't know why hide so many useful features under abilities for the classes when some of them should've been part of the core of the gameplay.
Story is also not that interesting, but i don't think that was what made me not like this game, it's just that the gameplay itself is boring and repetitive in the worst kind of way - i get JRPGs are usually repetitive and i don't mind that, but just going from battle to battle is really boring when the story and combat is not that interesting.

80%PC

Recommended
The characters are well defined, the story is strong, the battles are satisfying, and it all looks great. This checked a ton of boxes for me and lived up to and beyond all my expectations.

95%PC

fans of FFT can expect to like this game very much

90%PlayStation 4

Fell Seal is a great game, clearly inspired by and a love letter to Final Fantasy Tactics and similar games. Let's break it down
--SPOILERS BELOW--

Story/Characters
Overall, good. A bit cliche, but not overly so. Basically, those in absolute power become corrupted (big surprise) and you have to figure out what side you're going to be on along the way. It is linear, however, which isn't necessarily bad, but you can't choose paths like you do in Tactics Ogre. The main characters are memorable albeit a bit cliched. The "jedi council" type characters were interesting to see them grow and develop and were honestly more interesting than the 3 mains because you knew exactly what you were going to get.

Gameplay (battles, menus, worldmap/navigation)
This is where the game shines. It took FFT and sped it up - battles are very fun and snappy. You can speed up animations, dialogue, etc. The class system is amazing, the abilities points and trickle down system works pretty well too. No, your benched units don't gain XP, but they gain ability points. Your non story units can go on missions (things that happen outside of battle - but in real time), so you can set a few missions, come back after work and fire them again, so you can actually progress while not actually playing. Helps level up your bench units. There are almost TOO many classes, but hey, variety is generally good.

Music/SFX/Voice acting
Music is very good, nothing spectacular, but very good.

Graphics
Eh.. they're ok. They look a bit "app game" to me, but they're not bad. The individual character portraits are great.

Difficulty
Very customizable, which is nice. You can control lots of things like enemy stats, their "intelligence" (will they heal, rez their teammates, etc) and perma death. I jacked up the stats to +35% and still got by. However.. the higher the difficulty, the more you're forced into the elite/min-max type setups (e.g. almost all of your characters will now have Dual Wield, etc). I never respec'd (never turned a character back to one just for customized job growth.

Customization/sidequests/end game content
Lots and lots! Lots of side quests (hunts, large scale battles with 9 units, arena - 3 back to back fights of increasing difficulty). You can customize the appearance of all of your non story units too, as well as the character portraits.

Is it fun to play? Grindy?
Very fun! But as mentioned, you tend to be pigeonholed the harder it gets.

OVERALL RATING
4.5/5 stars

Some other notes/builds/etc:
For special classes, you get many of these items. Not like infinite but you will get plenty of Coronal Plumes, and badges later on.
Best class bar none is Anadine with Demon Knight. Killing machine!

80%PC

Solid tactical game, can't go wrong if you like FFT-like games. Oddly interesting monsters design, decent story, fun gameplay / progression. Game was challenging but not unfair & still fun, personally started with Hard difficulty then tuning to higher enemy stats after about midgame but no permanent injury. (My high clocked time were due to many hours spent in troops & pre-battle management for min-maxing plus planning my characters classes progression :/ ).

Wish they would make a sequel. 👍

90%Linux

Fell Seal is a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy Tactics. It's not just the same genre, but it also uses a very similar job system.

Speaking of the job system, it's amazing. There are 26 classes and comparing to FFT, getting job points is easier and more fun. Every story character (which are not many) have their own unique class (but they can't access 6 of the standard classes). One of they story characters has his (its?) own class tree. And with the DLC we also have monsters classes. So.. even just discovering all the classes and their capabilities will take quite some time. And it's going to be very fun. You don't really have to grind here, but you'll probably do because it's lot of fun.

Graphically, it's deceptively simple. It seems simple, but actually there are a lot of effects going. I mean, it's still a game created by quite a small team, but it looks pretty enough.

Difficulty is extremely customisable. You have a few presets, but there are so many dials you can play with, that you can basically tailor the experience to what you want. More games should do it. The default difficulty is interestingly challenging. Meaning the battles will scale with you (to a point) and you won't really be invincible.

Economy is a bit more of an after-thought. If you don't have the DLC. Money are a bit tight (if you don't grind) for more or less the the first 60% of the game, then.. it won't matter anymore. If you have the DLC.. money will never be an issue. More than money what you will be bottle-necked on are components, which you'll randomly gather. Speaking of which, they did a great job with random drops. The more progressed you are with the story, the better the chance to get them, even in very low level battles.

Story is good. Seems incredibly cliché at first, but in the end, it's a good story, with most of the characters non Manichaean. I mean, it's not a masterpiece, but it's a good story with two interesting endings that will make you love more the characters.

The gameplay is very solid. The job combinations allow for a lot of variety and you can almost design your characters. Amazing. Nothing groundbreaking, standard S-rpg here, but very well executed. Once you start playing between thinking about the next mission or the next build you want to try, it will be very hard to put it down.

Just a note on the DLC: totally worth it. It adds 3 classes, the possibility to use monsters, new ways to get money, exp, AP and items, new challenging (well.. not too much actually) battles with nice prices and a few "large scale battles" where you can deploy 9 units. Lots of fun.

One of the best SRPG available.

60%PC

Whether or not you enjoy Fell Seal depends mostly on one thing: are you willing to learn how to play this game before you really play it? This surprisingly deep character management sim allows you to explore a lot of interesting builds and really flex on the battlefield. Why the thumbs down? Feel Seal created a poor first playthrough experience. You have to either spend 5 hours learning the game before you play, or hit NG+ before you can really enjoy the game.

20%PC

cliched story, mediocre writing

does not respect time (dialogues that can't be skipped in missions)

poorly balanced

unintuitive

camera angles make targeting sometimes extremely difficult since tiles will overlap perfectly

clunky KB+M controls on PC

Overly grindy

In trying to be faithful to what it is mimicking, it kept all the negative and outdated aspects as well. Worth playing if you really love the genre, otherwise don't bother

2/10 because it was literally a playable game.

80%PC

It's been quite a long time since I've enjoyed an indie game this much, it really does Final Fantasy Tactics justice as a spiritual successor, but isn't long to the point of being a chore, like Tactics Advance or A2. There's plenty of hidden events, but they aren't super cryptic, and you don't require a guide to fully complete the game and its riddles

90%Nintendo Switch

Basically everything I could’ve hoped for with a FFT inspired game. Splendid gameplay all around, with plenty of job variety and combinations. Story wasn’t amazing, but it was fine and it gave nice story jobs. That being said I’d rather play a remade FFT instead of this. Fell Seal is still really good, but there’s not much to call its own (crafting isn’t it). I still had a blast playing this though.
Also its injury system sucks.

80%PC

Favorite Thing:
Least Favorite Thing: I normally only do one but I feel the need to list 3 things I hated in a game I otherwise really enjoyed. 1) No saving during battles and some of them last an hour or more! Try doing a tournament in one sitting, it sucks. 2) The XP trickle to benched teammates quickly results in them becoming useless. 3) Injuries are just a time waster and force you to find the lowest difficulty battle.

Date Completed: 2019-06-18
Playtime: 51h
Enjoyment: 8/10
Recommendation: If you like a good tactical RPG then go for it!

80%PC

Great game!
First time playing a FF style tactics game.
Paid about $43 AUD
Worth the price of admission.

80%PC

Great game, lots of difficulty customization and classes to choose from.
Sometimes the game can feel a bit slow even at max animation speeds.