Game Profiles: Septerra Core

Septerra Core (official and frikkin' old homepage here) is a rather interesting sort of game; it's an effort by an American game studio to essentially create a Japanese game.

It really isn't a particularly well-known game; it spent enough time in development that it basically was one of the last sprite games, contemporary with an army of full computer graphics games. It was three-dimensional enough in its environments, but technically two dimensional.

But enough about the game's technical problems. The game takes place on a unique world called Septerra (hence the title). Septerra is a massive, physics-defying construct that consists of a Core (obviously) surrounded by seven layers of magic floating continents.

Yes, magic floating continents. In the sky. One actually bands the planet at its equator.

Each layer, called a "world shell," has its own distinct flavor.

The "first" shell, Shell One, is the highest, and is inhabited by technologically advanced and sophisticated people who call themselves the Chosen, who built a single huge city around the planet's spine (the axis around which the continents rotate, which can be tapped for energy).

Shell Two is a post-apocalyptic desert region that was made so by Chosen infighting.

Shell Three is a semi-medieval fantasy setting, with swordfighting and zombies.

Shell Four, with its massive world-banding continent, is the World Bazaar, the seedy center of trade for the whole planet, where there is no government and everything is legal. (No joke. For a significant portion of the game, your headquarters are in the Red Light District there.)

Shell Five has two advanced nations on it, whose relative proximity to the Core has made them wealthy, as the Core can be mined for a diamond-like material called Corite (an NPC remarks "It's like diamond, only better!"), but they have long squabbled over the rights to mine there.

Shell Six is sparsely populated, but is a den for pirates.

Shell Seven is an alien fungus world (if you've ever seen the film Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, it's like that) inhabited by mutant monks called Underlost (no, seriously).

Each world is radically distinct and beautifully crafted. The only real flaw in the worldbuilding, which is always nice and occasionally breathtaking, is that Septerra is actually quite a bit smaller than it looks. (There are also a lot of little pointless spots, like empty backalleys, that make you wonder if the problems with the game's production interfered with them constructing the world.)

The plot is fairly straightforward (a game reviewer on one site complains that it's far too much so), at least in that there's a single main villain, Doskias, from the beginning to the end (telling you that Doskias is the main villain isn't even a spoiler), and it has twists and turns but they have little to do with that villain directly. (There are a few other nice twists, though, the main one that comes to mind being that SPOILER the daughter of the Chosen Emperor [the Emperor had been killed by Doskias's flunkies earlier] is helping you with evacuating an area about to be hit by a Doomsday Device, then suddenly turns on you and announces that she intends to marry Doskias because he's made her a better offer.)

The combat system in the game is pretty similar to a standard turn-clock-based system, but has a few twists to it, such as a three-tiered combat system where you can let characters "charge up" to do more damage or use better attacks and skills. Central to the combat system are the Fate Cards, which can (almost) all be used to cast a spell alone, but are more powerful in combinations. Each character can only use one Fate Card at a time, which means that it's actually necessary to use all three members of your party to cast the strongest spells. (Actually, it's apparently pretty similar to Chrono Trigger's combat system in that way-it even has similar map-based combat characteristics.)

The bosses are the biggest enemies, but many of them are also the trickiest enemies. One early "tricky boss" is a device that sits in a lava pool. You can't attack the center (which can attack you, by the way), but you can destroy its three legs (each of which can also attack you) to knock it into the pool and destroy it. Simple, right? Well, not as much so as it sounds, because it can heal and resurrect its legs, and the legs are really tough. When my sister was recently replaying through this battle, her characters were considerably lower levels than the first time that one of us first encountered this boss (there was a bit of questing roadblock, and I spent a lot of time levelling up, such that one of the characters in her recent save had only acquired the skill "Steal" after this battle, while in my original save he had not only had "Steal" for a long time, but had mastered the more advanced skill "Mug"). She had also taken a less appropriate party member (one of the best for the fight is the character Grubb, whose "Repair" skill can be used both to heal mechanical allies and severely damage mechanical enemies-to the point where this skill does more damage to the boss than its elemental weakness) than I had. Did she get curb-stomped? No, it just took her longer (and cost her more items and hitpoints), because she followed the right strategy-wearing down the legs while using big magic to finish them.

One of the things that sets Septerra apart from similar games (i.e. actual Japanese RPGs) is that it has voicework. ("Over 5 hours of recorded dialogue.") For fans of newer games, one of the voice actors had a more recent and famous role-as the voice of Halo's Master Chief.

Septerra Core is a game that hasn't really aged terribly well (the often long load times for combat and scene changes can be really annoying), but if you're a Japanese RPG game buff, you should investigate it, because while it probably won't work with newer versions of Windows, it's a strong American pastiche of those games which doesn't command a high secondary market price.

I don't play terribly many games (except for Pseudolonewolf's and other flash games, since those are good games that are also free), and this one, along with Total Annihilation and a game called Revenant, pretty much defined what I look for in PC-based games.

Also, my sister totally ships Maya and Araym.

-Signing off.