The legacy of Septerra Core is marked by numerous pitfalls and
disastrous events. It is a game that was originally conceived quite
some time ago by a group of talented folks at Valkyrie Studios.
The game had promise, the team was energetic and full of hopes,
and thus, development started. However, the publisher that was
originally going to publish the game, Viacom, left the gaming
arena and left Septerra Core hanging - and the folks at Valkyrie, in
a respectable feat of dedication, bought the rights to the game and
continued development in their own backyard (quite literally so).
Fortunately, European distribution rights were eventually picked
up by Topware Interactive, and, soon enough, US rights were
picked up by none other than one of the most respectable gaming
companies in my book these days - Monolith, ?The Shogo people?
as I call them.
One would think that a game that?s been in development for two
years is bound to look dated, or in some way cede to the more
impressive games of the present day. It is, unfortunately, the case
with many games - whether they come out looking bland and
unimpressive [Tiberian Sun] or downright old [Anachronox,
judging from people?s reaction to the E3 demo]. On the positive
side, this is absolutely not the case with Septerra Core: everything
about it feels new, refreshing, and, as the hip word in
management goes, ?innovative.? Granted, it?s somewhat easier to
compete in the RPG scene, since the last good game was Baldur?s
Gate, but there?s still got to be something to keep the player
entertained.
Septerra Core is a anime-style game, with console elements, and
similarities to the likes of Chronotrigger and Final Fantasy, though
the line is drawn there. The interface is significantly more intuitive
than Final Fantasy?s (which isn?t all that hard, I imagine), and the
story is much deeper and more elaborate.
In the ancient past, the Creator brought forth the shining jewels of
the universe and all their secrets. One such jewel was the world of
Septerra - its secret hidden deep within its Core. There were seven
distinct layers of continents, also known as the World Shells, that
orbited the planet. And the Core... the Core is an immense
biocomputer that regulates the movement of the Shells.
Many ancient legends speak of this world, and they tell of how the
Creator designed the world such that Man could inherit His power
one day, when He was gone. He created two keys, which would
unlock the secret of the Gift of the Creator, and grant access to the
Kingdom of Heaven.
Then he who the Creator and his angels could not destroy
appeared. His name was Gemma, and he was a
demon who lusted after God's power. He stormed the world of
Septerra Core, and captured the Keys, thus intending to take over
the Kingdom, and inherit all the power. In utter sorrow and
desperation, He Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken send his only
begotten son, Marduk, to Septerra - and, saddened, forever left the
affairs of men.
After a battle that raged for a hundred days, and a hundred nights,
Marduk destroyed Gemma, and repossessed the stolen keys. 'The
world is not yet ready for such power,' he said to the mortals, and
hid the relics so that none could gain them. He said though, that
one day, many moons from then, when the world was again in
great danger, there will be one who will unlock the power of the
Keys, and will save the world from destruction.
Much time has passed since then... and Marduk's prophecy is upon
us. Welcome to Septerra Core - a world in which laws of nature to
work in ways not common to humans. Where continents orbit the
planet. Where the World Shells create unique ecosystems, and Bio
Engineering has induced a variety of societal changes. Where
living battleships float overhead, and Junk Pirates roam the
darkness. A world whose very heart is the Core, a living computer
that quietly overlooks the fruits of its master's creation.
There lives a society of the Chosen on the Outer Shell Layer. They
deem themselves masters, lead an extravagant lifestyle, consume
massive amounts of energy and dump crap on the layers below.
[Hmm, I just snapped out of the epic language that I was trying to
stick to, but this I couldn't resist. Back to it...]. They have
discovered the Keys, and believe all the answers to the mysteries
they have uncovered over time lie in the depths of the Core. And
thus they decided to descend to the lower levels.
It is so that your part in the chain of events starts. You are Maya, a
Junk Scavenger from Shell Two, one that is located directly below
the Chosen's Layer (why, oh why can you never take the role of
the aristocrats and rich people in such games?!). You make your
living here, looking through trash to find useful items that you
could resell, and watching out for the dark ships that dash through
the somber sky above.
As the Chosen and their brethren descend below, war is waged
over the land. Many nations of the Lower Lands are threatened,
and fear the destruction to come. As you see the immense fleets of
the Chosen,
you realize the danger and set out to warn the inhabitants of the
Lower Lands of the impending danger, and have the word spread
around. However.... soon enough you find yourself fighting your
personal battle for freedom.
Thus your entry to the world of Septerra is outlined. The world is
quite immense, and very well-presented. Everything is either
craftily hand-drawn, or artistically rendered; and, coherent with
the image of a layer that survives on mining junk, everything has a
worn-out, rusty, used look - very Fallout-like. In fact, quite a
number of parallels can be drawn with Fallout, which, in my book,
was one of the best 3rd person RPGs of the past while, if not of all
time. The worlds are radically different, with environments ranging
from desert to forest, ice, water and so on and so forth.
Interestingly, the game doesn?t use a 3D accelerator, yet the
graphics leave nothing to be desired for - thus showing that one
doesn?t -need- a 3D card to experience beautiful graphics. (Then
again, Baldur?s Gate showed that, too.)
But graphics don?t make the game; plus, one can judge the
graphics by the screenshots more often than not (so long as they
aren?t the screenshots from the back of a retail box). Considering
this is an RPG, the character development, combat system, NPC
interaction and the party system are significantly more important.
To start off, the character development system isn?t anywhere
nearly as complex as Baldur?s Gate or Fallout. You start off with a
pre-defined distribution of experience points (similar to Cloud)
and, as you gain experience levels, your character becomes better
and better. You cannot specialize in any skills, such as magic, but
you shouldn?t have to - there will always be someone in your party
that has the right amount of skill for something you need to do.
There are no special skills to be learned, either - nor are there
Limit Breaks (however, as mentioned below, the levels of attack
do play the same role in the long run, except are much easier to
attain.)
Similar to console RPGs, during combat, you cannot distance
yourself or approach an enemy for purposes of correcting your %
probability to hit with respect to the distance. Generally, you
execute your attack and run a certain percent chance of missing,
depending on some of your attributes. The way the attacks work is,
again, similar to Final Fantasy, where a charge meter increases
and your ability to execute an attack depends on the state of the
meter; however, contrary to Final Fantasy, there aren?t two states
to it (?can attack? and ?cannot attack?). There are three notches
on the meter, and once it starts to charge, each notch charged
represents the next level of attack: so, for example, Maya with her
default weapon has a single-shot attack (at notch 1), slightly more
powerful burst (two notches) and gattling attack (fully charged). Of
course, as you wait for the meter to charge your enemies will
attack, too, and you may have to balance sometimes between the
power of an attack and the fact of effecting damage on the enemy.
However, if your meter charges to, say, 2.8 notches and you use it
to perform a level 2 attack, there won?t be 0.8 charge left on it - it?ll
start from scratch, so proceed with caution on party members that
charge rather slowly. Something I didn?t like, though, is that when
combat is initiated, all parties involved jump into a more open
area where combat takes place, sort of as in FF with the camera
zoom - but somehow, jumping looks a hell of a lot cheesier.
Fortunately, you can see the enemies before getting into a
combat, too - and while you still can be taken by surprise (such as
with story-based encounters), in general, you can escape before
getting into a fight if your health happens to be low. On the other
hand, what I rather disliked was the fact that you can?t scroll to a
place, click on something and have the character run there: you
have to keep clicking as the screen moves to keep your character
from stopping.
The maximum party size is three, with other characters waiting in
towns, inns or wherever you happen to have left them. Some
characters won?t work together, however - more so, they may
attack each other in combat, for reasons of their own, and as such
aren?t suggested to be put together; however, there are side quests
which may help reconcile some of the characters? differences, and
allow greater flexibility at making the party.
In RPGs, an omnipresent item is magic (in most, anyway); but
rarely is it ever implemented in exactly the same way in two
games. In Septerra Core, magic is cast using items called Fate
Cards, and draws from a power called the Core Energy. As
outlined in the story, the Core is the center of Septerra - and the
Energy is that which is generated by the continents? movement
around it. A character can build up some Core Energy within
himself, and that allows him to draw on it, for instance, to cast
Fate Cards (think of the Force for a similar example). The best
analogy would be with the Magic: The Gathering system, where
you have to tap X mana to cast a spell, whether a summon spell, a
healing spell, a fire or a wall - and many others (there are a total
of 24 cards in the game). However, that?s not all - you can combine
the cards, and have some affect the result of the others (such as a
Black Lotus would affect a Braingeyser), creating unique
combinations of spells.
I found an interesting glitch in the gameplay. When you enter a
store, and you have Runner along with you, you have an option of
stealing from the shopkeeper, which is fine. Say you steal once,
maybe twice (if you?re lucky) or thrice (if you?re -really- lucky). In
either case, after the third time or if you get caught the vendor
raises his prices, whether for reasons of ?local crime affecting
profits? or for obvious reasons, such as the one that you failed to
steal and got caught. In any case, the glitch is, that not only the
selling prices are raised - but the buying ones, too, which makes
little sense to me: that means you can buy all you need from him,
then loot him, get caught and sell off all your junk - making a profit
on it. I?d imagine if crime were affecting profits vendors would try
to have a larger profit margin? perhaps I?m wrong.
The difficulty of the game is, I would say, moderate. Though I
suppose, as you progress along, things get much easier - similar to
Fallout 2 (though not 1). It?s relatively hard at first, where you have
to manage healing potions, juggle your Core Energy between
healing cards and attack cards and so forth - though, as you get
further, your character gets more powerful, and you at least have
more maneuvering space, such as having enough Core Energy to
cast both a healing and an attack card within the same fight.
All that huge storyline isn?t just written on the screen, though.
There are thousands of lines of spoken dialogue in the game, and
the voice acting is commendable - people sound like they look
(here is a perfect example of stereotyping). When a person speaks,
there?s also a talking portrait - and, while I can see an effort to
lip-sync the character, it seems to me that it wasn?t done as
minutely and as perfectly in Fallout. As well, a very strange glitch
that occurred many times while I was playing is a character might
repeat a few words, such as ?You should check out the Pumping
Station the Pumping Station.? In the written dialogue, though, the
speech wasn?t repeated - which makes me wonder. It isn?t
particularly detrimental to the game, but it is rather curious. In
regards of dialogue, I noticed some grammatical mistakes, such as
the now-ubiquitous confusion of ?your/you?re? and ever-ubiquitous
confusion of ?affect/effect.? Most people would probably pay little
notice to such petty details, though.
The cutscenes are beautiful. Pre-rendered, of course, they show
skillful mastery of character animation and other effects, such as
particle, smoke et cetera. Much of the story is told in pre-rendered
cutscenes, but most of it is told in engine-rendered cinematics, a la
Fallout. As well, music improves the ambience significantly, with
the right amount of emotion lent to a given setting - a rapid,
adrenaline-packed beat for combat scenes, or a windy, spacious
swoosh when travelling in the vast reaches of the deserts.
So where does this place Septerra Core? I believe that isn?t a hard
question to answer. If anything, it?s essentially the one of the very
few worthy RPG to come out this year (along with Silver and
Darkstone), so that alone would make it the RPG of the year in my
book. But winning by elimination isn?t winning - I believe that
Septerra Core belongs in the list of the better, if not best, RPGs to
be done in a while. Granted, it doesn?t have the advanced
character management system of Fallout and Baldur?s Gate, but
AD&D isn?t the only thing out there. Final Fantasy was despised by
purists for the ?lack of storyline, its linearity and the lack of
character development,? an assessment with which I would
completely agree; yet, there was another aspect to it, one that
couldn?t be described through simple qualitative words, and one
that made me play it five times. I think that element may be
present in Septerra Core too - thus, I believe, that any fan of the
RPG genre should definitely give this one a try, if simply out of
respect for Valkyrie.
Ratings:
[ 24/25 ] Graphics
[ 24/25 ] Gameplay
[ 17/20 ] Sound
[ 14/15 ] Fun Factor
[ 05/05 ] Storyline
[ 10/10 ] Overall Impression