Septerra Core Legacy of the Creator: Ambition, the enemy of success

Septerra Core Legacy of the Creator is an RPG game that attempts to blend western RPG mentalities with JRPG sensibilities. It's got oodles of dialogue, world map exploration and even a ATB system. It was generally well received when it released back in 1999 and garnered praise for it's visuals and voice work and you know what? They both still hold up well today but I'm going to be honest here: Septerra Core hasn't aged well.
What it got somewhat away with back then doesn't cut dry now. It's a slow game, with slow player progression, pacing and combat. A linear story with vague cues on where to go next it's quite a frustrating experience and I was reliant on reading a strategy guide just to make sure I wasn't going backwards and forwards for tens of minutes because I didn't realise I had to speak to one particular generic looking NPC to gain some intel to progress the story.

I hate to be utterly critical of a game and it's true it's still visually beautiful and interesting to look at and that voice work was years ahead of it's time.
Each character and environment has had a lot of attention to detailed paid to it and it really does have it's own sense of character. The story itself is interesting and layered and filled with a memorable core cast. If there was one thing going over and over in my mind when playing this game it was that it seriously needs to be remade with all the mod-cons of modern gaming.

To give you a bit of context about Septerra Core; it's plot revolves around a young woman named Maya. She lives on the planet Septerra that has all it's landmasses split apart and revolving around the planet's computerised core.
Now the bad guy in this story is Doskias, a direct descendant of a powerful hero. He's arrogant and entitled and sets out to manipulate the world so that he can access the planet's core and receive the "gift" which is obviously going to be the power to control the planet.

He's pretty much hell bent on achieving his goal so much as to destroy anyone who he thinks will even pose the slightest threat or hindrance to his plans, even some of his own allies are dispatched without a second thought.
We're pretty much assured within the first ten minutes of the game that Doskias is a bad guy. However, he is interesting with it, not just some hell bent power monger, Doskias believes this to be his birthright, that it was almost prophesied for him to "save" Septerra.

Maya on the other hand, is a humbled character in the beginning: her parents were killed in a war and she just lives day by day in her piece of the world just trying go get by. We learn that it's a pretty harsh world for most with only a few civilisations achieving prosperity.
One of the other orphans that Maya knows gets involved with smuggling goods to people from another continent (or a shell in this game), whom are directly working for Doskias.

Maya is a well rounded out character, she's proactive, not whiny. Portrayed as strong and confidant, Maya takes on the defacto leader role in the group. It's great to have seen this in a game from 1999 where strong female characters were even struggling to be on the cinema screens.

Maya is joined atypically by a rag tag group comprising of an old friend and his robot dog, an exiled soldier, a general's daughter, a bounty hunter and surprisingly Doskias's lover who interestingly is trapped between stopping him for the sake of the world or selfishly hoping to "save" him from himself.
And this isn't even the full roster, there is a total of nine playable characters in Septerra Core.

I liked the story and it has that JRPG thematic feel to it coupled with the FMV sequences for the more bombastic moments. It makes sense, the world is well constructed and each of the shell continents have their own personalities and politics all for the player to immerse themselves in.

Where I have to become critical of Septerra Core isn't in it's story or it's graphics, it is in it's gameplay. Level design and battle scenario design, just doesn't work well.
I definitely feel this game got let off it's less than amazing gameplay in reviews partly because of it's graphics and plot. Sure this is a RPG game and we generally have a lot of dialogue to get through but at least 50% of the game is fighting and exploring so these areas should be just as polished.

So combat, it'll be familiar to anyone who has played a JRPG. Forgoing western RPGs of the time, combat doesn't play out in real time. Instead characters enter battles in fixed positions. You cannot alter this in any way at all, but positioning can be exploited by you or the enemy party by using attacks that cause damage in a direct line or area of effect.

All characters in battle have an ATB (active time battle) bar that is segmented and slowly fills up during battle. Each segment represent an attack. The longer you wait the stronger the attack. Also some skills you can "equip" also have a preset ATB position. For instance you can equip Maya with the grenade skill but her ATB must reach segment two in order to use the move. Later you can equip Napalm which acts like Grenade but requires all three segments of the ATB bar.

Makes sense? Sounds technical, has the opportunity to deepen combat but it doesn't a whole lot. But more or that later, Septerra Core also has a magic system along with regular attacks and skills and magic too takes advantage of the ATB bar, spell power increases in correspondence with how full the bar is.
All characters share the same MP bar, which is called CP (which stands for Core Power) and it's consumed by using spells or in the case of this game; fate cards. Skills also consume CP as well and so spamming multiple spells and skills eats up the universal CP gauge at an alarming rate.

The biggest flaw of Septerra Core's magic system is that it's just not that versatile for the main game. Spells and skills are vastly under powered compared to regular attacks with the only obvious benefit being that they have 100% accuracy.

You can attach a fate card to multiple characters to create combo attacks but again, very pricey. Uses up a lot of the ATB gauge and only useful in the endgame. No one character has an exceptional magic stat, they lose huge points in strength but don't have the gains elsewhere other than speed leaving them quite underdeveloped.

Honestly, there is a lot here to work with but it's all underbaked. Enemies don't have elemental weaknesses to be exploited and so elemental spells are just attacks with special effects. Ultimately battles resort to waiting out the ATB bar for level three attacks. Rinse repeat. Every now and again you can use skills but the opportunities to experiment in battle are just not there.

I applaud Septerra Core for it's interesting ideas but I'm so let down at their execution. Battles are incredibly slow paced and they make exploring dungeons feel really tedious and that's when your attacks connect! When you have several misses in a row it's infuriating.
Having detailed animations is all well and good but they're long winded and repetitive, in a bad way. The generic attacks lack flourish and enemies interrupt your ATB charge way too often. Even when you're in the middle of a boss fight the game lacks urgency. A boss should be bang, in your face! Best strategy... Nope. It's rinse repeat, it's disappointing. All the drama happens outside of combat.

 Speaking of outside of combat, here is another critique I have of Septerra Core and it's what is the point of having all these beautiful textures and interesting locations when the map design is so bland?
Textures repeat themselves over so locales feel like mazes rather than livable spaces and this problem is compounded by the camera distance - it's close. Really close.

When I think of Chrono Trigger and how well the map design is in that and then I look at Septerra Core I'm just puzzled. It could have made so much more interesting places to explore.
To make things worse, there is almost no soundtrack. You have three random battle themes, a world map theme and that's about it. So, whilst you're exploring the labyrinthine dungeons you get to do it to the sound of gentle wind, humming machinery or nothing. I think if we had some music for the towns and dungeons it might've helped stem boredom but listening to nothing but the odd battle theme for hours is a joy kill and inexcusable in a game like this.

I'm really disappointed replaying Septerra Core. Games age, that's true but the elements it fails on are as crucial today as they were then, the only difference is that it's harder these days for game to succeed on looks and story alone. We're spoiled, we have played decades of games that have pushed gameplay so far and refined what a RPG is or a shooter or a platformer. We're know what near perfection looks like, we know what is competent and it isn't here.

Septerra Core could use a remake, it's story and world deserve to be told to a large audience but someone needs to take the game mechanics, sling them out the window and start from the ground up. My first thought is that the reward for charging the ATB gauge should be better. Instead of just a small damage modifier, how about Maya's level 2 is a cone AOE attack against all targets in a direction and her level 3 is a an all out barrage against all foes. They don't even have to deal huge damage, slight reductions even to balance it. But make it not cost CP, you want the ATB gauge to open up options of attack with no cost penalties.
Mentioning CP, each character should have their own. It differentiates between magic casters and non-magic casters. You can also boost the CP cost of fate cards and their damage, coercing players to use CP to it's fullest potential as long as they have the reserves.

There needs to be a greater variety of enemy types with dedicated elemental properties. In an RPG, elements are essential to keeping the combat engaging and not reduced to 'spam the most strongest attack' scenario that Septerra Core certainly suffers from.

The Shin Megami Tensei games have shown how well elemental play keeps players on their toes in battle, we all love to feel powerful and outsmart the computer. It's not rewarding to just obliterate them because we've grinded to god-like levels.


Visually, if Septerra Core was updated hands down it would look great cel shaded. I would even like to see them keep the isometric view point but give the players control of the in/out zoom of the camera during exploration and to be able to rotate the camera during both exploration and combat.
Obviously these are just ideas off the top of my head and the chances that Septerra Core will be remade is incredibly low to non-existant but I like to dream up how a game from the past would look if it benefited from what we've learned up today.

Hope you've enjoyed reading this article, and if you have thoughts or experiences of your own please leave a comment.

Have a good day, everyone!