Game Review: Septerra Core

Note: Game reviews will contain spoilers.

A Decade in the Making

I don’t recall how I first purchased Septerra Core, as it was literally over a decade ago.  It was likely back in college, ordered off online before Amazon was ubiquitous, possibly from Ebay (though I believe I got it new).  It would have been before I got my now main email address at GMail, and definitely before I realized the importance of archiving all the old emails.  It definitely is amusing to think of all that has happened in the past ten years or more, but back to the relevance to my story.  Septerra Core is an old game, and while using DirectX, backwards compatibility wasn’t always the greatest in the earlier versions.  It is also a pretty long game (as they really could be back then, with lots of filler and backtracking and the like), so it took awhile to play through and probably got put to the side several times.  As a college student, I also was able to get new OS discs for cheap, and so would routinely jump to a new OS from Microsoft whenever I was able.  But at some point upon doing so, Septerra Core would no longer work, and so it was relegated to the “pile of shame,” referring to games you started but never finished.

It wasn’t for a lack of trying, as with upgrading to XP I would try compatibility settings in hopes that it would run and searched around for any new patches.  But with Valkryia Studios going bankrupt and closing their doors.  After a few years of trying, I eventually gave up.  Unbeknownst to me, a patch was eventually released in 2006 that would address these issues, but by then I had more or less given up, though I did still have the disc in my possession just in case.  Then one day several months ago, while looking through GOG, I happened to stumble upon the listing for Septerra Core.  I noticed in the compatibility that it only lists XP and Vista, but looking through comments I ascertained that it would also work with Windows 7 64-bit, which is what I have installed.  So, still unaware of the patch, I plunked down the $6 to purchase the game and blew the dust off my old saves (figuratively) and excitedly loaded up the game.  And behold, it all worked!  My last save file was dated October of 2002, meaning that almost ten years had passed since I had last been able to play this game, but due to the great people at GOG, I was able to finally finish it.

 

Western JRPG on PC

While coming from a western developer, this game has a much more feel of being inspired by Japanese style of RPGs, with strongly defined characters and a linear story.  Naturally, having not actively played the game in quite a long time, I was pretty rusty on the story and what I was supposed to be doing in the game.  Fortunately the internet is a great trove of information for this sort of thing, and after skimming through a few walkthroughs I was able to piece together most of the backstory.  So, with some sense of what happened and a few clues about what to do next, I was finally able to start playing again.

The way that you play the game is controlled entirely by the mouse.  You use it to lead your party around the maps and to give orders in battle.  Enemies are seen wandering around on the map and the battles also take place there, in difference to older Final Fantasy style games.  During battle, you have a gauge that fills up over time and has three levels that allow you to perform increasingly stronger attacks.  It appears that the strength increases linearly, so you get a little bit of strategy in figuring out if you want to save up for a stronger attack with the possibility that it could miss (I generally favored ‘mid’ level attacks).  You also have magic which is controlled by playing cards.  With three people in your party, you can play up to three cards together to achieve a variety of effects.  The main card determines the attack while the others act as modifiers, such as adding an elemental type or making it affect all.  The magic uses up a shared resource, so you don’t have to worry about managing the magic levels for each individual member.

Old School Problems

It is interesting to go back and replay older games, viewing them through the lens gained by experience with more modern games and their conveniences.  The pacing of this game definitely felt slow by today’s standards, with lots of waiting around for the ability to take turns during battle, followed by animations that seems sluggish and longer than needed.  Maps were also padded to be larger than need be, and there were many cases near the end where I had to get so many keys in order to unlock doors to get more keys, to finally get where I was going.  Plus after getting the treasure or killing the boss at the end, the wonderful walk of shame out of the dungeon (fortunately much faster in reverse, but with enemies re-spawning with each area change, still not pleasant).  It is a testament to the progress of games design that these stand out so much nowadays.

While I do appreciate the art and the confines of the screen from those days left not much to work with, it still felt cramped and wandering around the map wasn’t too enjoyable since you could only really see about ten feet in front of your character.  The particle effects were nice, but were pretty basic by today’s standards.  And the characters have a bit of a “plastic” look to them.  For the time it was really nice, but with all the advances in graphics we have these days it can be a little hard to watch at times.

 

Another Off the “Pile of Shame”

While the end was a bit of a letdown, I do have to say that I am glad I repurchased the game and was able to finally finish it.  It is a bit eye opening to think about how technology is progressing and how our medium of storytelling and experience is so very tightly coupled to it.  It is very likely that over time older games may become unplayable and it is a refreshing sight to see places such as Good Old Games working to preserve the history (and make a buck or two while they are at it).  I enjoyed having the experience of playing a game over such a long period, and giving me time to think about all that had progressed during that time.  Video games have come a long way, and I eagerly await to see where they will go from here on in the future.  Plus, that is one more game off my pile of shame.