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A world comprising seven shells joined together by a spine to a central core. Empires at war. A plot to steal ancient secrets. No end of exploration, combat and magic. And lots of characters to play around with. Yep, Septerra Core: the Legacy of the Creator has a lot going for it. It has all the ingredients of a decent RPG and a compelling enough storyline to keep one going for hours. It is therefore, somewhat tragic that its shortcomings tend to trip it up rather badly.
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The game comes on a single CD and requires very little by way of system requirements. I must mention that the minimum installation size comes at a mere 1 MB, enough to make one sentimental about the days when all one needed to carry games around was a floppy disk! Needless to say, it installed without a hitch on my PC.
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The game has a console-like look to it with scrolling screens. The graphics are 2D but are pretty nifty with most of the characters being anime-inspired. Some of the locales, especially on the world map (more on that later), are breathtakingly beautiful. Character movement is a bit jerky but one can live with that. The music is good, although it tends to get a trifle repetitive and the same goes for the voice acting. The cut scenes are adequate, although not exactly classic stuff. Gameplay is rather simple with the mouse handling most tasks.
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The game is based in the mythical world of Septerra - a world comprising seven shells bound to a single core by a massive spine. Septerra had been ravaged by a bitter battle between the forces of good and evil, ending with the victory of the former (lead by Marduk). And the core is literally at the heart of matters in the game. Not only does it radiate energy that is vital for the shells but it also contains the gift of heaven, which promises almost god-like power to the person who finds it. Unfortunately, the keys to the core have fallen into the possession of the evil lord Doskias who wants to use its secrets for his own ambitions. He plots a devious course, triggering civil wars and leaving a trail of blood as he tries to get to the core. Trying to stop him is the game’s heroine, Maya. An orphan who lost her parents in the civil war, she collects junk for a living on one of the shells but gets swept into the plot when one of her friends is caught smuggling arms.
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Helping Maya are some of her friends as well as allies (yes, you can form a party) that she picks up along the way as she goes from shell to shell in an attempt to defeat Doskias. And they are not there just to make up the numbers in combat. Each of them evokes different responses from the people (non-playing characters) she meets. Some are arrogant, others helpful and some plain neutral. What’s more, they are not averse to a spot of bickering between themselves. As a consequence, Maya has not only to look out for the enemy but also keep an eye on her own flock on her travels.
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And talking of travelling, one of the most attractive features of the game is the world map - a huge map that allows you to travel great distances by simply walking from one place to another. To get a better idea, imagine you had to travel from the US to Canada. In a conventional game, you would have stepped into some ship (or other means of transport), the game would have paused, loaded a new screen and eureka, you would be there! Here, all you have to do is go to the world map and coolly walk to the place you want to go to. Once you reach the place, the map is replaced by a screen showing you at your destination. It’s almost as if the world had shrunk to facilitate your travel. A good concept with some very nice music thrown in to boot! The maps of specific areas are however disappointing - coloured outlines that seem right out of Doom!
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It is not all smooth sailing for Maya and Co. There are enemies to vanquish, ranging from guards to wild beasts. And in keeping with the finest RPG traditions, there are lots of weapons and spells going around. Each of Maya’s friends has a weapon that he/she is most comfortable with - one of them even has a colossal spanner! In addition, weapons and armour can also be bought from shops. There are lots of spells going around too, if you want to keep your hands clean. The spells are cast using fate cards and core energy (Septerra Corespeak for Manna, I guess) and can bring on everything from floods to avalanches. Of course, some characters are more skilled than others when it comes to casting spells so one has to choose one’s party members carefully if one intends to rely on magic!
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There are hours and hours of adventuring here, especially if you want to investigate all possible routes and worlds and also solve all the little sub-plots that keep cropping up. It would also help to keep a shopping list handy, as you never really know what you might need in a particular situation - you might need an empty phial to collect some fluid or even the odd earplug to keep your ears safe.
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Septerra Core however trips up thoroughly in more places than one. The most spectacular goof-up is the combat. If that sounds harsh, then try to picture this. Maya and her party suddenly come across the enemy. Before you know what is happening, everyone executes a leap into the air and takes up specific positions (no, you cannot control where they land). What follows is a bewildering version of turn-based combat. Maya and her companions can take offensive action only after they are charged to a certain extent. Depending on the extent to which they are charged, they can either launch a weak, medium or heavy assault on their adversaries. While heavy assaults do more damage, charging up for them takes more time. Attacks may succeed or fail at random, irrespective of how well you have aimed them. The execution of the attacks is also a bit comical. Most of the characters jump into the air, land near the enemy and bash (or chop) them. This continues until the enemy is vanquished or Maya’s party is dead. While running away is an option, the characters can do it only one by one. All of which makes combat a rather time consuming process, although there’s lots of gold and goodies to be had if one is successful.
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Another problem with Septerra Core is the fact that the game does not flow smoothly. There are many occasions when one seems to have reached an impasse and progress seems impossible. The developers seem to expect the players to make some rather unrealistic assumptions. For instance, there is an area that is so filled with noise that it can only be explored while wearing earplugs. Fair enough - the problem is that earplugs are hardly on top of one’s shopping list so one has to canter through several regions on the world map until one finds a shop selling earplugs. And when one tries to return to the noisy area, one discovers that all the monsters and guards one had killed initially seem to have respawned.
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Then there are the non-playing characters. While having lots of them makes for a lot of interaction, their tendency to react differently to different members of Maya’s party makes things a bit tiresome. So if you think someone has information for you, you have to keep going to him with different permutations of the party until you get the response required. Also, one has no control over the development of characters. Points are allotted to different characteristics automatically whenever one goes up a level - not much fun for those who like to tinker between different attributes in best Diablo tradition. Rounding off the flaws are a series of ‘Panic Level’ bugs which often crash the game midway through combat. Unfortunately there is no way of dealing with them unless one replays the particular episode from scratch.
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At the end of it all, one is left with more than a little bit of regret. Septerra Core is a great example of how less-than-smooth gameplay can plague even the most interesting plot. Better design could have made this a classic. It is a tribute to just how well the story is woven that I kept hammering away at it, even while cursing the flaws and giggling at the funny combat sequences.
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To err is human, they say. Well, Septerra Core is so riddled with humanity that it stops well short of being an RPG classic.
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System Requirements:
- Pentium 233 or better
- 32 MB of RAM
- Windows 95/98
- Direct X 6 and QuickTime 4 or higher
- 150MB hard drive space
- 2x CD-ROM drive
- Direct X compatible soundcard
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