Without a solid story there is no way that an RPG can grip the player and warp their minds into the game’s world and characters. Septerra Core begins with an interesting premise and takes a while before the plot really begins to take off. A nice change is the main character being a female, something that doesn’t happen often in RPGs. Maya is a definite anime-inspired character (in fact, most of the game and characters have an anime influence) and is the central person in the story of Septerra Core. The entire world that she lives in is separated into layers of ‘shells’ that rotate around the planet. At the center of the planet is the ‘Core’, where the world’s workings take place and the ‘Gift of the Creator’ resides. Maya is a junk scavenger who inhabits one of the lower shells. The upper shells contain ‘The Chosen’, a group of individuals who consume the energy of the planet and trickle it down to the rest of the shells.

The Chosen are not the good guys in Septerra Core, rather they are the threat. They have formulated a plan to travel down to the Core and retrieve the Gift of the Creator, something fabled that would supposedly save the world in its dire time of need. Stumbling onto their plot, Maya, along with her brother Grubb and his trusty sidekick Runner, head off to warn the other shells and devise a plan to stop them from obtaining the Gift of the Creator.

An interesting start, sure, but how does the rest of the game measure up? Despite the long time the developers have had to refine the game, there are only a couple aspects that help this to stand out from the rest of the console-style RPGs on the market. Let’s start with the battle system, an integral part almost as important as the story itself.

Walking around with your characters, eventually you’re bound to happen upon an enemy wandering around in the same vicinity. Once they spot you, it’s time to take them out. Leaping into the heat of the moment, the battle system then kicks in. Three character portraits are pictured in the upper left hand corner of the screen, with a tiny bar slowly filling up as the battle rages on. The bar below the portrait is split into three sections. As each section reaches full, you area able to perform an action. Depending on how full the entire bar is will differentiate how powerful your normal attack will be. Using an item and other simple tasks only require the full section. There isn’t a whole lot of problems with this type of battle, but it quickly becomes tedious and boring. And when most of the game is spent battling, having them be boring is not a good point.

A small quirk that began to annoy me during battles was that to attack all the characters and enemies, you usually have to leap into the air, land over by the person and then execute the attack. There are exceptions, but for Grubb and almost all of the physical attacking opponents (i.e. using claws instead of a firearm), it is irritating watching this happen over and over again.

Septerra Core’s graphics are a mixed bag of some good and some bad. The good is the pre-rendered backgrounds that have become common place in almost all RPGs of this nature (most likely due to the huge success Square has had with this formula thus far). All the backdrops are dripping with detail and this is an area where the extra development time shines through beautifully. Similar in nature to most other titles with pre-rendered backgrounds, though, everything seems very static and non-interactive. It would have been nice to see creatures rustling about on the ground, or the tree branches swaying in a strong wind.

Most games are moving toward 3D (which isn’t always a good thing), but Septerra Core is holding onto the now dying breed of 2D sprites. This is in no way a bad thing - seeing as how at times I prefer it over 3D - but unless 2D is done well at this point, it just looks ugly. Valkyrie Studios hasn’t put in nearly enough animation for the movements in the characters, and is looks jerky and unnatural when watching them pulling off various actions. Surprisingly, there was actually some slowdown during a few of the battles. On the other hand, Septerra Core’s spells have some very nice effects to accompany their attack.

If nothing else, there is one part of Septerra Core that I have to applaud the developers for implementing, for it something that almost no other RPG has been able to pull off quite yet. Every single one of the characters, no matter how minor, has a voice to go along with the obligatory text. While at times there are many that start sounding oddly similar, but the fact that they have pulled off this feat at all is a large compliment in itself.