Septerra Core: Legacy of the Creator

Developer: Valkyrie Studios

Release Date: October 31, 1999

Time Played: About Two Hours

Dubiosity: 2 out of 5

Final Fantastosity: VII out of VII

Would I play more? Would not be opposed, but I’d prefer a turbo mode kthx

Septerra Core occupies a similar space to Dubious RPG Hall of Famer Sudeki, in that it’s a western-developed RPG intentionally trying to imitate their Japanese counterparts. Even more specifically, Septerra Core *really* wants to be like Final Fantasy VII with some of its initial worldbuilding choices, although its visuals and general aesthetic reminded me more of Fallout 1 and 2. Technologically advanced empire? Sure. Sassy protagonist from hardscrabble, vaguely Midgar-looking dirt town? Yeah. Does said protagonist get her call to adventure after being accused of a crime she didn’t commit? Sure did! There’s a robot dog, so that’s cool, and uh…

Okay, so here’s the thing: If there’s an actual crime in Septerra Core, it seems like it might imitate its JRPG influences a little too faithfully, which is why I spent most of my two hours with the game doing the game’s take on slow, active-time battles when I wasn’t listening to reams of overwrought exposition and clunky worldbuilding. It’s actually not dissimilar from how Final Fantasy XIII handles its ATB gauge, with each character having three segments they can use one at a time or bank for more powerful attacks. There’s also a magic system involved with combining cards? Anyway, the game itself seems totally fine, but also I sure didn’t get past the inciting incident because I was too busy slowly grinding my way through enemy encounters.

Ultimately, I think the biggest take-away from Septerra Core’s slow start is that it seems like it might be an entirely okay time but also I ain’t got time for that shit. RPGs in general are a genre that aren’t known for respecting the player’s time, but at some point I felt like I needed to cut my losses before the game began in earnest. If I’m going to spend my time playing a game with lengthy JRPG battles… there might be other candidates more worthy of consideration.

Drakensang: The Dark Eye

Developer:Radon Labs

Release Date: February 18, 2009

Time Played: About two and a half hours

Dubiosity: 3 out of 5

Still more coherent than: any of the Realms of Arkania games

Would I play more? This seems fine, but there are so many other, way more immediately interesting CRPGs vaguely hovering around my backlog.

The Dark Eye, or Das Schwarze Auge, is Germany’s premiere RPG system, occupying a similar cultural cache to Dungeons and Dragons in its homeland. Unsurprisingly, it’s been host to many video game adaptations over the years, from the inscruitably hardcore Realms of Arkania series to adventure games like Quick Look hall of famer Chains of Satinav. The best of the bunch are probably Blackguards and its sequel, which toe the line between intelligent tactics games with bespoke, hand-crafted missions, and a trial-and-error sadism fests depending on how the developers were feeling that day. They’re pretty neat, and being reminded of their existence has made me want to give either of them another look one of these days. I remember the second one being a little better on that front.

Alas, Drakensang is not either of those, but it had the fortunate (or perhaps unfortunate) timing to be one of the few games of its type to come out in 2009. While Dragon Age Origins is probably the mean comparison I could make, Drakensang is probably better compared to the likes of Neverwinter Nights 2 (which we'll get to,) both for its intimidating suite of character building options and adherence to an established pen-and-paper RPG system. There are indeed a frightening abundance of options in Drakensang’s very freeform character building system and you’d better believe they all scared me to death. This is very much a personal preference, but having skill, stat, and spell increases all draw from the same pool of experience points rather than being separate leads to a lot of analysis paralysis. Do I bank points to increase my stats, or do I focus on smaller increases on crucial skills? I’m suffering Arcanum flashbacks over here.

Now, to be clear, I think there’s probably a solid, if unspectacular CRPG underneath the eurojank NWN veneer. The real-time with pause combat seems manageable, the camera isn’t a horrible nightmare, and there does seem to be some thought put into the mechanics. It’s just unfortunate that instead of giving any sort of strong first impression, my time spent in the initial opening act of Drakensang mostly involved slowly killing wolves, dealing with a weirdly punishing “wound” system, and interacting with writing that I’d generously describe as “quaint, extremely Germanic mid-fantasy.” It might eventually blossom into something more interesting (or not) but the two and a half hours I spent were, point blank, a mediocre slog.

That's the weird trend with both of this week's games, actually. Both of them feel like they might be alright, but they sure didn't pass the "first few hours" test that more-or-less summarizes this feature. Now obviously, a game is more than just its first few hours, and I can think of more than a few of my favorite games that give off less-than-great first impressions. No one is going to be enchanted by the first few hours of Temple of Elemental Evil, either spent doing fedex quests in Hommlet or slowly getting worked at the moathouse, nor is anyone going to speak highly of the first act of The Witcher. Ultimately I hope this feature isn't taken as any rigorous critical discourse or serious recommendation to play or purchase any of these games (except Wizards and Warriors, which I genuinely think is a weird, rough gem) but also I fully invoke Wolpaw's Law here. I am under no obligation to give a game a second chance if it doesn't put its best foot forward... but also let's be honest some of this shit might actually get revisited for charity-related purposes.

Generally liked Septerra Core when I played it umpteen years ago. It was a regular in the bargain bin at GameStops and other game shops, and I'm glad I gave it a try. There wasn't much for JRPGs on PC back then.

You've pre-empted two of the games I'd earmarked for next year's May Maturity playlist, though to be fair they were plucked from the remaining dregs in my Steam library and I wasn't too hot on either to begin with. Might still give Drakensang a spin, but I suspect I'll have already maxed out my German CRPG tolerance after an inevitable Gothic III playthrough. (Maybe instead I'll make next May's theme "CRPGs that only look like they're twenty years old" and put Eschalon III and a few other Indies on there...)

Anyway, my thanks as always for being the proverbial canary in the coal mine for these bad (and/or tedious) boys.

Drakensang was one of those ones I always wanted to check out. Now I don't have to. Thank you for your service.

I actually have Blackguards in my Steam library, so I should definitely get around to trying it at some point (I want to say I tried a demo of it and that's why I bought it). I had no idea it was part of the same world/system as The Dark Eye.

After I watched your stream I was remembering some aspects of Drakensang (which I played until the end).

Like you said, Drakensang does have this really weak start and that is because what they are trying to do is the classic concept of “plot which start by threads which appear unrelated and trivial, but they connect to something bigger” (I feel that a lot of post BG games tried to do that).

Problem is that the game have around two to three threads you start to follow (the main one being about Aldo murder) until they connect. But that this take forever, it takes so long that when I played I sort both forget what I was doing before and after, all becoming a blur. So when the main plot kicks in it does so late that you might don't care or simple don't stick, given that character and plot are introduced very late.

Now I confess that while I also don't get much how the ruleset work, I like this idea of using and porting the whole thing as sort it gives the game a unique identity/distinction, instead of what we often have in the form of bad oversimplified systems which can make a game look generic.

However, while isn't the level of RoA of you have tons of skills or spell which don't work (and you have to figure out which one are vitals and which ones aren't), the issue here is that initial combat is very limited and some debuffs you get hit pretty harsh, until you have access to easier healing. So earlier combat get tedious very fast.

CRPG devs trying their hand at that high-falutin' JRPG world they got clued into via FF7's PC port never did as gracefully as JRPG devs who had a PC-98/working ENG->JPN faq going for IBM-compatables trying their hand at that.

Man, I have fond memories of both these games. Well, frankly, I forgot Septerra Core existed, until this unlocked that. I guess it would show its age now, but these were both great when I played them. Though, I always compared Drakensang more to emulating Oblivion, much more than Dragon Age. This was a nice trip, thanks.

It seems like that's the context which would make that game work. I think in terms of actual *quality* it's probably one of the better games I've played for this feature, and if not for the slow-ass battles I probably would've given it a "1" on the scale.

Something I also neglected to mention in my write-up is that it has solid voice acting for a game of its era, and it seems like there's a lot of it. sure, I played the entire thing in a tiny-ass 640x480 window, but it's got production values.

Very glad to be the test bed for "Mento's May Maybe I shouldn't play these." I've only got one game left for this current wheel, and it's Might and Magic IX. You'd better believe that is just gonna be 3-5 hours of me going "BUT IT'S ACTUALLY NOT THAT BAD GUISE" as my chat looks on in disbelief and I threaten a full playthrough. If there are any other questionable games lurking in your steam library you need someone to taste test beforehand, let me know.

One of the things I've been talking about doing to fill that void is showcasing the fun, smaller RPGs I've also managed to amass large quantities of. I want to play more Underrail and Serpent in the Staglands at some point, and also I dunno maybe this will be the excuse I need to play Shadowrun Dragonfall. Plenty of opportunities to clear through various Steam and GOG backlogs under the pretense of "streaming" "video games." Definitely can tell my brain has been at least slightly ruined by streaming because I think about games in terms of the content I can produce with them.

Of course... the immediate future is gonna be a lot of Dragon Age II. Also I'm considering getting both a capture card and a scan converter so I can stream console games on native hardware, including my PS2 with the fancy-ass $30 component cables I bought. Still need to justify buying Xenosaga, Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter, and those Shadow Hearts games six months ago.

Blackguards and its sequel are neat games, but I must needs emphasize that both are still very "European Extreme" in their difficulty and encounter design and there's zero shame in dropping to easy. Definitely worth a look though, and I might inevitably show them off on stream one of these days now that I've remembered their existence.

Yeah, to be clear I think there's probably a decent game buried somewhere in Drakensang, but I fully and willingly invoke my right to not play any more, having not been very invested in those opening hours. A lot of that patented Eurojank ambition comes from its implementation of The Dark Eye's mechanics, seemingly wholesale, and if nothing else I'd like to see the highlights of someone else's playthrough, even if I'm not sure I could manage my own.

"Western RPG devs trying to make a Final Fantasy" is really one of my favorite weird micro-trends of the genre; not just for how strange it is, but also because of how much it's the product of a specific time and place (namely the 90s anime boom and FF VII being the biggest video game.) It's not dissimilar to how a bunch of Japanese devs tried their hands at making bad cover shooters during the Xbox 360 era... but you know, more fun because the games they're trying to imitate were colorful and weird instead of brown and staid.

But yeah, I'ma say that "Japanese developers trying to make Wizardry games" were probably more successful at their job than the other way around, and the small niche of hardcore dungeon crawlers out of there is proof of that legacy.

Thanks for reading!

I got Septerra for like $1 at Big Lots(?) in '99. The only memory I have was that the dialogue language kept changing and I had so many game breakers in the first hour that I couldn't play it.

This is the first post I've seen anyone talk about it.

Yeah Septerra Core is definitly a grind. I remember killing a few of the earlier enemies and then going to the shop to see if i could buy anything good.. and you see stuff being offered for humongeous amounts of currency that aren't even close to the realm of possible purchases. Like i feel i never bought more than 1 big weapon despite at least spending 8-ish hours in total on that game. But man, i didn't play FF7 yet so i was blown away by the concept of a world with different shells and how that seperates the poor from the rich. And that overworld let you peek through the clouds onto the lower shell at times, which felt like an exciting sneak peek on future environments. Given that i first played this game as a demo, that kind of made it feel like i was able to see more of the game than a demo should let me do :P

I also thought the card system graphically looked quite spectacular. The combination aspect made the mind wonder how many cool summon-combo's there actually were in this game. Septerra Core also does a good job in differentiating the characters visually, while at the same time they still all fit into that steampunky 'junker' vibe.

Maybe i should play through this game sooner or later. I have a weird fondness for most Monolith games after all.

A ringing endorsement for The Wheel of Dubious RPGs if ever I've read one. The Streaming/Blog series that plays and writes about the games BIG TWITCH is too "mainstream" and "remotely relevant" to play.

Well, you're definitely the person who was the most positive on Septerra Core when I mentioned it in the discord, so clearly the game did its job for a certain facet of people. Once you get past the obvious paralells to Final Fantasy VII, it seems like it's one of the more "well-made" games I've played for this feature, but my patience for slow JRPG battles extends only so far these days. If I'm going to invest in something like that for the long haul, it'll probably be something a little weirder.

Septerra Core was my first jrpg back in the day.
It wasn't the best game I've played but it did introduce me to the genre and other great games.