Playing Septerra was a pretty weird experience. It took me almost two years of irregular playings to beat it, mostly due to the dull gameplay, mixed with the supberb atmosphere.
What can I say? Almost every time I spend playing it, my feelings were contradictory. The combat system is full of flaws, but at the same time it has some great ideas on it. The exploration was interesting, but boring in the long term. All the things that any JRPG fan would expect to be on a good game exist... but in pretty poor shape. And yes, I said JRPG. Septerra tries to give a different approach to this genre, most will say an occidental way.
For me, the biggest problem was with the slow pace of combats, with tons of paused times without any reason (your characters attack, or do some card magics, and the "wait time" becomes eternal after so many battles). The fact that almost the first half of the game does not offer any real challenge, makes the game some kind of boring exploration with dull combats game.
But then, I really got ethralled with the plot and characters. It was very refreshing to see a well balanced woman as a primary character lead. With some exceptions, all of the cast deserves some attetion. But nothing compared to the beatiful, genuine, world that is Septerra. There are very few games with a world as interesting as this "multilayer" place.
And one last note. Im not sure why, but I found the almost-absence of music very dissapointing. The game would be much better with a most extensive OST. Maybe its not as important as other things, but hell, it is not there.
Before buying it, I really advise to try it first. Its not a game for everyone.