I have mixed feelings about "Septerra Core", like a love/hate relationship. I absolutely love the plot and characters in it, more than almost any other game. It keeps me hooked, and the originality blew me away. I freakin' adore the plot, the detailed world, the characters.

The thing that put me off were the constant battles that took forever, and wandering around mazes, just to run into these battles...ALL THE TIME! Even using a cheat where I didn't have to fight anyone, I quit before I finished, because I got to tired of the battle system, and the constant sameness.

And yet, I still remember the characters, the plot, and I wish I knew what happened.

My thoughts exactly. I'd like to write something more, but I would just copy/paste what you have already written.
I also did not manage to finish the game from the same reasons :(

Same here :(

I got to the point that I thought was lategame, only to check in a walkthrough and figure it was still the middle of the game, immediately I closed it and never opened again, the game is too boring, finishing it is a exercise of extreme masochism.

Indeed, it's all nice and shiny on the outside but incredibly frustrating to play. Those "find red key to red door, blue key to blue door, yellow key to yellow door"-dungeons... And how about we put lots of switches you have to press. Backtracking through respawned enemies is fun too.

It's kind of a shame. I liked the battle system at first, until I realized the amounts of battles yet to come.

The world is nice to experience but the constant battles seem to stop me from exploring way too much.

I liked that about the dungeons. Its seems like dungeon crawling in RPGs has been getting more and more linear. Its my one big beef about Skyrim. The combat in Septerra was a problem though. Not so much the amount of battles, just their flow. If they were shorter, or had me doing some maneuvering around or something it would have been a lot better.

I think that because it was very obvious that I had to go around the mazes and collect keys and press switches to proceed it felt very linear to me. All it did was prolong the dungeons. If the combat was smoother and more interesting maybe I would have been okay with it. The dungeons rarely surprised me and the amount of recoloured enemies didn't help either.

I had the game when it first came out. I liked it but I never beat it for one reason, what others have already mentioned, that there are too many repeating battles. Going back and forth between locations trying to find my way, and having to fight every single time i enter a room got so tiresome. I fought so much, even without a cheat I was killing the bad guys in one hit, but even then, I couldn't take all the battles anymore.

Maybe one day I'll get back into frog jumping to try and beat this game.

This game is truly painful to play... and I've played a lot of console JRPGs with a similar battle system. Don't get me wrong - as people above have said, I like the characters and find the bits of lore about the setting quite interesting. I can see how this could have been a brilliant game, if it were handled by say Bioware or Squaresoft (like FF6/7 days), with more in-depth character interaction, dialogue trees, and cutscenes. As it is, I find I have to force myself through the agonizing dungeons just for tiny little pieces of plot at the end, and then repeat the ordeal all over again - sometimes with the same dungeons! Seriously, I was about to cry when I saw I had to crawl through the Chosen Palace yet again.

I don't know what the developers were thinking, for example, when they don't give you a simple option of immediately exiting to world map after boss fights like the Hell God in the Core, rather than backtracking all the way. Or just an accessory that lets you skip/auto-win fights where enemies are below your level. Even an escape rope type item would have been welcome. All of these are standard fare in JRPGs, so how can they compare themselves to FF7 (part of their original advertising) and not include such time-saving items?

This is the sort of game in which one must suffer awful gameplay to experience the story- which is sadly not that great. The ending is bland and lacklustre with no proper epilogue and the combat system is hideous for all the reasons detailed previously. My worst problem comes with those 'hit all in a line' abilites; what's the point of giving players a situational ability but then forbidding them from moving characters? Why does the game decide if my foes are in a line instead of me?
I doubt even the nostalgia defence will suffice for this game.