A Noble Revival of Classic – Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven Review
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a remake of Romancing SaGa 2 JRPG released in 1993 on the SNES. This remake is the easiest way to play the game on modern consoles. This remake overhauls the graphics completely from 2D to 3D, has English and Japanese voice audio, and has many quality of life fixes to make the game more fun to play such as displaying the turn order, explaining stat growths better, displaying the enemy weaknesses after they are revealed, and more. It also has more character classes, new cutscenes fleshing out the seven villains’ backstories, and has special attacks added. Although this remake makes many changes to the game it’s still extremely faithful to the original game. This is a great entry point into the franchise and the story is not related to Romancing SaGa 1 at all.
I’ll give a quick premise of the game without any spoilers past the hour mark (the content contained in the demo). Emperor Leon and his sons Victor and Gerard lead the Kingdom of Avalon. The world was previously saved by a group of seven heroes who mysteriously vanished. One of the seven heroes, Kzinssie, attacks Avalon and it’s up to the Emperor and his aides to defeat him. A mysterious seeress shows up to the throne and explains a new kind of magic that allows royalty to inherit their wisdom and skills to their heir.
You can probably surmise where the plot is heading but I won’t spoil anything. The game focuses more on running an entire empire rather than a single character. Its selling point is the extremely unique mechanic of being able to transfer skills from one emperor to another through inheritance. It sounds confusing and even off-putting at first but it’s not too complicated.
The first set of characters is always fixed and stars Emperor Leon and Gerard and is essentially the prologue and first chapter in the story. But as the player progresses the story there will be generational timeskips where they will play as a subsequent emperor as well as a new generation of supporting characters. Timeskips have certain criteria for triggering, but generally conquering new regions or defeating one of the seven villains can trigger it.
Later emperors have a more generic looking appearance than Leon or Gerard because you choose who inherits the throne. Their skills will be inherited from the previous generation and the new emperor/empress class will be from a random pool of whichever classes were unlocked. Just be aware that they will be generic characters, so the plot for the middle of the game will not have as much dialog and will be more one-sided with new characters talking but the new emperor not talking much in contrast to the prologue of the game. The final act has a fixed emperor/empress appearance and will have more dialog compared to the mid-game to make up for it.
If the player really hates the options of the emperor for the next generation they can choose one then abdicate the throne which acts as a mulligan and lets the player choose another emperor, but this can’t be done multiple times in a row. This wasn’t a feature in the original game and lets you pick a leader that fits with you without the need for reloading. This game isn’t sexist either – the player can even have empresses as well, and some plotlines are exclusive to emperors and empresses.
Romancing SaGa has a reputation for being hard. This was certainly true in the original release but this game is surprisingly approachable to newcomers. Many IPs that had origins on the NES and SNES were hard because of different game development practices back then, but this remake is a lot more fair than the original game. There are too many small quality of life improvements to mention, but all the changes in the game’s mechanics prevent players from getting soft-locked and generally speaking the player can only get stronger and stronger each new generation.
The game over for this game is different compared to most other JRPGs and this game does feature permadeath. Whenever a character gets knocked out (0 HP) they will lose a number from their Life Points (LP, which generally can’t be increased except in the endgame and with rare accessories). Knocked out party members can be revived with no problem, but as a character gets knocked out more and more they will lose more and more Life Points, to the point where if their life points go to 0 they will be permanently dead. This can happen to the emperor or empress as well! Some conditions may cause a game over forcing you to reload as well, but the save points are generous in this game.
If the emperor/empress dies it will just trigger a generation skip to the next emperor/empress. Although it sounds harsh, the generations don’t last too long and the punishment isn’t steep. All the characters are generic and replaceable and the player can inherit and learn more skills easily. It’s not the same as a JRPG with a fixed set of party members, where a permanent death will mess up a whole playthrough (Fire Emblem has fixed units and permanent death that is far more harsh than Romancing SaGa 2 since there might be only 1-2 units who can exist in a certain class). Some plotlines will even lead to the emperor/empress’s death as well (such as making a decision causing a scandal) but they’re rare.
The combat system is the selling point of the game and this game is more gameplay-focused rather than narratively focused. It’s a turn-based JRPG with the usual stats and classes. There are tanks that have high defense that attract attacks and parry, light infantry who use swords, spear-users, rangers using bows, magicians who can use offensive spells and heal and much more.
Later on many new classes can be unlocked such as the Thief, Amazon, Ninja and Dancer though some can be tricky to unlock and this is just to name a few of the game’s many classes. There are easily a few dozen classes in the game, some of which are new to this remake.
This game uses Battle Points (BP) which is essentially the same as MP in JRPGs and are the points spent in battle to use skills or magic. There are rare consumable items to restore it and one-time use healing points in dungeons.
The turn-based combat can be compared loosely to Octopath Traveler in the sense of enemy weaknesses. Every enemy will have a set of weaknesses represented with boxes that have to be figured out, so having a diverse team helps.
More damage is dealt when hitting weaknesses and it raises a bar that allows the player to execute a special United Attack.
This game does have levels but its leveling system is a different from most JRPGs, to the point where it has carved out a subset of JRPGs I call SaGa-like games. Another great Saga-like game to check out is Legend of Legacy. There’s not really a general level for characters. Instead, each character has levels for all weapon and element types.
The party members learn new skills from fighting hard enemies through a process called Glimmer (or Sparking). This game explains itself well by displaying a lightbulb icon next to certain skills to indicate that if that move is used it can unlock the next skill in the chain. Usually this happens for hard enemy encounters or boss fights. It’s really brilliantly done and I never had to find myself scouring online resources to figure out how to unlock new skills. In fact, the game even has easy to access built-in menus (Almanac Tech List) that explains all the skills unlocked and shows how many new skills the player can Glimmer off from that skill.
If the player uses the skills when indicated with a lightbulb the party members will naturally learn great skills naturally as the story is progressed. Skills are divided between different weapon types and magic types as well and these ranks get higher and allow the player to learn and inherit better skills.
All kinds of weapons and magic icons are clearly labelled such as swords, greatswords, axes, staves, spears, rapiers, bows, fists, as well as elemental magic. The player can inherit a lot of skills and can keep 8 Techs (physical skills), 8 Spells, and 4 Evasions. Old skills can be replaced with new ones easily and once you unlock a new tech/skill/evasion and complete a generation with it it will be permanently learned and can be given to any new characters at any time.
This remake of Romancing SaGa 2 really isn’t hard like the old games in the series or even other contemporary SaGa-like games. I played The Last Remnant on the Xbox 360 on release day, a game that was heavily inspired by SaGa (it had Akitoshi Kawazu who directed many SaGa games). It was genuinely possible to soft-lock the game by fighting too many enemies, which scaled the enemies’ levels to insurmountable levels even if the player’s characters weren’t getting stat growths or new skills. Releasing patches for game was possible for the developers on the Xbox 360 but they were slow to release and didn’t help significantly especially if the player already ruined their save file. Later releases of The Last Remnant on the PC fixed this by fixing the gameplay mechanics and even letting the player recruit more unique characters rather than forcing them to use a certain number of weak generic characters.
This game isn’t hard or obtuse and the tutorials in the prologue are amazing to help get eased into the generation timeskip mechanics. There’s also difficulty settings if the player wants an easier or harder time. I don’t think that all these quality of life changes make the game easier – I think that it makes it more fair and easy to understand.
In addition to skill levels and stats there are other resources to manage such as gold. This game is different in the sense that the player is meant to manage funds for an entire empire and not just manage the protagonist’s personal expenses like in most other JRPGs. Just at the start of the game the player is given over 500,000 Crowns and equipment only costs about 5,000-10,000 each.
Currency has to be invested into constructing buildings such as a forge, university, bridges and more. These often have a high capital cost and is the bulk of where all the spending goes. This is where the generation mechanic comes into play – usually the construction will take time and be finished during the next generation so the player should plan to build in advance. These unlock more weapons, armor, classes and revenue.
Gold can be found from chests, as a reward and from fighting enemies (the player will get revenue from fighting enemy encounters in dungeons). Since the player manages an empire they’ll have to have a steady revenue source which can be a great source of gold rather than just finding it. I really liked how often there will be disruptions to the revenue every few generations such as a pirate group staging a coup or blocking the trade routes.
It does feel as though the player is managing an entire empire rather than just focusing on a protagonist. This game doesn’t have a “real-time” time passing system (this game is not like Lightning Returns), only through taking actions will cause the generation to skip eventually (usually through big actions such as conquering regions).
Fighting enemy encounters is implied to be spending time and if the player purposely tries to grind enemy encounters to raise skill levels and get more revenue it will eventually cause a generation skip (in the originals it was from fighting about 250+ enemy encounters, and there’s only about 20 enemies per dungeon). Grinding too much will also increase enemies’ stats but new enemy level caps have been put into this remake. By the endgame you gain powerful tools from constructing facilities.
Some of my favorites were the forge, where the player can craft any kind of weapon as well as upgrade favorites. This isn’t the kind of game where the player buys better equipment in shops, they will need to upgrade and forge better weapons/armors that eventually get spread throughout the kingdom later on.
The magic fusion mechanic in the academy is also amazing where I was able to fuse lower tier spells into higher ones. Spells aren’t like physical skills and the player generally can’t glimmer new spells from old ones (the player can glimmer upgraded versions of the same spell though).
One of the highlights of this game is how nonlinear it is. The player can explore the region in any direction. The game does force you to certain areas early on in the prologue, but after a few hours into the game you’re given free reign to go where ever you’d like though some areas might be harder earlier on than others. Each region also has a conflict and questline to complete and it’s amazing how many different ways you can play out the story.
In general the game is very open about the dialog choices and you can save anytime and reload if you’re truly unhappy with your decisions. When the game detects you’ve conquered most of the regions and are nearing the end of the game you’ll be locked into the final emperor and go into the endgame. There are quest markers to help you figure out where to go and your advisers give suggestions on where to go.
My only big criticism is that the game can be a bit slow at first and is very tutorial heavy in the beginning. The game’s low budget does show at times and the 3D models aren’t exactly the best. The narrative is strong in the beginning and ending of the game, but most of the game will have generic characters for the mid-game, so the narrative does take a back role for most of the game.
The only character interaction is really your protagonist nodding at a problem in a region and finding a solution. It’s because the developers backed themselves into a corner because of the original game’s design decisions. The new additions with the backstory of the seven heroes is phenomenal and it really makes the story easier to understand compared to the original. There are English and Japanese voice audio options present.
Although the first emperor succession has a lot of narrative, the subsequent emperor/empress changes can be jarring and feel random (generation changes does occur randomly depending on your actions in-game). After conquering a few regions you’ll get a random pop-up saying “100+ years has passed, please select your new emperor/empress” and it feels so odd. It felt disappointing losing the characters I grew attached to! But the gameplay aspect is really fun. I was able to pick a new empress, inherit skills and inherit skills & magic onto a new generation of fighters and gameplay-wise they will be stronger. Watching the facilities that were under construction become built in the next generation felt amazing and I was able to use the facilities to become stronger quickly. It felt analogous to how technology improves in real life.
The addicting gameplay, unlocking new skills, completing quests and trying new character classes and builds is where most of the fun of the game lies. This game has a surprising amount of replay value due to how differently the quests play out and is just really fun to play.
There is a post-game in this game as well that can add an extra 5-10 hours, but the post-game doesn’t have everything from all original remaster of the game. There were new character classes added in the remaster in optional dungeons, but they were re-worked into the story missions of this remake. There is still new post-game challenge bosses I won’t spoil. After beating the main post-game boss there’s a new game plus option with even harder difficulties. You can carry over most items and stats but one big problem with the new game plus is that you don’t start off with all the character classes you unlocked and you also need to re-unlock all your skills through the glimmer/sparking process which is extremely repetitive and disappointing.
This is similar to Metaphor ReFantazio’s disappointing new game plus which also wouldn’t let you carry over character classes, called archetypes in that game. I wish that the developers would let you break the game after you’ve beaten it, or if the developers are worried they could give options for the players to select whether or not they want to carry over previous playthrough classes & skills tech. It’s too bad because some classes in the game are unlocked very late in the game that I would’ve liked to experiment with and there are mutually exclusive classes as well (only 1 of 2 classes can be selected per playthrough based off the player’s choices) so you can never use all classes in a playthrough due to not being able to carry over classes.
There’s no way to really screw up your playthrough either and the developers clearly did their research and know how to make SaGa games. The soundtrack has been remade and still sounds great, just like it did in the original game.
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a really fun game especially if you enjoy gameplay focused games over narrative ones. It’s really a JRPG like no other. Although I felt overwhelmed at first with how different and odd the game felt compared to other contemporary JRPGs I ended up enjoying it a lot. I was surprised by how the quality of life fixes made the game approachable and engaging, and from what I could tell as long as you pay attention to the tutorials you really can’t mess up a playthrough.
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven
Our Score: Excellent
Pros
- A one of a kind JRPG where you take control of an empire and play as a whole lineage of emperors and empresses.
- Although the party members are generic, it’s fun experimenting with different character classes and builds.
- The timeskip mechanic is fun. You can inherit skills and spells onto a new generation of characters. You construct facilities and your empire keeps improving over time.
- The game is very tutorial heavy early on and has slow pacing.
- Some quests can be ruined if a generation skip happens at the wrong time.
- Difficulty spikes can occur due to the game’s nonlinear mission structure.
– Brandon Harris
Reviewed on the PC
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