Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven Review

A SaGa Worth Romancing

The SaGa series has seen a bit of a renaissance in recent years, with a host of remasters and two new games breathing life into the franchise. Along comes Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven to add a remake to that mix as well. Developed by the same team that worked on the Trials of Mana remake, it gives the Super Famicom classic a modern look alongside a variety of gameplay tweaks and new content. Somehow the team has managed the astounding achievement of making the game, and series as a whole, more accessible and fun without sacrificing the depth and open nature of the original game. Though some narrative quirks remain, the additional story elements and additional dialogue give the world a lot more character. Revenge of the Seven is not only an incredible remake, but easily the best game in the SaGa series.

Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven tells the tale of a group of seven heroes who saved the world, and who are fated to return one day and save the world again. However, when they do return, instead of helping the world, they begin to conquer it. What exactly happened to cause their fall to evil is a central mystery in the game’s world. New to this remake are discoverable memories of the seven heroes that show scenes from the past that give hints at what exactly happened to turn the heroes to evil. They never show the whole story, but enough to give hints as to the world’s past.

Outside of this, most of the story in the game involves the various regions of the game and how they are being plagued by these former champions. There’s not a ton of depth to any individual story, but mostly they provide character to the world and its various people as players explore. Much of the story is well-written and, coupled with the excellent voice acting, it does a good job of creating a world players will be compelled to try and save. Being a game more focused on the gameplay experience, story sequences generally tend to be on the short side as not to slow down the player’s progression too much. The biggest issue is a strange disconnect at times between the story and gameplay. When advancing a generation, quest progress stays as is and NPCs don’t change, so it can make it feel like the line of emperors is advancing, but not the rest of the world. It works as a gameplay conceit to prevent players from losing progress on anything, but story-wise it’s off-putting.

Emperor and party

Party makeup, including who occupies the throne, are totally up to the player.

Progression early on in Revenge of the Seven is a linear affair. Players start off as one of the original emperor’s sons, and soon inherit their father’s power after he falls to one of the seven heroes. This serves to introduce the game’s most impactful gameplay system. Whenever certain quests are completed, an emperor dies, or if the player simply chooses to move on, the game will advance to the next generation and a new emperor must be chosen. Each emperor apart from the first and last can be picked from among a selection of classes the player has already unlocked. Gender and class may be part of this decision, as certain quests require a specific gender or class to progress, though thankfully the game spells these out pretty clearly. Skills and stats earned from one emperor carry on to the next, so careful consideration needs to be considered when picking classes to make a successful royal lineage.

Picking classes for the rest of the party is vital as well. Each class comes with a set of weapon techs and/or magic spells, though technically players are free to develop classes to use any kind of skill. Each class has also its own unique skill, which cover a wide range of bonuses such as immunity to certain damage types all the way up to periodic regeneration. When using a class for long enough, these unique abilities become mastered and can be equipped to other classes. This provides a lot of depth in mixing and matching abilities, especially with the emperor who can equip more abilities from other classes than normal characters. Learning new skills happens in two different ways. New spells are gained by increasing the skill level for that magic type. Weapon techs are a bit more random, as is tradition for the SaGa series. New techs are randomly gained when using existing ones. Revenge of the Seven mitigates the randomness a bit by noting which techs are likely to spark the learning of a new one with an icon. Though it’s not technically guaranteed, continued usage of skills marked this way will eventually result in learning a new skill.

Formation setup screen

Formation and party setup are crucial to success.

Progress with classes persists from generation to generation, and even from character to character. Should a party member lose all of their life points, then players are free to hire a new instance of that class and keep the progression going. When advancing to the next generation, all skills learned will then be available via a trainer who can teach them to other classes that have the required skill level in that weapon or magic type. This means players don’t have to relearn skills for every character class that share the same weapon or magic types. The class system provides a vast variety of strategic options to play with to build the perfect party for any situation. New classes have been added for this remake as well, so even veterans of the original will have new tools to play with. In addition to picking classes, players will also need to pick a formation for their party members. These provide benefits to characters based on their position, such as being harder to target, or increased speed. Picking a good formation is crucial to success, and new formations will be gained as the game progresses to provide new strategic options.

Though the game initially starts on a linear path to take out the first of the seven heroes, it quickly opens up to allow for free exploration and tackling of the other heroes in any order. There’s no world map to explore, rather players choose previously unlocked locations from a map, which can be fast traveled to at any time. New locations can be discovered by talking to townsfolk, through quest progress, or simply exploring existing areas and finding new exits. Locations of the seven heroes and other quest markers are shown on the world map so there’s always a sense of where the player needs to go, even if some discovery is required on how to get to certain locations.

Boss battle

Boss battles can be extremely challenging and require the use of all the game’s tools

Dungeons and other explorable locations are filled with roaming enemies who will charge at the player if spotted. Enemies can be maneuvered around, and if a player manages to strike them before spotted, all enemies will receive a bit of damage and the player will start the turn-based combat with an advantage. Conversely, if an enemy runs into the player from behind, the formation of the party will be broken and the enemies will start with an advantage. This makes exploration more dynamic than many turn-based RPGs, and there’s even a bit of platforming thrown into the mix as well. There are many nooks and crannies to discover in each of the locations that house armor, weapons, and other treasure that make exploration a joy. The world map shows a treasure chest count for each location, giving those who love hunting for secrets an idea how much there is left to discover.

Aiding in this open-ended approach, the game scales enemies along with the player. This way there is never an instance of wandering into a place with enemies much too high of a level to handle. This makes the tactical nature of Revenge of the Seven‘s combat all the more important. Battles are turn-based with order determined by the combatants’ speed. The order is always shown in a timeline at the top of the screen for players to see. Like many games in the series, hit points are restored between encounters removing some of the tedious attrition management of many RPGs. The flip side of this is that enemies always hit hard, and players can’t auto-pilot through regular encounters. Each character begins with a set number of life points that decreases if they get knocked out in combat. When a character runs out of life points they are gone for good, usually necessitating a trip back to town to get a replacement. In the case of an emperor losing their remaining life points, the player will either have to reload from a save or advance to the next generation.

Though hit points do not need to be managed between encounters, each character has a pool of battle points used for skills and spells that is not replenished. However, thanks to plentiful restoration items and many restore points before bosses, careful use of BP is not much of a bother. Players are encouraged to use spells and techs to strategically target enemy weaknesses and make it through battles in an effort to preserve precious life points. The game will helpfully highlight discovered weaknesses under enemies, and these persist between battles and generations. Hitting enemy weaknesses, in addition to dealing extra damage, also fills up a unite attack gauge that allows multiple characters to use powered up attacks. Strategic use of these attacks is vital to success, especially in boss battles. Boss battles can be extremely challenging and require the use of all the strategic tools the player has available to them. They can sometimes take a bit of trial and error, and annoyingly there’s no immediate retry or reload option if the player is defeated. Instead, the game automatically advances to the next emperor as the player will instead likely wait for the process to end to access the load screen, or simply close and restart the game. It’s a minor but odd omission.

Battle scene

Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a visual delight

Graphically the developers have done an incredible job transitioning the world of the original to 3D. The game as a whole is bright and colorful, with player characters, NPCs, and enemies all showing nice details that make everything feel like a living, breathing world. Attacks and spells have entertaining flourishes, so learning new skills often proves a nice visual treat in the middle of combat. Audibly, attacks and spells have satisfying touches as well giving appropriate weight to the challenging combat. The soundtrack includes remastered tracks from the original, which was already a beloved Kenji Ito masterwork. Battle themes provide a suitable amount of excitement and tension, the boss themes being a particular highlight. Other tracks in the soundtrack highlight memorable moments in the story or provide a nice backdrop to the world’s locales. The original soundtrack is available as an option as well for those who prefer it. All in all, it’s truly amazing how well the audio/visual presentation of the original has been remade for a new generation.

Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a delightful reworking of a 16-bit era game, bringing it to a modern generation while keeping true to the art of the original. The challenging combat and depth of the original are completely intact, with new features and many modern niceties to make things less obtuse without hurting challenge or depth. Game progression is wide open, encouraging a wonderful sense of exploration and experimentation. A variety of options allow players to make the game easier and harder as they prefer. This is easily the best game the SaGa series has produced thus far, and an experience any JRPG fan should not miss.

Scores
BATTLE SYSTEM
    
INTERACTION
    
ORIGINALITY
    
STORY
    
MUSIC & SOUND
    
VISUALS
    
'Excellent' -- 4.5/5
nsw
40-60 HOURS
ADJUSTABLE

Deep and challenging battle system

Large non-linear world to explore

Wide variety of classes to unlock and experiment with

Some disconnect between the generational gameplay and the story

No warning that completing certain quests will advance to the next generation

You may also like...

Leave a Reply