Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven Reviews

Very short background. I have played almost every SaGa game there is. Romancing SaGa 2 is my favorite one by far. THIS. This is the tits. It's great. A+ God I wish Square would put actual effort into things more often.

If your a fan of dragon quest this is on par, Very good JRPG ! combat is very fun and animations are quality!

Great remake with a few minor issues. At the beginning of the game, I was very worried about LP and trying not to grind too much (due to time skips and monsters getting progressively harder the more battles you win). But, most of that was unfounded due to how the game mechanics are set up. The biggest issue I had is the New Game+ and higher difficulties. You go from easily beating the end boss in a few turns on Hard (and the optional post-game dungeon boss), to wiping on trash mobs in the starting area on the New Game+ at the next difficulty tier (Expert). This is mainly because you have to learn all your skills/spells all over again, from scratch, while the enemies are super tuned (even my tanks with auto parry and highly defensive gear, 100% negate shield, and defensive abilities, were getting killed in 1-2 hits in a single round).

As a remake, it's a masterpiece on its own: charming 3D graphics, good UI, great music, intuitive controls, buttery smooth performance, zero bugs (so far), fast-paced combat (thanks!), quick cutscenes/transitions, text skip, etc. There a few aspects they could have improved as well, like adding visual cues for elemental resistances in armors and block types in shields, describing glimmering prerequisites across generations so that they are more intuitive, decreasing the amount of mobs in certain maps, or improving the base drop of certain items so that you are not forced to farm them using drop boost equipment in NG+, wherein all your gear is already far better by that point. In the end though, they did a great job on the remake. Regarding the game itself, this was my first experience playing Romancing SaGa, and it was really fun for the first 30–40 hours. It gets a bit repetitive later on, as you get close to the end, since good teams tend to revolve around the same strategy, though it still remains enjoyable for the most part. During my first play, I always had the eerie feeling that I could die at any moment from a bad turn, which was quite cool. Mobs also scale up with your progress, so, even a goblin can harm you in end game. After beating the game, I started NG+ on Expert to collect missing achievements and drops, and it felt more like a boss rush than anything due to a certain mechanic abuse. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing though—I didn't want to spend too much time revisiting certain places anyway. In in the end I did miss a few achievements because of softlocked tasks I couldn’t complete anymore, so I guess I’ll give Romancing difficulty a try at some point in NG++, when I feel like it. However, from what I experienced, it's the same as in NG+, you keep exploiting the game’s systems to survive one-shot mechanics by killing the enemy first. That’s kind of a bummer, because artificially boosted difficulty isn’t exactly fun, and the first playthrough doesn't feel like that at all. At the end of the day though, no one forces you to play in that mode, and there's no extra reward for it besides satisfying your own sadomasochistic urges — you do you. I can't think of many games where the adage "The best defense is a good offense" rings truer than in this one. Personally, I enjoyed it a lot, and I’ll be looking forward to more remakes from the SaGa series if they are anywhere close to this level of polish. All in all, an absolute must-try if you like JRPGs and want to experience something different. 9.5/10 Cheers.

Great remake for a great game. For me the best things are the class variety, cool combat mechanics and also the story. Seeing how and why 7 heroes from the past became the villains keeps you interest until the very end. If you enjoy Jrpgs, this is a must play.

Man, this game is so odd. On one hand, Romancing SaGa 2's titular remake of the original really feels very fun and fresh upon first starting it. The world map is huge, and if you go into this not knowing how the game works, you're genuinely excited to start what you know is going to be a 100+ hour adventure. You've chosen either a male or female character but you don't play as them, so it's odd but you quickly forget about it and quickly become invested in the story of young prince Gerard who is worried about living up to the potential of his legend of a father, King Leon. You quickly learn about the world around you as well as the imminent threat of the Seven Heroes, which, for the name, are quite the opposite of which. Then, you get to what feels like a huge turning point for Gerard and the game really opens up, you recruit new characters to use in your kingly retinue, and then... A core mechanic of the game is revealed. [spoiler]Everything goes out the window. You realise that a core mechanic of the game has you frequently recycling the "main character" for a new one and, while the stories of your questlines continue, you're constantly doing so as a different person, and it's really so jarring.[/spoiler] All this said, the game really is great-- The combat is a turn-based slugfest where your six-man retinue, comprised of whatever combination of party you'd like, continuously spanks the enemy to learn new skills or magic. It feels a little grindy in the sense that you really do just hit the enemies a bunch of times until you glimmer new skills that in turn do more damage and add various effects, be it poison or stunning an enemy, etc. The soundtrack is great, the battle music is stuck in my fucking head and I can't for the life of me get rid of it, and it's been weeks now since I've last played. There are slight city-building mechanics as well in the form of city upgrades like new facilities that cost lots of gold and subsequently upgrading them to allow them to do additional things; it isn't extremely varied and extensive, but it's simple enough that if you don't normally like said mechanics, it isn't a turn-off or something that requires an insane amount of grinding resources to complete. I won't spoil the weird mechanic that I mentioned above, but it really did bother me SO MUCH. I really like Gerard and the things he had going for him, and as an extension of that, felt as though the people who you play as going forward really offer so little to the game's narrative as you are essentially playing an unnamed protagonist versus someone with goals or aspirations, likes or dislikes, or really even any personality at all. [h1] THAT SAID: [/h1] If you own the game and are like me in that you dislike said mechanic, stick through it. I know it's unfair to ask that of anyone when it comes to a multi-hour JRPG experience, especially one that feels as grindy as this-- But if you do, you'll find that the story continues and does start to really feel redeeming, especially as you progress and start to unravel the mysteries the game presents with its Seven Heroes-turned baddies.

This game is really good, one of the best JRPGs I've played in a long time. I never played a game in this franchise before but I am definitely going to check out the others. Its refreshing to play a challenging turn-based JRPG that is mostly gameplay focused instead of a heavy emphasis on story and characters. That said, it still does have a lot of soul for the story that it does have and it felt really cool looking back at all the emperors I went through and the adventures and accomplishments they each had. Only negative thing I could say about this game is that final boss is such a huge difficulty spike that I had to re-think my entire team and grind for the right fusion spells to counter all the BS they throw at you. Ending was very satisfying though and looks like there's a lot of post-game too. Highly recommend this game to JRPG fans.

I gave it a fair shake but it's just not for me. It's doing some different things that are interesting, but it's completely lacking in character development, interactions, and a coherent story. I could not suspend my disbelief hard enough around the emperor system to understand how a court mage or a random mercenary could become emperor of a country. The gameplay and dungeon crawling is interesting, but not interesting enough to get me to sink dozens of hours into this thing. I feel like this game is way too niche as a general recommend, you need to do your homework to figure out if this game is for you or not.

Through the passage of time and the lineage of your emperor you are charged to defeat the seven heroes. So begins a journey that will last a thousand years. Like all the SaGa games, this comes with a core mechanic that twists the progression system, this time being a lineage system that makes the game go through hundreds of years of time. The system involves picking an emperor and a party, and then doing quests around the realm in order to expand your empire, as well as tackle the seven heroes in any order you see fit. Eventually, your emperor will either retire or be slain, and then time will progress years into the future, with you then beginning another emperor's journey. As this time leap occurs, several of the quests and regions left available in the world will change. You may find that some conflicts have been resolved automatically, or some have left catastrophic results. One thing's for sure though, the one unchanging constant in the world is the threat of the seven heroes. These individuals result in immense boss battles that test your knowledge of the battle system pretty well, with the final boss serving as a glorious tribute to the player's mechanical mastery you're sure to remember. Overall, certainly a solid jrpg if you're looking for something that focuses on interesting mechanics. The story is at a bare minimum in this game which helps pave way for the more non-linear structure it has, an interesting style that the SaGa games excel at.

I didn't think much of it when I first bought it, but the DRM of this game is insulting. You need an Online Connection to authenticate the game... [b]Every. Single. Launch.[/b] So if you're Internet's out? Tough shit, go play something else. A shame, because the game itself is quite good, but I can't play it at the one time I'd very much like to.