Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven - Switch Review

Launched in 1989, the SaGa series, from RPG kings Square Enix, was designed to be different from its big brother, the Final Fantasy series. Its focus on difficulty, non-linear storytelling and character progression made its games a mainstay in Japan, but in the rest of the world, they are not as well known. Romancing SaGa 2, from 1993, is one of those that didn’t get a release in the west at the time, but now has a full shiny remake for everyone to enjoy in the form of Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, and now everyone can try to save the Kingdom of Avalon from its ancient heroes. So, was the wait worth it?

The Good

On its surface, the core gameplay plays like many other JRPGs: gather your party, pick a location on the overworld map, then navigate through a largely linear area, encountering foes and entering battles until you reach the goal / the boss of the area. The battles, too, are good-but-not-revolutionary turn-based affairs: combat features weapon type and elemental weaknesses, formation and positioning considerations, and buildup of a ‘team attack’ gauge. The regular monsters will not prove too much of a challenge on standard difficulty, with only the bosses leading to more tactical, long-lasting fights that prove memorable. 

But that is just the basic foundation of the game. The SaGa series was designed to feel different to its sister series, and it achieves that with some novel gameplay elements and mechanics, almost all of which are great additions. 

Firstly, the story is not linear; at any given time, you can choose from a range of quests and locations to visit, with different problems to solve. Will you crit path searching out the seven heroes, or deal with some side quests, helping out neighbouring kingdoms or your own subjects? Each area you complete will reward you with more income, a new class of party members, or more areas to explore. Whatever the reward, it will always be worthwhile. You can’t do everything though, so there is incentive to replay and make different choices because the quests you don’t take will have an impact in time too. 

Which brings me to the other core game mechanic—this is a story told over a millennium. It is not the story of one emperor, but the kingdom, and you’ll be playing as a succession of rulers, each dealing with the impacts of their ancestors’ choices. In gameplay terms, after clearing certain events, the game will skip forward 10s or 100s of years, and you will choose a new emperor, who will need a new retinue to accompany them. The new emperor may have different strengths and skills while also inheriting the skills of the royal line, which leaves some room for multi-generational planning. Using this mechanic, Romancing SaGa 2 encourages you to try different character classes and therefore playstyles, keeping the moment-to-moment gameplay fresh. It also adds an extra piece of tension to the combat—if your party is wiped out in any battle, then well, time to select a new party. The Emperor is dead. Long live the Emperor.

This centuries-long gameplay has more impacts than just your player character, too. Choices made by one Emperor will help and hinder their descendants, both directly and indirectly, positively and negatively. They can range from simple things like building a magical college so future generations of spellcasters can learn better spells to ignoring a request for help from one kingdom leading to a full-blown coup and war to deal with hundreds of years later. This extra layer of gameplay on top of the moment-to-moment JRPG action really helps tie Romancing SaGa 2 together and makes it stand out.

All of these features were in the original Romancing SaGa 2 to some extent, but in the course of updating the game for 2024, the graphics have been overhauled (from 2-d pixel sprites to a Xenoblade 3-esque art style) and some considerate quality of life options for those not raised on a hardcore 80’s RPG diet. All this has been done with care and attention to detail—not always the case with remasters like these—and it should be commended.

TL;DR

• Generation mechanics are novel and interesting 
• Open-ended JRPG of epic scale
• Lovingly recreated with useful quality of life improvements

The Bad

As is the case with most JRPGs, this is a big game that demands a lot of your time. Part of this deal is that you become invested in the story and characters, and so you want to continue playing. It is here that the generational story-telling comes slightly undone: because it is open-ended and gives you a lot of variation in your party, the characterisation of your party is minimal. Indeed, past the first 2 generations, which serve as tutorial and story setup (and are also the only 2 Emperors to have voiced dialogue), your party will look pretty similar. Each character class has a male and female variant, maybe a palette swap or two, and that’s it. Their look won’t change if they become emperor either, nor will they have much impact on the overall story. 

All this means that it’s on you, the player, to get yourself invested in your team and their objectives, all the while knowing soon you’ll have to start all over with the next generation. This issue expands to the story as well. It isn’t always clear where to go or what to do, and whether what you’re currently doing will progress the main quest or not. This is perhaps a remnant of the 1993 SNES original, but is still sometimes irritating. In a similarly occasional manner, you will get the odd stutter or texture load-in on the switch, but nothing devastating.

TL;DR

• Hard to invest in generic, bland party characters
• Occasional performance stutters

Final Score: 8/10

Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a welcome addition to the Switch’s library. It's not for everyone, but if you like your JRPGs, then you will have a good time. It’s open-ended nature and generation-skipping gameplay make for a novel and entertaining wrapper to some classic turn-based battling. A high-quality and considerate remake, which hopefully paves the way for more.

Thank you for checking out our Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven Switch review, thank you to Square Enix (via Bandai Namco AU) for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

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