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I’m always on the lookout for new RPGs to try. When I saw that Square Enix’s releasing Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, I knew I had bug them to give a code for the game.
My experiences with the SaGa series (mainly from the SaGa Frontier games) have not been positive. There’s a good reason why the franchise isn’t as well known or liked as Square Enix’s other RPGs. They’re honestly sub-par, ranging from middling to crap.
That’s why I wanted to try Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven you see. I wanted to see firsthand if this would be the game to finally turn the franchise around.
Now that I’ve had a good run with it, here are my thoughts.
What is Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven?
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is third person turn-based JRPG co-developed by xeen Inc and Square Enix and xeen Inc, and published by Square Enix. It’s available right now on all major platforms…except for the Xbox.
Our PC copy was provided to us by Square Enix! Thanks so much!
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a remake of Romancing SaGa 2 on the SNES…a game I’ve never even played. While I grew up playing games during that period, I was a SEGA kid mainly. I only had access to the NES and Mega Drive but not a SNES. One of my biggest regrets sadly.
As a remake, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven had huge potential. Most people hadn’t even heard of the first game, so it could easily win over fans by its first impressions alone!
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven starts off like most other JRPGs…which honestly led me to underestimate it. You start off as Prince Gerard. Through machinations of the Seven Heroes, he soon loses his big brother, and later on his father, the Emperor.
As the only one left in line for the throne, Gerard is crowned Emperor (after tying up some loose ends) and it’s here where the game really gets interesting. As Emperor, Gerard reigns over his kingdom and its expansion.
There’s a twist here though; you don’t play as Gerard for long.
Like all mortals, Gerard soon dies and leaves a successor, who you can pick from a pool of random characters. This dying and succession cycle continues as you progress, with new Emperors being crowned every few dungeons you clear.
While the premise is unique, it does have the unfortunate side effect of making the characters disposable. Other than Gerard, character development is pretty much non-existent. His successors are mostly random NPCs you might’ve seen running around town but other than that, there’s nothing to know about them.
The game doesn’t provide any backstory for those available to succeed as the Emperor other than a few generic lines to intro them. You don’t know their motivations, their history, their goals…nothing. You’re just give a hand of choices and told to pick whoever you like.
On top of that, the characters for each class all keep the same look (other than colour changes).
Whether it’s 100 or 300 years onward, everybody looks similar. It makes it feel as if you’re playing with clones, instead of people from your kingdom.
This kills off any sort of character or world building the game established early on. You literally have no idea who these people are. They are interchangeable honestly.
I would have appreciated receiving a warning from the game when a time is going to hit too. I’d be happily playing a character and beat a dungeon and then have the XXX years later screen pop up to show that there’s been a time skip.
No warning, nothing! Love your character? Too bad. They gone now. Here’s a new one that’s like your old one. Now go play.
Thankfully, the skills you’ve gained with your crew carry over to their successors so you don’t need to relevel their stats all over again. You’re even able to configure which skills you want them to have. In essence, you’re able to have the same crew from the beginning to the end. It’s just that you’ll have to rebuild your team every time there’s a time skip.
I really have no idea how the succession works in the kingdom. It seems like any random NPC can be in the lineup when you pick an Emperor. It’s really weird and totally an issue to me. I wish the game made something up to explain how a random person can easily assume the throne and the kingdom.
Speaking of kingdom, there’s some light kingdom management aspect to the game too!
Like Ni no Kuni II, you can grow your kingdom with the funds you amass from your adventures. Investing in buildings lets you unlock new stuff; weapons, magic and the like. I wish the kingdom management ran deeper than that, but alas it doesn’t.
It’s too simplified for my tastes sadly. You get a notice you can build something. You give the steward money for it. Then, you wait by fighting a few battles. You’ll soon get a notification that the structure’s built.
Depending on the structure, you can then commission new weapons or combine specific spells. It might sound cool (and it was initially) but after the novelty wears off, you’ll find that everything you do is just surface level stuff.
Very basic, very hands off. It feels more like you’re a banker than an Emperor.
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven has a very unique battle and skill learning system.
Basically, you get better at skills by using them in battle. It’s eerily like Morrowind and Skyrim. Unfortunately, in a turn-based battle system, that equates to LOTs of grinding. The progress you make even learning the most basic skills is laughable, especially at higher levels.
It’s even more hellish if you’re trying to improve your magic, because you only have a set amount of MP (or rather BP as the game refers to them). Once you run out, you either have to go rest or use BP replenishing items (which are quite pricey).
The battle system also takes a bit from modern Persona games, in that you can see your enemies (and do preemptive strikes if you hit them from the rear) walking around the map. It also incentives you to exploit your enemies’ weaknesses.
Doing so fills up the Overdrive meter, which lets you unleash combination attacks. These do much more damage than regular blows. They cost no BP, so it’s always a good thing to use them when you can.
The succession system makes the battles more tedious unfortunately.
Enemies really take a massive leap ahead in power every time the game time skips to a new generation. That means you need to grind a ton to stay competitive. Even then, I feel the regular baddies are too beefy, absorbing ludicrous amounts of damage before dying…which in turn makes the regular battles be very repetitive. There’s no auto-battle feature (something this game sorely needs), which means you have to play every single battle.
I know.
I was bored out of my mind too with the tedious fights by the fourth successor.
To top it off, the game assigns LP to every character. That stands for Life Points. If you fall in battle, it goes down by one. Run out of LP and that character’s dead. If you lose all your characters in a battle, it counts as a massacre, with EVERYBODY (no matter how much LP you have left) dead.
Needless to say, that really sucks.
It sucks because you set everything up again with a new crew. It’s not enough that time skips force you to this, but wipes also make you suffer through it all again too. I don’t mind the system mechanics in theory, but I do wish that there was an option to basically reselect the same archetypes every time I make a new party without needing to redo (and recheck) everything to make sure it’s all shipshape.
Repetition is never good, is what I’m saying.
The visuals for Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven might be one of the weakest aspects of the game. They’re clean and lack detail, reminiscent of old school RPGs like Xenosaga or Shadow Hearts. It’s a stylistic choice no doubt influenced by the game’s release on Nintendo Switch.
Still, the barebones look of the game does have its merits. Loading times into and out of battles are lightning fast. The game runs smoothly on modest hardware too. This should give it a broader appeal on the PC.
On top of that, the character designs are pretty good.
They look…well, like knights and warriors should look like.
Therese (one of the first characters who joins you) is a female archer…but not like you’d expect. She sensibly wears an archery chest guard and is dressed rather realistically with a bodysuit. She doesn’t wear a bikini or has nonsensical armor like other fictional archers (Legolas and Hawkeye comes to mind).
Most of the game’s characters are similarly attired…apart from a few. Let’s just say, these ladies are for the thirsty players among us. I don’t mind it one bit, but it’s not the main draw (with regards to the art style) for me. It’s disappointing though that all the different characters in a class look alike. Except for color swaps, a Ranger will always look like another Ranger.
I’m also quite partial to the music, particularly the battle theme.
It makes use of the trumpet as the main instrument and it really stands out from other RPG themes. It honestly reminds me of Wild Arms 2, and it’s incredible opening theme.
It’s not the only good song in the game too.
Quite a few of the environmental music’s well done as well.
I’m really partial to the gloomy, Gothic tune that plays in the Avalon sewers and a few other dungeons. It’s like something that you’d hear in a Castlevania game! The calming tunes that plays when you’re in Somon and other minor towns is superb too! This one reminds me of Xenogears’ Nisan theme, Singing of the Gentle Wind.
Honestly, I’m seriously considering getting the OST for this. The music is excellent and I think it definitely ranks up there with the likes of those from Xenogears, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Wild Arms and Final Fantasy X.
But…it’s a huge disappointment that so much music’s reused. The ones that are available are so kickass that you have to wonder why there aren’t more tracks.
If you’re hoping to play the game on the go, there’s good news to be had. On the ROG Ally X, I had zero issues playing the game on 1080p. Everything was turned up to the max.
The frame rate was great, the loads almost as fast as the desktop version…though there is a matter of hitching here and there as the game loads in assets. The hitching isn’t prevalent or widespread, but you will encounter it no matter where in the game you are.
Is it a deal breaker? Far from it. You’ll overlook it after you’ve been playing for a while and it doesn’t even last that long. Not even a second even, so it’s not like a huge thing.
The Bottom Line.
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a decent RPG with a unique twist.
The succession system, the fun battles and the organic way to improve skills makes it one of the best games in the SaGa series yet.
It’s too bad then that it is held back by those very things that make it so good.
The succession system means you barely get to bond with your characters (and they all come out looking like clones), the battles can last too long if you’re under-level and the skill improvement mechanic means you have to grind…a lot. Like a ton of it. And then some more.
It’s a typical JRPG at its heart, so the grinding is to be expected. The rest though, that’s definitely going to be a bother to some.
It’s a shame then because those issue keep the game from being a true classic. It’s definitely worth your time to play it now (or when you can), but it’s never going to rank as one of gaming’s greats.
TLDR:
Great JRPG hampered by some questionable mechanics.
The Good:
- Fun way to learn skills.
- Freedom on how to progress.
- Neat story.
- Decent visuals.
- Music is enjoyable.
The Bad:
- VERY grindy to level up skills, especially magic.
- Can accidentally use weapon breaking skills.
- Not a lot of visual options to tweak.
- Characters in a class look similar, even centuries apart.
- Time skips happen without warning.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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