Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven Review on Xbox

Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a non-linear JRPG, rule and expand the Empire of Varennes across multiple generations..

The premise is over the course of centuries your protagonists will discover a vast array of story experiences, as you fight the Seven Heroes in an epic battle that plays out over thousands of years.

The game boasts Characters & Imperial Succession, Free-form Scenarios, strategic turn-based battle system, reimaging of the original games 2D pixel sprites, difficulty settings, and the ability to enjoy the remaster music or the original score at any time.

Accessibility

With regards to accessibility, there are a number of options available. These range from control mapping, subtitles, mini-map settings and a large number of combat display options. There is no button remapping or subtitle options. Audio options however are limited, so those with auditory issues, may struggle with the game.

Gameplay

Remakes are becoming more and more common, allowing newer players to engage with old franchises. And its not hard to see why, with the likes of Final Fantasy doing the numbers with their games being remade for the newer audiences. A good remake rebuilds the game from scratch with new assets, a different engine, and potentially new gameplay mechanics or story changes.

However the best remakes do all of this whilst keeping to the ethos of the games original intent. With a lot franchises often changing original intents to suit the sensibilities of said ‘’modern audience’’, the gaming community at large often panics when their favourite franchise is being remade.

I can thankfully dispel that fear from Romancing SaGa 2, as from what I can tell, the developers have stayed true to ethos whilst ensuring quality of life revisions only compliment the game. At its core this game is about one thing, its about the journey, not the protagonists.

This is very different from most RPG’s with them being the opposite. The main games system is based around a lineage system, with its story being told over centuries, that cleverly interweaves progression and world building through each succession. You begin as the son of a king, the Emperor of Varennes. During this the games tutorial phase, an event happens where your family, including the king are killed and seven previous heroes turned villains have arrived.

As the successor you discover you can now inherit all of the knowledge of the previous emperor allowing you to build up each new successor with existing skills, abilities and tactics from the previous one. This spans across generations, which means that should the current emperor fall in battle, or perhaps you accomplish a major victory against one of the Seven bosses, it triggers a time skip anywhere from 50 or maybe even 120 years where a new successor will need to be appointed.

The successor will be from a choice of complete strangers, not heirs, which means that you can choose from a range of characters, each with their own classes and special tactics. As time progress you will gain access to more classes for your retinue, which in turn means more class choices for being emperor. Each character has a Life Point (LP) stat, that once reduced to zero in combat, results in a permanent loss for that specific individual, which then a new character will become available to fill the slot.

The Inheritance mechanic doesn’t just restrict itself to the emperor, it also works for all those in your retinue. Should any fall, they also can be replaced, but with a new character with the same class. This may sounds as if death is now meaningless, and any experience gained always kept. This isn’t strictly true, as the consequence of death from anyone is the potential loss of "unmastered" (sparked) techs and the need to then rebuild your party and team formations from scratch again.

Speaking of tech, the games characters doesn’t level up in the usual way, with it deciding to go more a Final Fantasy II way of doing things. Combat is turn-based, and at the end of your fight you level up your health, weapon or spell types that you have used in combat, rather than the character’s basic level. 

New spells and weapons attacks (called techs) rely on a lightbulb indicator appearing during battles, which if used, provides a chance to unlock a new powerful variation of those skills. Rasing the proficiency of the weapons with all classes mean that the future generations of those classes will benefit from them, which is critical for later battles.

Alongside these techs and spells, you will soon unlock United Attacks, which allows the retinue to execute powerful combined attacks. As you progress, more of the retinue is added to this attack, creating some really long and devastating attack chains as one super attack. This isn’t available from the beginning but requires the party to land an attack on the enemy, in which doing so, builds up an energy bar.

As mentioned earlier, combat is turn based with an indicator showing which character turn is next in the top left hand corner. The strategy of battle comes in three parts, first is making sure you’re find and hit the enemy’s weakness for extra damage. To do so you will need to attack using a variety of weapons/spells, which in turn will allow you to work out what the weakness is. Second is using crowd control attacks via status effects, or killing enemies before they get a chance to act. And finally, make sure you have enough balms (health kits) before entering any battle!. One or two attacks in this game will be enough to take one of your characters out of combat and in turn stop the whole teams buff which they receive due to their formation.

Speaking of Formation, this is another mechanic of the game that provides you with buffs, but also lets you understand positioning of your retinue is also important in battles. Formations give the team certain buffs, be it harder to hit, better range attacks or protection from incoming attacks. Positioning your team is important as AOE attacks can do some serious damage if a wrong formation is used. New classes have new battle formations, granting bonuses for position. The Imperial Cross formation lets you place a lead character who will take most attacks, but with higher defence, whilst the tail character with have a lower target chance, but lower speed. As you progress in the game, more become available to you.

That’s not all, because as this game is told over centuries, there is a number of mechanics attuned directly to it, for example improving the kingdom. The huge number of years allow you to construct buildings that will modify your kingdom and generate income, provide new opportunities such as more classes to play with. Early on the blacksmith is only available to create, but as you progress, gardens, university, and a magic school all pop up.

I’m only lightly touching on the integrated mechanics of this game with so much still not mentioned, that only help to promote game enjoyment further. Things like Special abilities, forging and reforging weapons and armour, combining spells all make a the games core gameplay even better.

Graphics

When it comes to the style of gameplay, you really couldn’t get a bigger shift if you tried. From 2d colourful sprites from the original, to fully fleshed out 3D assets for the remake. It’s clear that the developers went beyond the norm to ensure the style and visuals from the original were not lost in any way with its remake. From the landscapes to the enemy types to the overall UI, things have been enhanced to ensure a new audience gets the fullest from the game. However, with a nod to the original game, the character sprites do appear in the loadings screens which is a lovely touch.

Speaking of enemies, like the original, they are visible on the overworld, wandering around these arenas ready to attack, but at the same time can be avoided. It even allows a pre-emptive attack from behind for extra damage if you can do it without them seeing. However, if they attack you first, your formation is broken and all characters are open to attack.

Battles take place in a number of stunning zones based on the original game, that are varied and expansive with regions from seaside’s, Sahara’s, forest and larva based mountains. Careful exploration of these amazing vistas are also recommended due to you being able to pick up crafting materials hidden. Alongside secret statues that provide you with visions that allow you to uncover about the lore about the Seven Heroes, including their origins, and their eventual fall to being evil. 

When exploring the games vast world, some sea routes or field locations maybe block off, but most regions are open for you to discover in any order. This ensures that each player has their own unique path through the game (outside of the tutorial boss), that allows you to fight the Seven Heroes in any order you choose.

The downside to this is that due to the non-linear structure of the game, some events or characters are miss able, and that’s because most of the story is generated by your decisions, during the game. Unlike some, choices actually matter here, with decisions through dialogue or gameplay having a clear impact!

For example, one mission pushed me to attack a castle, but before moving onto that I randomly decided to do a side quest elsewhere, which led me to interact with a thief. Depending on my choice with the them, I was then given a short cut to the boss in said castle! This can be a double edge sword though, as one quest could only be completed if I had a male Emperor, which I only realised by chance when my current female protagonist had died and I had wandered back into missions location.

The plethora of enemies and their varied attacks is superb with each new region providing interesting and engaging enemies to challenge you. And thankfully to accompany this is the games compendium which details all enemies and their weaknesses uncovered in full 3D glory. Speaking of weaknesses, the game has even included a quality of life feature that shows a weakness stat bar under each enemy that gradually fills up when uncovered with the correct attack.

One element I did find though was heavy pop-in on the more open areas, with distant enemies pop up randomly or even being visual, but not moving till you got closer. Does this actually detract from the amazing gameplay, not really, and it can always be patched.

Sound

Just like the visual style, the music have also been given a full revamp with a whole new set of scores based on the originals. And who better than one of the original composers, Kenji Ito to provide the newly arranged tracks. These collections of scores ooze ompth and depth, that really sells battles, story telling or just exploration regardless of the players location. But that’s not all, the developers had also included all the original scores for free, which you can switch to at any point in the game.

Battles and weaponry sounds are superb, with the impact from them feeling meaningful and deep, whilst providing that otherworldly feel. Combine this with the remastered or even original scores, and you will be smiling ear to ear as your retinue carve their way through the enemies at hand.

Voice work here is for all story and side mission cutscenes, with in-game chat being conveyed with text. The voice work here is great, but for me it’s doesn’t hit anywhere as deep as the original Japanese actors work.

My recommendation here would be a good quality soundbar to really enjoy the musical scores as you make your way through this epic adventure.

Verdict

This leads me onto the rating of the game:-
Now I rate games in order of, avoid, on sale, great purchase and must own. My rating for Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a ‘’Must Own’’.

Nightdive are often touted as the kings of remasters with their eye for detail, strict code to keep the original games ethos, with added extras like missing content added in. However it is clear to see this games developers, have taken that code as well, and are pushing to become the kings of remakes.

The game is currently priced on Xbox at £49.99 or approx. $50 and depending on skill and patience would give you about 60+hours to complete the story. However you can easily double that, with a second playthrough with new game plus that provides new enemies, classes and even powerful weapons, whilst doing different story paths.

This to me is the best way to update and refresh old franchises for new audiences. As someone who never even heard about the Romancing SaGa franchise, I am now a full convert, due to this game, and that should speak volumes…