Oh, Romancing Saga 2, where have you been all my life? What’s that? You’ve been available for years now and I even own you on several platforms? Romancing Saga 2 is just one of those games that’s been recommended endlessly and I’ve been avoiding it because there are too many games for just one single person to play. The general consensus online seems to be that we’re in an age with too many re-releases and not enough new games, which I think is preposterous. And Romancing Saga 2’s remake, Romancing Saga 2 – Revenge of the Seven seems like not just a faithful remake, but one that took its time and completely reimagined the game in 3D. Is it worth a gander? Let’s find out.
Before I redeemed the Romancing Saga 2 – Revenge of the Seven demo key, I went and played the first hour of Romancing Saga 2 on my PlayStation 5. With very few instructions, I was left to figure out most of the stuff on my own and I left the first dungeon immediately and was escorted back to town. Great start, let’s start up the demo! The demo treats the first part of the game more like a tutorial, so you can’t just leave the first dungeon immediately. I was introduced to my party and off we went to kill some baddies in a cave, classic RPG stuff.
Story and Setup: The Return of Avalon’s Heroes
We take on the role of Gerard, the youngest son of King Leon, ruler of Avalon. Gerard isn’t much of a fighter, preferring his studies, and as such is more of a liability in combat. Combat being one of the primary focuses in Romancing Saga 2 – Revenge of the Seven. Combat is turn-based with many different weapons, abilities, and spells available, though not from the get-go. While attacking enemies, you’ll learn their weaknesses and resistances to help you deal extra damage. Though far from something as brilliant as the Press Turn system, a nice change of pace from the standard mindless attack spamming. Each character can equip up to two weapons and as they use weapons their proficiency with them grows. As their proficiency grows the option to learn new abilities presents itself in the form of Glimmering Techniques.
Glimmering Techniques is something I’d love to see in more games, and is the big takeaway from this demo for me. As your proficiency in weapons levels up, you’ll eventually get a little bulb next to your ability to indicate there’s a chance of it “glimmering.” Meaning, there’s a chance on using the ability to glean a new ability. Imagine your bow user levels up their bow proficiency and now there’s a bulb next to their standard bow ability. Instead of using the more powerful bow ability you might fall back on the basic one for the chance to unlock a new ability. Balancing the decision in a tough boss fight of doing the stable, guaranteed extra damage versus the lower damage with the chance of something cool happening is a tightrope I love to walk.
And make no mistake, there were some battles in this game that were touch and go. The demo offers three difficulties: casual, normal, and hard(classic). The difficulty can be changed at any time but despite my better judgment, I went with hard(classic). Most of the trash fights, your regular enemies, went down quickly and without much issue. Romancing Saga 2 – Revenge of the Seven refills health after every battle, so if you’re not spending a lot of your BP during regular battles just to survive, you should be alright. Especially because there are little one-time-use BP refill nodes near save points, primarily before boss fights, so using extra abilities when you need to isn’t an end-of-the-dungeon event. Even on hard difficulty, I wasn’t struggling very much.
United Attacks and Overdrive: Teamwork and Tactical Timing
A new feature of the combat is the overdrive bar. As you exploit your enemy’s weakness, the overdrive bar in the bottom right will begin to fill. This can also be filled by getting a preemptive strike on an enemy in the field when catching them by surprise. Once the bar is filled, you’re able to execute a united attack. United attacks are interesting because while the bar being full means anyone can execute them, the attack itself is wholly based on who is executing the attack. I’m not completely sure how it works but when you tab over to the united attack tab on the battle screen, it’ll show you your options for attacks based on the weapons you’re holding and another person in the party. Some of the combos got us where we were going just a bit quicker, which was appreciative. Other time, I won the battle before it began, which was very cool.
I can’t speak to the music very well as I’m not familiar with the original soundtrack, but the remastered work is quite good. Thematically fitting and some bops, though they’ve failed to get stuck in my head just yet. My only real issue with Romancing Saga 2 – Revenge of the Seven is the art. I’m sure this game was built on a budget but it looks old, or like a Falcom game. The characters lack expression, the hair lacks physics, and animations are stilted. This is a ground-up remake so I’m not sure why this art style was preferred over something a little more nuanced but, it is what it is. Stylistically, it works for the game but it would have been nice to have a little more variance in the art. The models look clean and the style is very much in the vein of the Mana series.
I really vibed with the no respawn dungeons, allowing me to explore every nook and cranny and Romancing Saga 2 – Revenge of the Seven betting on me killing every enemy. It worked really well with the health refill after every battle. I had already planned on playing Romancing Saga 2 – Revenge of the Seven this year so this demo didn’t really change that desire. I was also really impressed that I was able to play the entire demo at a steady 60fps on my SteamDeck, even though it sucked down the battery. But if you’re on the fence, good news, the demo I played just released today! If you’re on the fence about Romancing Saga 2 – Revenge of the Seven, I really recommend checking the demo out, especially if you’re a fan of that classic JRPG experience.
