In 1993 Square released a sequel to a game, Romancing SaGa 2 and while it would be 23 years before it got a release outside of Japan, people found it interesting. Now here we are almost 30 years since its original release, and a lot has changed in the world of games. Has Square Enix kept the spirit of the original adventure alive with this new release, or is this one saga that had its time to shine?

The story that is told here has two layers, the first is the general overview story and the second are the stories around the characters themselves. As for the main story, it tells the tale of seven legendary heroes, who were reported to have saved the world thousands of years ago and then they vanished without a trace. Now monsters with the same names as the heroes are causing chaos across the land and it comes to a head when Kzinssie attacks Avalon, killing the first born son of the emperor. Armed with a thirst for vengeance King Leon, his second son Gerard and a party of warriors set out to take down Kzinssie, but the King is defeated, upon his death he imparts his skills to his son and thus begins an adventure that takes hundreds and hundreds of years to finish up. That main story continues, with the leader of Avalon heading around the world, helping folks out and attempting to defeat the remaining heroes. The secondary story is more connected to the various leaders you play as across the game, and what you do as that leader.

This is perhaps one of the games biggest strengths, but also one of its most confusing and annoying aspects. The strength comes from the fact that you are free to explore the world, pick up hints for adventures and then complete them in whatever order you like. There are times when the game will hint, very strongly, at undertaking a specific mission, but those are rare. With the freedom to discover missions as you venture around the world, there is no set path you have to follow and with each new leader you become, your playstyle can change, which can influence what you want to do. When the first year passed for Gerard, I was ok with that, but then after completing a boss fight, quite literally by the skin of my teeth, the game just cut to 56 years later and I had to choose a new leader. This is the part that was annoying and confusing, as there is no real sense of when this change will happen, I had some occur after fairly normal missions and some occur after big fights. I also had to choose a few time, upon my wiping the party in a boss fight or several of them, but let’s not talk about those. I do like the idea of seeing the passage of time, enjoying what happens hundreds of years down the line, but I just wish the game was willing to tell you how long you had with a leader, until it forced it upon you.

Where the story has its faults, the gameplay really doesn’t, don’t get me wrong there are some convoluted moments, but it is mostly strong. The gameplay can honestly be broken down into two parts, what happens around Avalon and what happens everywhere else. Sticking with the Avalon aspects, this is where you can be a ruler, making decisions on what is built and researched. As time progresses you will see the city change, they are mainly subtle changes, but there are a few noticeable changes as well. The big part here is that you will need to invest in the town, to help it grow and that requires money, which you can get from battles and exploring. If you get the blacksmith up and running, you can get new weapons made for you, which in turn can help you in battle, same for the Incantations Lab. I honestly didn’t spend too much time with this part of the game, as I was having more fun exploring the various towns, fields and cave systems that exist.

That makes a nice segue to talk about that, exploration is fun, as there is a lot of to see and discover. Each town you visit will often have the same basics, a shop, an inn and a tavern, but not always, as some towns might be so small they only offer one of them. This is great as it means you need to think a little more strategically about where you want to head to, rather than just picking a random place. Inside the towns you will see folks living their lives and sometimes they will have things to tell you, usually about how monsters are in a place, which then adds that location to the map. Venturing out to a cave or cliff side always comes with a learning curve, where things are, what enemies are around and of course, how to run away should you need to. For all that I loved about the world, I do wish there was an actual open world to explore, rather than just fast travelling to a new location, it does keep the pace going, but also feels a little cheap. It does help with revisiting locations though, as most locations have a few hidden things to pick up, you will want to explore them in detail but that often requires you to fight all the monsters that live in the space, which is where the games combat system really shines.

There are quite a number of layers to how the combat works, but it never really gets in its own way, which is a welcome change. As your character changes quite often, you might think you reset your skills each time, but that is not the case, as each new emperor that you choose inherits the skills of the former. New spells can be learnt at the Incantations Lab, but there you will need to consider the elemental configuration, if you have fire skills, you can’t learn water skills. Weapons that you equip will also provide you with skills over time, but you can also have two on each member of your party, which should give you a good range to work with. The combat plays out via a turn based system, which you can keep track of across the top of the screen. When it is your turn to issue a command, you have a few options, weapon based attacks, spell based attack or items. Basic attacks can be done at any time, however special attacks, like a double cut with a sword of fireball require BP, once your characters BP is gone though, you can only do basic attacks. While health is refreshed automatically outside of battle, BP only refreshes via supplies, BP refresh pools that are usually next to a save point and staying the night at an inn. There were times when I would enter a fight and not realise that my BP was low on each character and while each character can bring healing balms into battle, they can not bring BP recharging items, so you have to keep an eye on it. When you unleash BP powered attacks, be they spell or weapon, you fill an overcharge meter and once it is full, you can unleash a combo attack with another member of your group. The first level of this is two attacks, but eventually you can get three attacks within one battle, something that is very handy for some of the damage sponge bosses that you have to fight.

The other half to combat comes in the form of tactical formations that you can set up at a tavern, why there I have no clue. These formations will be found over time either by yourself or folks at the castle and when you choose one, it will offer a specific benefit. The first one you get enables more powerful magic, but it forces someone in your party to be at the front of the fight and they will take a lot of hits. On the flip side the person at the furthest point from the front is targeted less, but as they are also further away from the fight, their attacks are less potent. If you are someone who prefers a certain fighting style, finding the right formation will be crucial so you can fight the way you want and what you want to achieve. But there is a downside to them, if someone in the party falls in battle, the formation is broken and you lose the benefits it was giving. Formation breaks can also happen when enemy attacks you outside of battle, and starting a battle without a set formation makes things much, much harder. There is even more to battles, with enemies having weaknesses to certain weapons or spells and if you use the right combination, you can deal out large amounts of damage. The flipside is also true, using a fire based attack on a creature made of fire, will give you either low damage or potentially none. All of this comes back to your retinue, the party of fellows that you go around the world with, because if you stack your squad with one or two specific magics and nothing else, you will be setting yourself up for a significant battle each time you begin a fight. None of this also addresses the need to keep an eye on your team mates as they fall in battle, as you can only revive them so many times before they are lost.

Finally, the last major aspect of battles is how it awards experience after each one, your health and BP will slowly fill a bar after a fight, the longer the fight the more you get in it. Once that fills, the corresponding item levels up and you get more to work with, it’s very simple. Your weapon and spell skills also can earn levels after a fight, but the catch is that you must use them, if you don’t they remain where they are. The upside to this is that if you want to level up your fire magic, any fire spells will work, so you can use either the lower cost spell a lot or the more expensive less, it works out in the end. Once a skill levels up, you may get an upgrade to that bucket, so again for fire you might unlock firewhip, or with a sword you might unlock mince. Some of these unlocks can happen randomly in battle, a character may learn to dodge just as they are about to be hit, but there is no telling when someone will get a glimmer of inspiration. All told, the number of things you need to keep track of for battles, and we haven’t even touched on armour, shields and tech skills, well needless to say there is a lot, but it comes together very smoothly and just works. Even for myself, someone who is not a massive JRPG player, I found the battles easy to track and enjoyed them more and more.

Moving on from the gameplay, lets talk about the presentation, as there is some really good and some really bad going on here. First the good, for the most part the game looks gorgeous, thanks in part to its anime-style visuals and character design. The locations are varied, so one cave system doesn’t just look like another and the towns are done the same way. Towns do have consistent themes, based on the region of the world they are in, but they are not the same place copied over and over again. The monster design is great and after going back to look at the original designs, I can say the 3d versions are wonderfully recreated. The characters that you can play as or join your party look good, but there isn’t a lot of variety to them. The tank class guy always looks the same, large and in giant metal armour, the mercenary mage always looks the same with the hat, all that changes between them is the colours of their outfits. Now on one hand I did like this aspect, after spending a few hours with one group, starting over with the same emperor class and team that all looked the same, felt like a continuation. The flip side of this is that your party may not have the same skills as before, which meant even though a character looked the same and sounded the same, they didn’t play the same.

The lack of variety extends to the NPCs as well, every old guy looks the same, all the kids look the same, even the enemies look the same. Yes the design looks great, but a few shifts of colours on a werewolf character don’t make them look cooler, just different. A lack of variety in design isn’t anything new, but that is not the sort of thing that should happen these days, but worse than that is the games weird LOD. Level of Detail or LOD, is the range around the player that is rendered in the best detail a game can, think of pop up in the distance, games load in detail as they need to, it is a common thing. The problem is here it’s a god awful mess for two reasons, the first reason is that there is no fade in. What I mean by this is that characters will just pop into being the moment the LOD ring reaches them, it happens with both friendly and unfriendly folks. Your home of Avalon is a great place to see it happen, people spawn in on the street, trees get more leaves and even stairs become stairs and not ramps painted to look like stairs. Sadly between the LOD limit and your character is another detail line, between it and the LOD all folks that move, even enemies, run at a lower FPS. So you see the actions take place, but it is only like every 3rd motion that is shown, but once you get closer, you will get the all the detail, once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

With respect to the games audio, there is a lot I like about it and one core part that I hate with a passion, that is the games new orchestrated soundtrack. Kenji Ito is the composer of the original game and now this remake, so it is nice to see them get a chance to reinvent the music they created almost 30 years ago. The problem is the new music is just always playing and its always grand music, by that I mean it feels like the big moment is always happening. The game does let you swap back to the original soundtrack, which I did and honestly, I had a much better time with that playing. With the rest of the audio, there is a lot to like, the voice acting is solid, though much like with the lack of variety of the designs, the voices repeat for the same looking character. Also at the end of a battle, you will often hear the same lines repeated over and over again, so be aware of that.

I really enjoyed Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, as far as old school JRPG’s remade for a modern audience go, it is one of the best ones. The combat system has a lot going on and will might take you a moment to get your head around it, but once you do, it is very satisfying. Being able to invest in Avalon and see the changes hundreds of years down the line, is also a real treat. Sadly the lack of control over when the time skips happen makes it harder to connect to any specific character and while your choices do shape events, it still feels weird to just lose 50 odd years randomly. If you are looking for a game that you can really sink your teeth into, this is one you should check out and if you are unsure, there is a demo. There are some weird issues to be sure, but the better parts far outnumber those and the end result is a game that is justifies the saga in its name.