Romancing Saga 2 is a game about its lineage system that that ties into the progression and world building. You play as the Emperor of Varennes, but if your hero falls in battle, you take control of a new Emperor, and if you accomplish a victory about one of the titular antagonists, there will be a time skip again. This is not just for window dressing as your progress will be reflected with your descendants and your choices will matter.
In fact, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven’s biggest draw is its world-building. Even when the reset button is pushed, you still get to see the results of your actions carry on. Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a game that wants you to keep going and explore more. For instance, spend time at a pub and talk to people and you will suddenly find more places to go and more quests to take on. The result is an RPG experience that really is unlike anything else and still feels fresh today. It helps that some of the quests require the Emperor to have a specific class and so you will need to actively use the constant resetting to your advantage.
In this way, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven feels les like an epic story and more like a series of stories all connected to each other that you experience a bit at a time. When you take on the titular seven, you will recapture territory for the empire and this changes the world entirely, but giving you new places to explore and new ways to interact. You will also get a chance to find relics and objects that will let you see the past and how the seven became what they are and it provides a great backstory, even if the main draw is the world itself.
The earlier SaGa games had a very distinct combat system compared to the latter games, and Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven builds and expands on that in some very innovative ways. The way your party is positioned and the classes they have will greatly affect the outcome of the battle and there is so much room for replay to experience everything the game has to offer. There are some many choices for classes and party options and one of the best things about Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is the fact that the lineage system means you will get a chance to experience a lot of variety in your first playthrough, before you go back and experience the earlier sections again.
The turn- based battles utilize a timeline at the top of the screen that displays ally and enemy turn order, and this also includes showing when your foes are preparing dangerous moves. Some of these include the United Attack, a carryover from SaGa Scarlet Grace and Emerald Beyond, that lets multiple party members unleash double damage blows in succession, and the Glimmer system, where new techs and spells are learned at random both in and after combat. This system will cause a light bulb icon to show up beside moves in your arsenal that will give you a chance to glimmer a new ability.
While your basic sword attack may not hit a weak point or cause massive damage, this system gives you an incentive to increase the number of sword techs you have to increase the likelihood of glimmering. Another interesting thing is that enemy weaknesses are displayed in battle once discovered and this will carry over between generations. As such, you will want to unlock as many weaknesses as you can as soon as possible, in order to do improve your chances later on.
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a game about choice and this is why so many playthroughs are encouraged. You cannot see everything the first time, and there is so much story and so many options that you will need to play over and over and yet you wont be dissapointed. How you play as the Emperor will affect what you see and that actually makes me happy as it removes pressure to do things a certain way and I like that the game encourages making the game unique to your choices.
One thing I do need to mention is that Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven has quite a few performance issues on Switch. It is not too bad, but there are some areas where the loading gets egregious and there are a number of crashes in some areas. If you can look past this and the occasional texture pop in and frame rate drops, which never get too bad, then you can still find a lot to enjoy.
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven has some amazing music and the art style is excellent and I have to admit that even with the performance issues, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven may be one of the best turn based RPGs on the market right now. There is nothing else really like it and it uses its concept to its full potential. Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a fantastic remake of the original game that improves on so many aspects of the original and while there are performance issues on Switch, the overall game is just incredible. I do recommend Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven because it stands as a must play game.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
