GamerEscape

Romancing SaGa 2 originally launched on the Super Famicom in 1993. Since then the game has sold more than one-million copies and went on to see a remaster released for Japan in 2016 and a Western release in 2017.

More recently a full-blown remake was announced in the form of Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, developed by the team that did Trails of Mana. We had a chance to sit down and play the game at PAX West 2024, running on PlayStation 5 hardware.

The demo started at the beginning of the game, laying out the basic plot elements before finding the city under attack by an enemy force. As I slowly made my way out of the castle I was approached by one character, which said I could recruit them into my ranks. There were several such characters tucked into the handful of areas in the castle that I could use to fill up my party before I headed outside.

As I made my way outside into the town, one thing that immediately caught my attention were my character’s footsteps appearing on the mini-map. They did disappear after a time, but I could see that being a useful feature for navigating more enclosed spaces.

As I navigated the city under attack, I was able to collide with some of the monsters strewn about in order to initiate combat. It’s during combat that the newest version of the game shines, showing some lovely quality of life options. First and foremost is the inclusion of turn order, a feature introduced in SaGa: Emerald Beyond which shows…well, the order in which each character on the field takes their turn in combat.

Another feature I quite liked was the ease of seeing a monsters weakness. When you’re looking at the enemies in combat you can, at a glance, see a short list of the things they’re weak against. Of course, when you’re starting out, you’ll have to discover those weaknesses for yourselves, but once you know them it gives you a nice edge in combat.

Revenge of the Seven also includes something called “glimmers.” During combat, there is a chance that, by using a specific ability, you might be able to learn a new action. This is noted by a lightbulb next to the action in the menu. The brighter the lightbulb, the higher the chance that a new action will be learned when using it. Because it was early in game, a lot of my characters had actions that they could learn, and over the course of my playthrough I did unlock a new handful of attacks.

During the course of combat, there’s an “Overdrive” bar that will steadily fill. Once full, players will be able to execute an Overdrive, chaining multiple attacks together from members of the party. While using Overdrive was fun, there were some instances where the attacks I could utilize for this didn’t use a weapon that enemies were weak against. Sliding into the menus for the game, it looked as though characters could equip a couple of different weapons. I can easily see people getting to a new area, learning the weaknesses of any new enemies, and then switching up parts of their loadout in order to better handle things.

The gist of the game is that the player will control generations of emperors as they work towards confronting the seven heroes, who have since fallen and become villains, so it’s quite a drawn out story timeline-wise. And, while not a part of the demo I experienced, I was also told that game will have a city building element to it, which is something I’ve found interesting when placed in an RPG. The game will also feature English and Japanese voiceover as well as access to the original and new re-arranged tracks from composer Kenji Ito (SaGa Frontier, Mana series).

At PAX West 2024, I spent a fair bit of time playing upcoming RPGs from Square Enix, and I think for me, this was the one that interested me the most. Dragon Quest III HD-2D looks gorgeous with its art style, and Fantasian Neo Dimension finally makes the game more widely available for people that weren’t able to play it before. For me though, There’s just something about Revenge of the Seven that pulls me to it, and if I had to pick just one game to try out of the bunch that I played, it would probably be this one.

Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven releases on October 24th for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Steam

Images courtesy of Square Enix.