Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven review

In many ways 2024 has been a year of remakes, with all sorts of classics getting another chance to shine for a modern audience. While it’s often the case that I’d be more excited about a brand new game than a shiny new version of an older title, many of the remakes we’ve had this year already have absolutely exceeded my expectations and made me eat those words. There aren’t many series more ripe for remakes than the SaGa series. Spanning back decades this series is for the most part unknown to the Western audience, but now the 1993 classic entry shines again in Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven.

This classic JRPG will feel immediately familiar to long-time genre fans, with a fantasy setting of royal families and evil monsters that we’ve seen time and again. The game begins with you in control of Gerard, prince of the kingdom of Varennes and loyal son to the king. Always one to do the best for his people, Gerard decides to shun his studies in favour of learning how to handle himself in battle to defend his subjects. When this training leads to an encounter with one of the legendary Seven Heroes who has fallen from grace, Gerard loses his father and brother, becoming the sole ruler of the land in the process. The story takes some unexpected twists and turns as you progress further into the game, but ultimately isn’t quite as exciting as the combat it enables.

Combat is where you’ll spend most of your time in Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, and it is wonderful. With a focus on hitting weaknesses, the turn-based battles are snappy and engaging from start to finish. Each of your characters in the party of five you control can be equipped with a variety of weapons, and by using them regularly will become stronger with them. It’s not the most complex of battle systems, but the speed of combat and how rewarding it is to get stronger and learn new spells and abilities makes it endlessly compelling.

As you level up certain weapon types, you’ll be able to learn new skills using them using a mechanic called Glimmering. Once a character gets good enough with a particular weapon you’ll notice a little lightbulb next to it when you use it to attack, and how bright that bulb is indicates how likely you are to discover and unleash a brand new skill by using it. There’s something really magical about discovering a new skill mid battle that I absolutely love, and with loads of different weapon types available you’ll end up with a ton of powerful attacks, defensive stances and healing options to choose from in combat.

Another great reason to learn more skills is because they’ll be useful when unleashing your powerful team attacks. As you hit more and more weaknesses in battle a blue meter at the bottom of the screen slowly fills up, and once it’s full you can attack for massive damage. These team attacks combine two skills from a pair of your party members with an added damage boost, and generally wreck anything that isn’t a boss standing in your path. Combat can be over in a flash thanks to these attacks, and it always feels great to use them.

The snappy pace of combat is complemented by the exploration in Romancing SaGa 2, which also respects your time while also remaining compelling. There’s no massive overworld to wander around here, and instead you’ll just be given new locations to immediately travel to. Usually these are dungeons of some sort full of enemies to beat up, with chests to find, and you’re always rewarded handsomely for checking out all the hidden nooks and crannies.

For the most part Revenge of the Seven feels like a pretty straightforward classic RPG, but there’s some hidden depth to enjoy if you want to really maximise your team’s effectiveness. Formations can be chosen to buff certain party members for example, like the Cross Formation you start with that gives a defence boost to the tank at the front and ensures your more frail characters take less hits. There are also special buffs for each character class which can be unlocked that’ll really help you in battle once obtained. None of these systems are quite as wild as inheritance though, which the whole game is built around.

In the early hours of Romancing SaGa 2 you’re introduced to the inheritance system, when your dear old dad perishes to a big boss and gives you all his abilities. This is the pretty much the central theme of the game, and all your characters eventually end up passing their skills to their kids so they can continue on the fight against evil. In practice I found this mainly just meant I felt less of a connection to my party, though, as they slowly changed to their slightly different looking offspring who I didn’t really know.

This also ultimately means the story feels a little less special too, because it’s pretty much a story without characters you can get to know and root for. The fairly generic fantasy kingdom doesn’t really have enough identity of its own to care about it, and this means the only interesting story beats involve the enemies. It’s a shame because everything else about this classic RPG remake is wonderful, but without much of a reason to care about the quest at large outside of learning new skills the experience is a touch lacking.

If you’ve never played a SaGa game before, then Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a great place to start, with compelling combat and some interesting ideas. The narrative side is a little lacking thanks to your party occasionally transforming into the next generation, but everything else about this classic RPG is simply fantastic even in 2024.