REVIEW: Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven - The real GOTY of 2024

[NezahualDoomer]

Nothing comes even close, no other game in 2024 deserved this more than this game.

There are many reasons for this:

• Actual faithful remake
• Respectful to the original material
• Elevates the original game
• A game from a time were games were made with love
• A different experience than your typical slop JRPG's that you have played to exhaustion
• The soundtrack is a master piece
• A lot of the complains with the original were fixed
• The game makes a great entry for new players of the series
• No DEI, no Cultural Marxism, no agendas, no censorship
• A game about freedom of choice (talking about the gameplay here)
• An epic tale for men
• Akitoshi Kawazu Is a visionary and deserves more support from Square Enix

We need a Chrono Trigger remake that does as good job as they did with this game.

If you are on the fence: DON'T BE, you are truly missing out if you don't get this.

10/10 GOTY of 2024.

Here is my video review if you want a more in depth explanation

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3420101095

[Mobiusx2]

Here, here. I'm still only about halfway through and I concur. I didn't start the game until 2025 because I played all the main RPGs of last year back to back, but this is the best game overall by far. The fact that they took such a flawed game and made it work shows how masterful Xeen are at their craft. I also love that unlike all the big studios, they don't used locked-frame cutscenes, but actually use cinematic dynamic camera angles even in small cutscenes. That builds so much immersion for me as I play without subtitles on.
The soundtrack too... ffs. Usually I don't like remastered soundtracks, especially of the SNES era, but they nailed it here. Just flawless execution of the instrumentation. (Wish they nailed it this hard with Trials, but oh well.)
It's closer to a 9/10 for me, but I have no problem seeing it as a contender for 2024 GotY.

[NezahualDoomer]

Originally posted by Mobiusx2:

Here, here. I'm still only about halfway through and I concur. I didn't start the game until 2025 because I played all the main RPGs of last year back to back, but this is the best game overall by far. The fact that they took such a flawed game and made it work shows how masterful Xeen are at their craft. I also love that unlike all the big studios, they don't used locked-frame cutscenes, but actually use cinematic dynamic camera angles even in small cutscenes. That builds so much immersion for me as I play without subtitles on.
The soundtrack too... ffs. Usually I don't like remastered soundtracks, especially of the SNES era, but they nailed it here. Just flawless execution of the instrumentation. (Wish they nailed it this hard with Trials, but oh well.)
It's closer to a 9/10 for me, but I have no problem seeing it as a contender for 2024 GotY.

Yeah, I hope more people get into the series Kawazu deserves more praise and attention, the guy is a genius and the guys that made the remake deserve as much praise, they respected the work and elevated it, it's like an homenage, for me at least it is 2024 GOTY.

[Unknownsurfin]

You have clearly not played any actually good games of this genre if you think this is good or even GOTY material. This game has no story, and its game mechanics are simple and basic, its sucession system is just a multi party system, it lacks depth in every basic mechanic it has and scraped the very bottom of the barrel.

Honest question. Is this your first JRPG?

[BB Mouse]

Originally posted by Unknownsurfin:

You have clearly not played any actually good games of this genre if you think this is good or even GOTY material. This game has no story, and its game mechanics are simple and basic, its sucession system is just a multi party system, it lacks depth in every basic mechanic it has and scraped the very bottom of the barrel.

Honest question. Is this your first JRPG?

I think the story of this game is that you write the story yourself through inheritance. All the emperors train themselves and contribute to a final goal over thousands of years is actually romantic. I feel it. :P The old version of this game, 7 heroes felt just like another boss monsters. This remake tells their stories and I actually feel sorry for them. They are not the first heroes who got betrayed this way. Bruce Willis would tell you in lethal weapon that no body wants to be heroes because they usually end up broke XD

[NezahualDoomer]

Originally posted by Unknownsurfin:

You have clearly not played any actually good games of this genre if you think this is good or even GOTY material. This game has no story, and its game mechanics are simple and basic, its sucession system is just a multi party system, it lacks depth in every basic mechanic it has and scraped the very bottom of the barrel.

Honest question. Is this your first JRPG?

Not going to bother, blocked, I don't care about your hatred and the lies you are making about it, anyone can go and watch the review I made about the game and the evidence will show that all of what you are saying is just malicious, dishonest attacks.

Edit: Just watched your post history, is just constantly attacking the game and ♥♥♥♥ posting about it.

What probably happened is that the game kicked your rear, you can't handle it and now you are venting your furstration on other people's posts.

I don't care anyway, as I said:

Blocked.

[Chester]

So...

Glad you liked the game! The Saga franchise's continuity gets compared to Final Fantasy sometimes, as the games similarly don't have much story relation to one another (except for the ever present Minstrel!). They also play around mechanically with certain concepts and each game plays somewhat differently to each other. Romancing Saga 2's big difference from the other games was the "Generations" system, but if you'd like to explore more in the franchise then there's options for you.

This one is the most recent and is thus the most graphically/musically/quality-of-life advanced, but if you like that old-school goodness then Saga has got some stuff for you (and most of the original games and/or remasters can be found on Steam).

Saga Frontier 2 has a watercolor graphical style that holds up surprisingly well, and has something of a "generations" mechanic as you can play as the main characters' children as time passes. Similar skill sparking gameplay, though it's a little more hurky-jerky with the narrative time-skips (which you actually have a degree of control over). Saga Frontier 1 has similar gameplay but each scenario is very short and is somewhat built around replaying the game with one of 7/8 different selectable main characters (and has some very different mechanics if your main character is a human/monster/machine/Mystic!)

Romancing Saga 1 has a remake, though its biggest advancement from the original is a graphical update. Also has replayability based around main characters, though some of them share similar scenarios. Romancing Saga 3 is a fun old-school game, with similar replayability around choosable main characters, though with the sales success of this game (and the enormous success/monetary income from the Saga gacha game) a Romancing Saga 3 remake similar to this one seems extremely likely.

Unlimited Saga... the less said about that the better....

The most recent "main" games in the series before this were Saga: Scarlet Grace and Saga: Emerald Beyond. They would probably be the games I'd recommend the most if you liked this - though they play and look VERY differently. Similar sparking gameplay and battle mechanics. Emerald Beyond was more recent (released in 2024!) but has many selectable main characters and each scenario is very short - as soon as the gameplay ramps up, the scenario is over and the game is basically begging you to do NG+ to delve into the mechanics. Saga: Scarlet Grace was released before it (though I actually like it a lot more) and has deeper scenarios, much more challenging gameplay, and somewhat of a more engaging narrative.

Saga is a weird series - you might love one game and hate all the others, or be equally drawn to all of the different games' weirdness (the biggest thing the franchise is known for is being kinda weird). It's worth taking a peek to see if any of them appeal to you; though at this point, more remakes seem to be on the horizon.

(There are better summaries that you can find of the series than mine, but hey, you're here and you've already read it).