Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven Review (Switch)

Square Enix has been putting out some AA mid-tier entries for some of its forgotten franchises lately, including Visions of Mana (not on Switch) and not one, but two SaGa games in 2024. The first one was SaGa Emerald Beyond in April and now Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven.

As a remake of the original 1993 Romancing SaGa 2, Revenge of the Seven attempts to bring one of the more popular SaGa entries to the modern age. The original was groundbreaking during its time of release, embracing a non-linear narrative structure and a unique generational party mechanic that not many RPGs had. Revenge of the Seven retains what made the original special, but loses a bit of charm along the way with its poor presentation and load times.

The story follows the Emperor of Avalon as they expand their empire and fight back against the Seven Heroes, a group of warriors who saved the world in the past but have now succumbed to dark magic. It’s a rather basic plot set-up for an RPG, but the story stretches over 1000 years. At first, Avalon’s ruler, Leon, and his son Gerard lead the charge. However, they eventually abdicate to make way for successors, which are other party members that the player recruits over time.

This paves the way for Revenge of the Seven’s non-linear storytelling. The emperor goes around the world solving other nations’ problems in exchange for joining the empire, such as stopping an active volcano nearby or cruising through whirlpools to get a ship to a new nation. You’re given multiple nations to annex at once and you’re free to do them in any order you wish, which adds a lot of variety to your playthrough as some events unfold while others don’t.

After major story events, such as killing one of the Seven Heroes, several decades go by and you’re asked to pick a successor. While the story might be a bit dry, the game’s side quests help elevate its worldbuilding. Our personal favourite is one involving a mermaid and we had to gather ingredients to create a Mermaid Potion, letting us breathe underwater. This led us to discovering a giant underwater sunken ship dungeon, and these new areas kept our interest from waning.

The generational mechanic is a mixed bag. It helps Romancing SaGa 2 stand out from a gameplay perspective. You can build out facilities in Avalon including a magic school to learn new spells and a smithy to create new weapons. Every time a new emperor is selected, they inherit all of the skills and abilities of their predecessors. After every time skip, these facilities can pass down and teach all of the moves to new units that you’ve accumulated over the years. This life simulation aspect keeps the moment-to-moment gameplay engaging.

However, it’s hard to connect with any of the characters as they don’t have strong, if any, personalities and just feel like cannon fodder to fill out your party. Our party was certainly growing stronger, but we didn’t sense much character growth, which left us bored throughout the majority of the story and cutscenes.

Revenge of the Seven’s battle system is a much more traditional and simplified turn-based affair than Emerald Beyond’s. They both use the BP system, but Emerald Beyond makes players allocate their limited BP to certain attacks. In Revenge of the Seven, BP basically acts like a consumable MP system, as you’d find in most RPGs.

In Emerald Beyond, manipulating the turn-order timeline was a crucial aspect in preventing enemies from piling up on your party with beefed-up consecutive attacks, called United Attacks. Revenge of the Seven’s timeline manipulation doesn’t have nearly as much of an impact on the flow of battle, as the order seemingly only takes into consideration a unit’s speed stat minus encumbrance. As a result, Revenge of the Seven’s battle system doesn’t feel as nuanced.

Instead, there’s a central emphasis on hitting weaknesses. Enemies have multiple weaknesses, and they’re hidden at first, very similar to Octopath Traveler. By exploiting these weaknesses, you build the Overdrive gauge, which when full, allows your party to perform United Attacks. But overall the battle system lacks a strategic hook like Octopath Traveler’s BP stacking or Persona’s ‘One More’ mechanics. It devolves into something like a Pokémon game, where the two parties just simply take turns hitting each other.

We do like Revenge of the Seven’s progression system, though. Each character can equip two weapons and raise their individual weapon levels to learn new skills called techs. In order to learn them, characters have to use existing techs during battle and activate ‘glimmer.’ Characters tend to glimmer more often during hard fights, such as boss battles. While the chance to glimmer is random, you’re not left totally in the dark. There’s a lightbulb icon next to techs that can still glimmer and unlock new moves. It’s incredibly fun to continually unlock and collect more techs to add to your repertoire that can be passed down to future generations.

On Switch, Revenge of the Seven suffers from long load times and some frame rate stutters. The visuals aren’t anything to write home about, either. The original game actually looked similar to Octopath Traveler, especially during battles and an HD2D approach to this remake would’ve been much more charming than the fully 3D one we got here. The 3D models aren’t terrible, but there’s a lack of distinctive art direction and bland-looking characters. At the very least, though, there’s a good variety of monster designs that keeps the amount of palette swaps to a minimum.

Revenge of the Seven also has plenty of great quality-of-life features. The original was criticised for being too hard at times, but Revenge of the Seven has multiple difficulty options to tailor your playthrough. Your party’s HP also fully replenishes after every battle, which makes dungeon crawling a smooth experience.

Conclusion

Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a bit of an underwhelming RPG that has some unique gameplay mechanics. The open-ended world narrative structure feels freeing, but the characters are boring. The glimmer mechanic is fun, but the battle system lacks a strategic hook. Each of its gameplay systems is a double-edged sword, as we’d find a particular aspect enticing while another was baffling. It feels like a slight step back from the other recent SaGa games, but if you’re a fan of the series, Revenge of the Seven might resonate with you more than it did with us.