There's a story about how I ended up playing Romancing SaGa 2, but to keep it brief the remake got released and I considered buying it. Then I remembered I actually have the remaster of the original already. So why skip it? And so decision to play the remaster of a SNES title was made. What a ride it turned out to be.

Having practically no experience with SaGa franchise at large I was shocked by just how abruptly story is dispensed to the player. In fact, if you skip the opening which itself gives you a meager primer on ancient history, you'll have no idea who the Seven Heroes even are. What we see is good king Leon and his scholarly son Gerard embarking on a quest to cleanse the nearby ruin of monsters. Not long after disaster strikes – while the pair was outside with their retinue, castle Avalon, safe kept by the king's other son Victor, is laid siege to by monstrous Kzinssie who slays Victor for opposing him. Except... wasn't Kzinssie one of the Seven Heroes according to legends? Receiving council from a mysterious seer our king Leon and prince Gerad track down the fiend only for king to fall in mortal combat. Emboldened by revenge and effects of mysterious “inheritance magic” it now falls to Gerard to settle the score, expand the empire of Varennese and set straight this mad world where monsters are on the rise once more.

More than few hours further into the game we're introduced to the actual central mechanic of Romancing SaGa 2 – succession. With Gerard it happens after three “fade to black” screens, something to keep in mind for the future as well since it indicates passage of time, as he accomplishes milestone tasks available, but can also be forced if your party dies for real real aka they run out of LP in combat. So what exactly happens then? You get to choose from four not-so-randomly picked emperor candidates drawing from a pool of unlocked classes. In reality it's THREE choices since the first is always the same class as your last emperor, and remaining ones depend on various selective tables and RNG game will never tell you about. Something worth pointing out is only Gerard and the Last Emperor, individual you got to name when you started the game, have something resembling story relevance. All the in-between emperors you'll be playing for the majority of the game are yours to pick. Aforementioned inheritance magic means your emperors have a continual line of inheriting skills, spells and proficiency from their predecessors giving them advantage by default.

Since I've started name dropping classes I might as well get into what the game's actual content is. You'll be annexing other regions and kingdoms, usually by resolving whatever issue is present there. Putting aside that you're raising your empire's income, very useful for projects that cost hundreds of thousands and even millions, the real reason why you want every region is for further missions it may offer generations down the line AND class unlocks. Almost every region seems to directly or indirectly add a class to your roster. If there's story in Romancing SaGa 2 it's found in these localized arcs which are created wildly uneven. Some like the branching Cumberland succession crisis or Comroon volcano situation are way more involved, while others are “village elder has a problem, slay big monster to resolve”. In essence you're getting everything from party members, gear R&D and combat fix by playing conquest. Much to my surprise there are bad decisions to made which will result in screwing yourself over. Keep multiple saves which could be a problem since you have four slots + autosave.

I can imagine fear some of my readers may be experiencing upon reading “timed” in context of any RPG, but there is no ticking real-time clock here. You essentially get to perform three big events in every generation. Annex a region, defeat one of the Seven Heroes, resolve a quest, etc.

What Romancing SaGa 2 taketh away in the story department it more than made up for in combat and systems in general.

I don't like repeating myself, but if I was more experienced with the franchise at large I would've already been familiar with its glimmer system. Level ups are neat and yet inadequate next to the glorious light bulb effect when your character learns a brand new skill, doubly so when you know it's now stored in the Dojo and you can train it to all future characters. It's also exceedingly rare in JRPGs to see character advancement running on “you are what you do” akin to The Elder Scrolls. There are formulae involved here you can look up online if you want to, but you should know there are no character levels with which to easily gauge progress or difficulty. Get hit a lot? Your HP goes up. Want to get better at Hydrology? Cast water spells. Want to glimmer a specific skill you've looked up in a guide? Recruit a Saigo Clansman inclined towards the Mace category, find a tough enemy to battle with for higher activation chance and start pray. Did I forget to mention generic class characters are anything but and each has their own pros/cons, as well as gender differences where applicable? You can add that to the variables table.

But what of combaaaat?

Elegant deli platter of turn-based offering where your chosen formation, as taught by certain classes-turned-emperor, can make a notable difference. Since you have FIVE characters to play with and shuffle around your choice of current emperor is very important as that is the only spot which cannot be moved. Wouldn't want to put your squishy Strategist autocrat on the front line, now would you? I'm struggling to put into words exactly how combat plays as there is this constant “will my party setup get me more glimmers?” high overriding everything else. I did notice reliance on gimmicks and having faith in the player to figure it out. I've lost count how many bosses have overpowered attacks that will quickly wipe you unless you're A) tackling them later so you're the overpowered one, or B) capable of exploiting their undisclosed weakness. Realizing that stun and paralysis are two different status ailments has been the bane of my existence, as was one particular hag charming male party members. All five of them.

Add to that no random encounters, albeit some very tight corridors with enemy placement aplenty, and the ball seems to be in your corner. Running in the original SNES release would've limited your vision which made walking a viable option. That's been changed in the remaster as QoL, but you'll still opt to walk from time to time purely to outmaneuver enemies. There were a few instances I got frustrated enough to quit the game due to enemy density. Fight more = get more stats = get more glimmers, right? Well yes, but Battle Rank exists for a reason. The more you engage in combat, fight or flee, the more enemies get upgraded to deadlier variants with advancing generations. A cynical man would call this level scaling, but that's not entirely accurate. Presumably this is in place to prevent you from grinding a single spot for hours on end.

I've used some acronyms earlier and Romancing SaGa 2 brings its peculiarities. HP is automatically recovered after every battle, your SP/MP require manual curatives and are used to power skills/magic respectively, but LP is where things get interesting. Life Points vary on by-character basis, even within the same class, are extremely difficult to restore and once they hit 0 it's permadeath time. If it happens to your emperor it's time to pick a new one. Don't be alarmed because your recruits are not lifelong companions and assembling a new party with each new ascendance quickly becomes second nature. Or point of annoyance depending how you feel about it. Fortunately you get to keep all the weapons, armor and items you've accumulated up to that point. I'm not even getting into fusion spell research here because I... look, I just can't. I missed out.

Do I sound somewhat bitter? Maybe, but that's the sort of obtuseness you, well, learn to live with. At the end of the day this is a SNES title with a slight facelift. Checking out the manual is highly recommended lest you completely miss out on some concepts like global magic level or research order. Mind you, the SNES comment is not meant to be derogatory in any way. I was taken aback by aspects of the game playing it now so it may be difficult to grasp what reactions were like back in 1993. Despite there being the Imperial Log which tracks the state of the world, rumors and everything you've done so far, very nature of the game feels so far ahead of its time you can feel it buckling under pressure. Speaking from first hand experience it takes a while for the game to click and there's an extended sweet spot between early and late game when you get to bask in your own ignorance exploring this unrestricted world before the hammer falls on you.

Final Thoughts and Rating?

A blast from the past Romancing SaGa 2 feels almost like an alternate evolutionary route for the JRPG genre. One where story takes a backseat and character drama is far less important than mastering the glimmer system so you add more skills to your repertoire as well as take over territories to recruit more characters. At its core a turn-based affair operating on “you are what you do” progression system, you step into the shoes of ephemeral emperors facing inevitable succession. Will you defeat the returning Seven Heroes? Answer depends on a single question – is your head thicker than the metaphorical wall you're trying to smash through? Mild concussion was the price I was eventually strong-armed into paying and I'd do probably it again. Reading the manual is HIGHLY recommended.