Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven

初めてRPGをやる方にも、慣れた方にも、往年のサガシリーズファンにもお勧めします。ゲーム内難易度はいつでも変えられるし、タイムライン方式のターン制バトルなので深く考える時間もあります。あとシナリオはスキップしないほうがいいと思います。サガシリーズの中でも特にいいシナリオだと思うので！

Just buy it, it's a fun game. Not quite sure how to word it, but I've always wanted to play more JRPGs like DQ8 or Eternal Sonata, but sadly most good ones (I assume anyway) are locked behind 7th gen consoles. On PC it's slim pickings if you want an actually fun JRPG that captures the essence of those older games that came out in the 2000s. Those more light-hearted, cartoony/cell shaded JRPGs that just feel "right". DQ11 in theory is just that, but only on a surface level, hence I was very disappointed when I played it last year, after half a decade of waiting for a larger sale. It's very mediocre and lacks passion for pretty much everything from the writing and plot, to the graphics and gameplay. Basically it's not even half as good as DQ8. I am not super fond of 2D either, so while there's a ton of 2D DQ games, including a couple ones on PC too, I just don't really care for those. This game I came across by pure chance when someone talked about it in the general discussions and I checked it out, and there were a few hours left before the sale ended. Ended up buying it with a couple of minutes left on the sale. In short, with the preamble out of the way, the game's overall very good. Combat feels rewarding and challenging enough even on normal difficulty, and the difficulty you can also change pretty much anytime you want to. There's a wide variety of classes, attacks/skills, spells and special techs your characters can learn. During combat your party's also in a formation, which influences your overall stats and how likely/unlikely enemies are to attack/hit certain characters. With one formation for example the character in the back's harder to hit, and the character in the front is more likely to be attacked but also gains defensive resistances. Certain attacks also have special AoEs, so like, maybe a shock attack that rips through your party as a straight line, hitting the front, center and back. Some of your attacks are like this too, like a lightning whirlwind that hits horizontally in one row. Enemies as always also have weaknesses and resistances, but hitting attacks with the former builds a special meter that you can use for tag team attacks, where the current character attacks and the next character in the order follows up right away (using up their upcoming turn, but skipping an enemy's turn, if there's an enemy turn in-between). Also, health restores between battles, "BP" (used for most attacks) doesn't. Before most/all dangerous encounters you get a save point and a BP restoration point though. Enemies are also visible in-world and you can attack them early for a slight advantage, there's no random battles. The story progression is also non-linear, so you may get quests at village A and not B, while during another playthrough it's switched. You can choose where to go and which area(s) to tackle in which order, which can change the outcome of the story up ahead. Every now and then you're also forced to pass on the crown (and all of your skills/stats) to a new lead character. The first time this happened the game forced me, but the second time I did it on my own accord. At any time you can go to your throne and choose to pass on the crown and reign over the kingdom to another character, which I think is semi-random(?), between some of your party members, or some of the available party members you can hire at taverns. And yeah, at taverns you can switch out party members, in the castle in the trainings facility you can learn (old) skills and techs on new characters. Oh and I forgot to mention, skills generally are discovered mid-combat. Certain attacks/skills will have a lightbulb next to them, which means that using it right now can trigger a new skill to be executed and then permanently learned too. Besides that, there's other buildings too, like a smithy that lets you commission new weapons with found materials, and an academy where you can learn (and research I believe) spells too. These buildings have to be built first though, which requires funds and a bit of time. And yeah.. that's what the game is.. you battle a lot with your posse, learn, discover new skills and help villagers and Co. around the area to expand your kingdom's reach, which in turn lets you upgrade your own castle and town even further, and increases your passive income too. The end goal's to defeat all seven "heroes" I assume, but I reckon there's more to it. So far I've expanded to only a tiny bit of the world map, maybe 15%, and I've beaten two of the heroes. It's fun to tackle quests and locations in my own way and shape the story through it. Now, some technical information: The game runs incredibly well, even though it's UE4. Overall the graphics definitely don't match 2024 (year of release) standards, but that doesn't really matter to me. The game overall has a nice artstyle, nice lighting (especially inside houses when the light comes through the windows) and the only thing I'd criticize really is the lack of a proper resolution slider and the fact that sometimes, sometimes, I can see LOD pop-in. Now, I think both of those things can actually be fixed with UUU. UUU unlocks the console in this game, so you can use commands like r.screenpercentage to change the render resolution. Haven't tested if it sticks between re-launches, but it's definitely nicer to use a higher render res to make the game look sharper, more detailed. Anti-aliasing doesn't really benefit from the increased render res, at leasty with TAA on. It's roughly the same, just a lot sharper with more details if you render at 150-200%. LODs may be able to be changed too via UUU, I haven't tried that yet. Mainly because LOD pop-in is pretty rare and I am rarely noticing it. Just editing the ini/cfg files, instead of using UUU, may work too, haven't tried it either. Other than that.. Game's 20GB installed and also a 20GB download. They let you rebind your controls, even for controller, and also toggle/change various HUD elements. Oh also, NO DENUVO!!! Thank the heavens. Thank the lord Square doesn't put Denuvo on every single game they put out, just their bigger IPs. Hopefully it's zero one day. The UI overall is very stylish and adds to the game's flair and artstyle. I do wish the attack/skill list was "taller", fitting 5 or even 6 attacks instead of just 4, making it a bit nicer to navigate, but eh. The options, specially just the options aka settings, could've also been better, layout-wise. Gameplay, graphics, controls and so on, it's all in a giant list. Your cursor position is remembered between exiting the menu, but still, would've been nicer to have sub menus for gameplay, audio, graphics and controls. But again, those issues aside I love the UI too, it looks stylish and for the most part works very well in most menus. Buuut yeah. Game's great. Is it great because it's a remake/re-imagining of a 20+ year old SNES game, and most core gameplay elements carried over from it? Most likely. But I think that there's more to it and the developers of this game, xeen Inc., did an amazing job with this old IP. It's very clear that they cared and this wasn't just a half-assed rush job like DQ11 or so many other games being remade these days. There was a lot of passion put into this game, from the voice acting to the UI design and everything else, really. Here's hoping Square noticed how well they did and these guys get to remake another SaGa game in the future, or maybe even make an original one. There's actually quite a few of these SaGa games and I cannot wait to see what might be the next title they get to work on and put out there for us to play. I am really stoked. [spoiler]Here's also hoping Square lets em remake DQ8 and improve it with all the 3DS QoL enhancements, on top of adding new things. That would be lovely.[/spoiler] Me to Square: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3781982745