Another remake of the Super Famicom RPG, which in turn had a mobile port/remake several years back, Romancing SaGa 2 gives it a major visual upgrade with 3D-rendered characters, animations and voiceover for all major characters in the story. Per SaGa standards, it also plays with RPG mechanics in some clever ways; the series' trademark LP system returns once again, though unlike previous games, there is no way to recover it - once a character's LP drops to 0, they're gone for good. In the case of the protagonist, this also ties in to the Succession mechanic - once they die or retire after a set period of time (and events completed), they choose a successor to inherit all of the skills and levels they have earned over their lifetime, which in turn get passed down to another character later on, gradually allowing the player to overcome progressively stronger challenges they wouldn't have been able to in earlier generations. Skill levels replace the earlier entries' pure randomness, allowing the player greater chance to unlock ("glimmer") new skills as their level increases. HP and BP likewise have levels and grant guaranteed gains once they fight in enough battles. RS2 also incorporates some elements of a grand strategy game like Civ or Heroes of Might and Magic; conquering territory (by defeating enemies and completing quests) affects your revenue after each battle; and yes, it can fall into the negatives. Revenue of course is spent to upgrade your characters' equipment, but can also be used to upgrade your castle town, adding new amenities like a smithy to buy newer gear or an Incantations lab to shuffle learned spells or synthesize new ones; these are not completed right away as soon as you invest in them, but require a certain amount of time to pass before they become available. Per series standards it's a very open-ended experience; exploring every nook and cranny to find useful gear, money and potential leads for more quests is a key part of the experience. The end result is a game with a lot of small-scale battles and dungeon crawling, with an emphasis on steadily upgrading your team over a long period of time to overcome difficult bosses and conquer more territory; essentially an odd combination of Japanese RPG gameplay and grand strategy design tropes with the curious absence of any large-scale war battles. I'm not convinced its a fully successful experiment, but that's just the nature of SaGa - culling elements from western RPGs to make something that, for good or ill, is quite unique. I can't even really give it a hard recommendation for that reason - if what I've described sounds interesting to you, give it a try. If not, well, there's plenty of other SaGa games to try out, which all have their own unique blend of odd, disparate elements that may or may not come together in the end.
Developer: Square Enix, Xeen
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: 2024
Platforms: PC, Switch, PlayStation 4, Playstation 5