Romancing SaGa 2
Main game
3.20 average rating based on 30 ratings
- Developers
- Square
- Publishers
- Square, Square Enix
- Franchises
- SaGa
- Series
- Romancing SaGa, SaGa
- Platforms
- Android, Legacy Mobile Device, Nintendo Switch, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Super Famicom, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Wii, Xbox One, iOS
- Genres
- Role-playing (RPG)
- Themes
- Fantasy
- Steam
- View on Steam
Release Dates
User Stats
How Long Is Romancing SaGa 2?
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jademonkey's review of Romancing SaGa 2
After finishing the game, my thoughts on Romancing SaGa 2 haven't changed much from the status I made the other day.
There is very little story. There are tons of mechanics, but none of them are explained. There were quite a few instances in quests where I'm sure I would have gotten stuck for hours if I didn't consult a guide due to the old school lack of reasonable clues. The combat could be unfairly brutal on a regular basis. While there were no random encounters, screens were frequently flooded with far too many enemies, making some dungeons an absolute slog. The PC port controlled and ran rather poorly, having strange input issues that would cause the game to register many extra button presses at times.
Even with all of the fairly major issues, I ended up getting absolutely sucked into the stupid game. The story telling for the scenarios was quite basic, but had a charm to it that resonated with me. Combat was difficult, but had a surprising amount to offer for an RPG from 1993. I've always enjoyed SaGa style character progression, and RS2 was no exception. Building the empire through projects, research, and recruiting new units …
After finishing the game, my thoughts on Romancing SaGa 2 haven't changed much from the status I made the other day.
There is very little story. There are tons of mechanics, but none of them are explained. There were quite a few instances in quests where I'm sure I would have gotten stuck for hours if I didn't consult a guide due to the old school lack of reasonable clues. The combat could be unfairly brutal on a regular basis. While there were no random encounters, screens were frequently flooded with far too many enemies, making some dungeons an absolute slog. The PC port controlled and ran rather poorly, having strange input issues that would cause the game to register many extra button presses at times.
Even with all of the fairly major issues, I ended up getting absolutely sucked into the stupid game. The story telling for the scenarios was quite basic, but had a charm to it that resonated with me. Combat was difficult, but had a surprising amount to offer for an RPG from 1993. I've always enjoyed SaGa style character progression, and RS2 was no exception. Building the empire through projects, research, and recruiting new units was very cool, despite the limited depth to the individual systems. Playing a string of successive emperors, each inheriting the powers of the past was really neat and led to a feeling of playing as the empire, rather than individual characters. That said, I accidentally chose a lady rogue named Beaver as my emperor due to the input issues and she went on to found the most important institution in the land -- the magic university. That's a character I'll never forget!
I actually had more fun with Romancing SaGa 2 than I did any of its SNES Final Fantasy contemporaries, including 6. Actually, to throw out a real hot take -- it might just be my favorite SNES traditional JRPG now.
A hidden master piece
Before playing this game I thought I knew everything you should know about JRPGs, how mistaken I was. Obviously I knew about the saga series, my first contact was with a PlayStation demo disc featuring a saga frontier trailer, I also knew about Romancing saga 3 as it was a popular translation project. But I never gave it the opportunity to the series, until now.
Romancing saga 2 feels so fresh that I can barely believe that it has more than 20 years. This game is all about gameplay and making your own experience (you can do things in whatever order). The gameplay is really deep and the difficulty is sometimes brutal, but if you invest time in the game and really think about what you have learned throughout, then you can conquer it, and that is so rewarding and addicting.
The game is also good in other aspects: the story is ok (somewhat typical but fun). Music is really good. The remaster graphics are really gorgeous, all the scenarios have been redone while most character graphics not (wich gives a retro vibe), and overall the game has really cool aesthetics and small graphical details (battle poses are so so …
Before playing this game I thought I knew everything you should know about JRPGs, how mistaken I was. Obviously I knew about the saga series, my first contact was with a PlayStation demo disc featuring a saga frontier trailer, I also knew about Romancing saga 3 as it was a popular translation project. But I never gave it the opportunity to the series, until now.
Romancing saga 2 feels so fresh that I can barely believe that it has more than 20 years. This game is all about gameplay and making your own experience (you can do things in whatever order). The gameplay is really deep and the difficulty is sometimes brutal, but if you invest time in the game and really think about what you have learned throughout, then you can conquer it, and that is so rewarding and addicting.
The game is also good in other aspects: the story is ok (somewhat typical but fun). Music is really good. The remaster graphics are really gorgeous, all the scenarios have been redone while most character graphics not (wich gives a retro vibe), and overall the game has really cool aesthetics and small graphical details (battle poses are so so cool).
If you're looking for something fresh, challenging and deep look no further.
This dumb game is distracting me from my Spooktober playthroughs. In a series known for being obtuse and frustrating, Romancing Saga 2 really takes the cake (n.b., I haven't played Minstrel Song or Unlimited SaGa yet lol). It's extraordinarily easy to fail a quest by just talking to people at the wrong time or in the wrong order or visiting a region at the wrong time. Absolutely none of the mechanics are explained, and many critical elements are non-obvious (e.g. sit on the throne to trigger kingdom upgrades). Fairly often, a random battle can just include a boss level enemy and be a danger for wiping your party, even though you were doing just fine with the other random battles. I'm also fairly certain the remaster version on Steam is running on an android emulator and has random desynchs or something, causing a single input to happen multiple times which can result in the wrong commands being input in a boss fight.
Still, though, I'm having a good time on the whole. I looked up plenty of advice before I started, and don't hesitate to check a walkthrough if I feel like I'm missing something. I'm still bungling things here …
This dumb game is distracting me from my Spooktober playthroughs. In a series known for being obtuse and frustrating, Romancing Saga 2 really takes the cake (n.b., I haven't played Minstrel Song or Unlimited SaGa yet lol). It's extraordinarily easy to fail a quest by just talking to people at the wrong time or in the wrong order or visiting a region at the wrong time. Absolutely none of the mechanics are explained, and many critical elements are non-obvious (e.g. sit on the throne to trigger kingdom upgrades). Fairly often, a random battle can just include a boss level enemy and be a danger for wiping your party, even though you were doing just fine with the other random battles. I'm also fairly certain the remaster version on Steam is running on an android emulator and has random desynchs or something, causing a single input to happen multiple times which can result in the wrong commands being input in a boss fight.
Still, though, I'm having a good time on the whole. I looked up plenty of advice before I started, and don't hesitate to check a walkthrough if I feel like I'm missing something. I'm still bungling things here and there that I don't look up, but it's allowing me to enjoy the really cool dynastic approach where your party is constantly changing as you finish quests or just run into a full party wipe. The realm building through research, projects, annexing new lands, and making new allies is also really neat, even if there's not a ton of depth to be had. This structure of following the story of a nation rather than individual characters is such a cool departure from the norm. Of course, it has all of the SaGa charm in sparking abilities, finding cool items, stumbling on weird little stories, etc. as well. Battles are challenging enough and have enough options to be interesting, even if some maps are overcrowded with enemies to the point where I'd almost prefer random encounters. Also, the remaster allows you to enter new game plus at any point, retaining much of your power if you happen to fall behind the curve, which is frankly fairly likely given how obtuse many of the systems are.
All that said, I give it a 50/50 on whether I'm able to finish the game or get annoyed enough that I just decide to move on haha.