Status jademonkey Oct 18, 2023
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 …
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.
