Romancing SaGa 2 Remake (Multiple, 2024), Part 1 - The Lion and the Sun

 

This is a really, really good remake. Wow. I think it flew under the radar to an extent. I really enjoyed playing the original version of this game and it's obscure enough that I'm surprised to see it remade. This is a bit of a hidden gem in the Squaresoft library, and the original RS2 is probably the best out of all the SaGa games outside of maybe SaGa Frontier. This series is very spotty, very hit-or-miss. Looking forward to seeing if this remake surges out ahead of Frontier to become the new SaGa best-in-series.

Rather than being HD-2D, they gave this one a full 3D makeover. It's different from most 3D remakes though, with a very distinct visual style that prioritizes light effects and really nice environments over framerate. On Switch you're stuck at 30 FPS or so, but damn, the visuals in this game sure do have a lot of personality regardless. I tried the PS5 version and that's at 60 FPS, presumably Switch 2 is also pulling that off. The visuals are so distinctive and classy that I didn't even particularly mind when it was 30. Anyway, I'm not going to cover this game for real until/unless I wrap up the SaGa series, but I'm down to check out the demo now and I might as well post it rather than leaving it for later.

Pretty nice cover art normally, definitely has a retro mood and brightness to it. But wait! This is one of those invertable covers, which almost always seem to look a lot nicer if inverted from the normal look:

Alright, now it's got that "SaGa Vibe". This is some of the most SaGa artwork I've ever seen, and this looks like it would be a good default cover for the game in Japan.

Yeah, very much feels like a relic from the 1990's Super Famicom era, unearthed in a modern form. The Seven Heroes are on full display, and I think I'm just going to keep the game like this. Looks great on a shelf. A game case with some class.

The actual game gets going, as we watch the story of the Seven Heroes who once saved the world from evil and ushered in the modern era. I don't know, these "heroes" seem pretty malevolent in this imagery. But hey, whatever the history books say.

"It says here in this history book that the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds!" -Norm Macdonald

A volcano erupts, as it seems the Seven Heroes have returned to the world.

In 536 A.D. a massive volcanic eruption blotted out the sun with ash, ushering in an age of darkness that some say lasted for a couple of decades. It was constantly night for the first year, and even after that it was always darker than normal. This caused the global temperature to drop, and the combination of the cold and the lack of sunlight made it incredibly difficult for crops to grow. Famine followed, along with a fast-spreading viral plague that was able to florish due to the lower temperatures. Flus and viruses always do a lot better in the winter. This became known as the Plague of Justinian, named after the Roman Emperor at the time who, quite frankly, could do very little to stop the literal famine and pestilence sweeping the lands.

Basically, civilization was ground to a halt and parts of Europe began to resemble Caelid more than anything else. Cats became treasured to the people of Constantinople, a trend that persists to this day, because of their ability to patrol the streets and murder plague-carrying vermin that would otherwise get into people's homes and infect them with plague. I guess the cats were resistant to this plague.

Another crazy thing about plagues... these viruses (Plague of Justinian, Black Plague a few centuries later) seemed to intentionally change the metabolism of fleas. So a flea would drink the blood of a plague-carrying person, and carry it to the next person it bit. What the virus would do is make the flea perpetually hungry by messing with its ability to digest, which means the flea would just bite and bite and bite, always needing more, and new victims. This sped up the plague's rate of travel by 3, 4, 5 times in a populated area, since the fleas would become so ravenous that they would carry out the plague's wishes. It's pretty insane. Rats were a double threat: They could bite you and transmit the plague, or carry fleas that jumped off and onto you and transmitted the plague.

Man's only ally in this hellish time...was the noble cat.

Think about the year 536 next time someone is complaining about how terrible life is in this time of literally zero hardship in comparison.

The character models in this game are kinda anime, but they're subdued and realistic, rather than the usual bright colorful (cartoonish, if you will) aesthetic found in most games with an anime style. It's sort of like the difference between Early Fire Emblem character designs and Late Fire Emblem character designs. It makes this game really stand out from the pack.

All is not well in the land, as monsters have begun terrorizing the populace. Weird how the monsters start popping up and terrorizing everyone right around when the Seven Heroes appear to save the day, every time. What are the odds?

At least one of the Seven Heroes is a woman, possibly two. We know Rocbouquet is a woman (and whatta woman), but then we've got this other one with wing-arms and breasts. The original game said this was a male, which isn't what my eyeballs are telling me. Maybe this game will finally clear that up.

Choosing a hero. Much like Dragon Quest IV, you don't actually play as the hero until the last chapter. DQIV has a massive last chapter, though, while in this game the last chapter is a relatively small fraction of the overall game.

In other words, we can't expect to see this woman again until pretty much the very end of the game. A lot of players probably go into this game wondering where the character they picked is.

We start in a bar, where a dainty bard weaves the DELIGHTFUL TALE of the great Emperors of the Varennes Empire. He then prances gaily to and fro!

Back in the Year 1000.

In the Year One Thou-saaaaand!

Emperor Leon, a mighty warrior, takes his weakling son Gerard out on a mission to train him in combat and bravery. Gerard prefers to read about battles, not fight them, leaving those duties to sterner men.

Leon is quite powerful, which explains why the Emperor himself would be out on a mission to begin with. Double Cut absolutely obliterates foes, doing 100ish damage at this point. Gerard, meanwhile, plinks foes with his 7 damage hits. Maybe he should try being a bard instead, like Prince Edward. You know, bring people's expectations down a bit for him being able to actually defend anybody.

Win a battle and you get points towards the HP threshold of every active character; reach that threshold and their HP goes up. Any abilities used in the battle will also have points added toward their own thresholds of going up in level. Adding meters and tangible points was a great idea, rather than having all of these things just seemingly-randomly go up on their own like past SaGa games.

While Emperor Leon can handily dispatch foes with no help, he's got a bunch of royal bodyguards that join at this point. Our mission? To clear out a cave of monsters that have been menacing the local people. Well, nobody can say this Emperor doesn't do his own dirty work.

They take up the Imperial Cross formation, which has the tank (in this case Bear) up front tanking the most damage, while the weakest character is kept in the back. This formation was good for the entire game, as I recall.

Gerard of course goes in the back where he can't botch things too much for us. "Lowered expectaaaationnnns!"

The menu screen of this remake is pretty amazing. You've got your current Emperor and his four minions, along with lots of sub-menus that give you lots of micromanagement possibilities, information, and every game option you can think of. Except for 60 FPS. But I'd rather have the high-contrast visuals we have than have a high framerate and flatter visuals. Also, there's no "invincibility mode" here so I'll need to actually take this game somewhat seriously in terms of learning how it works. Good.

The almanac section of the menu has tons of information, and looks so incredibly classy. Have I mentioned how much I like this remake? It's the best one I've played since Dragon Quest 2 HD-2D.

Besides Bear, we also have James, a greatsword-wielding knight. This guy hails from the very-respectable Light Infantry class that mostly exists to do damage but also has some survivability / tankage. Then we've got Therese:

She wields a bow and has incredible hips. Good luck finding an actual hourglass that's as perfectly-proportioned as Therese.

The first dungeon isn't much to write home about, and just has a serious of basic fights to teach you how the game works. Skills are still sparked by "glimmers" where a character figures out a better move mid-turn. It's still awesome. Improving your characters isn't just a mindless grind; you need to focus on what stats you want to pump up, and what movesets you want to expand on. One character might focus on bows, one might focus on swords, one might be all about spells. Anyone can cross over, too, but it's clear everyone has a particular forte.

The first cave ends with a boss fight against this blue devil. Therese loads her bow and fires a cruise missile to send him back to Jahannam.

Our heroes return to Varennes to a hero's welcome, with confetti and women's undergarments raining from the rooftops.

I almost can't imagine high-profile leaders in the real world being able to walk down the street waving at their people in the open like this, at this point. I suppose it's been that way to an extent since November 1963, it's just really in everyone's face the last couple years.

The other prince, the older one, is Victor. He's the one who is actually good at combat, and has an attitude. Considering they have you playing as Gerard at the outset, and this guy is clearly far more militaristic, it would seem like a heel turn is imminent for Victor, but nope.

The armor designs, and character designs in general, are tremendous. All around, this is such a massive improvement over playing, say, Romancing SaGa 1 that it defies belief. Having to do that one is a real bone of contention for me.

I don't know if I'd go THAT far.

::the doors to the throne room fly open as Shawn Michaels' theme plays::

...My God. Who is this bae?

This is the Seeress. Everyone expected an old wisened hag,but instead we got this voluptuous young thang.

The Seeress seeks an audience with the Emperor, and now that he's seen her, the Emperor is like "yeah, I'm gonna need you guys to clear out, thaaaanks"

There's no Empress, last anyone checked. At least, there wasn't this morning...

Now Gerard gets to go hang out in the fighter's hall, like that one lieutenant who tried to be "one of the boys" in Aliens.

"Gee, I feel safer already" says Bear.

"For example, I enjoy strumming my bow, sometimes for an hour or two at a time. Sometimes I let some other lucky person play with my bow too. We can strum it all afternoon if we're bored enough!"

Alright, excellent. I'll just stick with my sword and waving it around like a madman and hope that that works.

That's it for this one, just checking it out. I'll do more with this when I get back to the SaGa series, assuming I finish that up. Only a couple things left in it.

Since this post was pretty much just the intro until I eventually play the game for real, and ended up being really short, might as well throw in some other things I've been looking at:

Code Vein II has a great character creator. You can make a really attractive character here and then lounge about in a bathing shrine.

Those are some great hips. A+ character creator for Code Vein II. There's probably a pretty good game attached to this too, I don't know. I just played the demo, which is entirely "create a character and then lounge around".

Speaking of hips, Mortal Kombat 11. Had a great time with this in the past. Most of the best parts of this game are in Aftermath, the sequel DLC which is basically the last third of the story.

They do an especially good job with the characterization of Jax. Mostly I just like that this is the one MK game in the new era to tell an entirely new story, without being any sort of remake of an older one.

The time travel and the multiverse stuff get to be a bit much sometimes, but other times it's used to good effect. Characters like Johnny Cage and Jax interacting with their younger selves is some really compelling stuff from a story perspective.

Yakuza Kiwami 3. Seems like pretty much across-the-board negativity about this game online. It's an alright time, but it feels old and out of place at this point. We didn't really need a Kiwami 3 seven years after the last one, especially considering Yakuza 3 has a perfectly good HD remaster already. They did give us a pretty solid arcade, at least, which is where I did most of my doddering about with this game.

Nioh 2. Supposedly easier than the first (which I struggled a lot with and eventually beat), and you get to make your own character. I've heard many times over that this is pretty much the best Soulslike game outside of From Software (Lies of P is the only real competition), and I can't say I disagree. It really is awesome. However, even easier than the first, it's still too difficult to be fun at times (until you Git Gud...if you Git Gud).

The gameplay here is fast and furious, like Ninja Gaiden or a fighting game, and I think marrying fighting game expertise with Soulslike expertise would allow a person to have a great time with Nioh 2. Me? I just get beat up a lot. The Axe works decently well for making the game more like a Souls game. I prefer the slower, methodical gameplay of those, where I always have time to think and react, over the fast and furious stand-and-deliver fights of Nioh 2.

I like that your character portrait on the overworld screen changes depending on what you're wearing. They didn't have to do that at all.

There's also a Nioh 3 now and that's getting rave reviews. Since I can't seem to really master these games (and thus have the kind of fun with them that I want to), it would be a waste for me to play Nioh 3 and not get much out of it. I'll see if I can finish Nioh 2.

What's this doing here? I don't know what this is. I thought they only made six of these?

Here we've got the modern remake of Street Fighter II, where Cammy is repeatedly hurricanrana-ing poor Fei Long!

Why is he letting her do this over and over!

She's dragging him around the screen by the face! Chrissakes! Jeet Kune Do is no match for Cammy's groin-to-face-based offense!

Now she's slamming Fei Long on the ground repeatedly with her rock-hard thighs! THE MAN'S NEVER GOING TO WALK AGAIN!

"SUPLEX CITY, BITCH" says Cammy.

"YEAH! EAT IT!"

We also have Evil Ryu vs Violent Ken. Ultra Street Fighter II sure looks nice. I should do more with this.

After seeing the movie Challengers (really good movie) I needed to play a tennis game, which meant...

..going back to the original Mario Tennis on Game Boy Color.

Damn, I don't even know if that's PG!

A surprising amount of this game consists of RPG elements, going around talking to people, training to increase exp and stats. It's a shockingly deep game.

After a series of (very long and difficult) tennis matches, you eventually (and I mean eventually, this game took a while) reach championship-level tennis. Now you must face the Michael Jordan of the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario. The renaissance man who somehow succeeds at everything, the way we all wanted to be when we were kids. Surprised Mario hasn't found a way to become President Mario in one of these games.

Fitting, considering how fierce Tashi is in Challengers. Which was a damn good movie. Single-handedly made me interested in tennis.

Eventually I arrive at the grand pantheon of Mushroom Kingdom Tennis, and wonder how the hell this game was so much better than anybody would expect.

Seriously, Mario Tennis on the GBC, impressive game here, with solid tennis and some deep gameplay. Would certainly be near the top of the heap for worthwhile GBC games.

More Romancing SaGa 2 later...maybe.