Here’s a demo for the Square Enix RPG remake that sounds a bit like anime Crusader Kings
Fight one of seven heroes in Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge Of The Seven
The mad lads at Square Enix have released a demo for their remake of 90s RPG Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge Of The Seven, in which you play a whole dynasty of customisable protagonists fighting vengeful ancient heroes. It’s a turn-based battler with an empire-building component in which you play as several emperors in succession, passing on abilities and knowledge to your heir. In what I consider to be a poetic complementary flourish, you can also pass on save data from the demo to the full game. Look, this is what counts as “poetic” just before lunch on a Thursday.
The demo - which you can find on Steam - gives you the beginning of the tale, ending with a battle against Kzinssie, one of the aforesaid malingering heroes. New to SaGa and worrying that you’ll need to play the first one before sampling the remake? Be of good cheer, my child: according to producer Shinichi Tatsuke, Revenge Of The Seven “has no connection to the rest of the SaGa franchise in terms of worldview or storyline” and “is designed to be easy to pick up even for beginners” thanks to some apparently ample tutorials and a choice of difficulty modes.
We ran through some of the remake’s new features in our announcement post, but I cannot expect you, a weary denizen of websites, to swim back through the sluggish tides of the internet and peruse something we published a whole three months ago. As Revenge Of The Seven’s story demonstrates, time marches forever onward, grinding away at the cartilage in the very finger joints we might use to click on links to the past. So here’s Tatsuke’s just-circulated breakdown instead. I hope your finger joints are still functioning well enough to scroll the page:
There are a lot of new features in this remake! There are new episodes from the Seven Heroes’ pasts, the battle system has been updated with increased strategic elements through United Attacks and the timeline, we’ve added new areas for character growth with abilities, plus new classes, new formations, new techniques, and new spells. There’s also upgraded facility development and equipment crafting in the game, in addition to new mini-games, such as the University Exams and Mr. S Finder. I’m also happy to share we’ve added three difficulty modes to choose from, fully voiced event scenes with English and Japanese voice acting, the soundtrack has been completely redone, and we’ve included the option to toggle between the rearranged version and the original retro music… There’s quite a lot, and even more for players to discover in the full game!
Tatsuke also has some advice for battle – strike at enemy weaknesses to fill up an Overdrive gauge and perform a big-ass United Attack, basically – and some comments on the Lineage system, which is the aspect of Revenge Of The Seven I find most intriguing, inasmuch as it pongs of Crusader Kings.
“There is a limit to the techniques, spells and such powers that a single emperor can learn,” he notes. “However, these powers can be passed down through generations to emperors of various classes, which will ultimately help birth emperors with overwhelming powers. You’ll need to accumulate several generations worth of power and experience in order to defeat all of the Seven Heroes.”
OK, so it doesn't quite sound like there are the raw materials for another Gigaknight Excelsior here, but I live in hope of some kind of surprise in-breeding mechanic and a touch of filial backstabbing. Failing that, the combat system looks fairly jolly and there are a lot of classes and abilities to pick from.
The Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge Of The Seven remake will launch on 24th October 2024. The team behind it also worked on the Trials Of Mana remake, which appears to be popularly regarded as a “good game”. If you own one of those "Switch" things and have access to Nintendo's eShop, I hear the demo is also available there too.