The early days of video game translations — and the hesitation to release or translate certain games — meant that there's a whole generation of lost classics. Everyone knows of SquareSoft's classics like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, but during the SNES days, it had a whole bunch of incredibly ambitious games that never saw the light of day. Romancing SaGa 2 was one of these, a beloved cult hit that suffered from never seeing an English translation until decades later, when its obscure gameplay and relative obscurity never gave it a chance to shine. Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a full-on remake of this classic game, and it shows exactly why the title is so memorable.

Romancing SaGa 2 is set in the Empire of Avalon, which is ruled by Emperor Leon. One day, the empire comes under attack by one of the Seven Heroes. The Seven had once saved the world, but they have returned centuries later to terrorize the land. Their attack leaves Leon and his heir dead, and the youngest prince is forced to stand against legendary heroes. Thankfully, he's granted a special kind of magic that allows the memories and skills of one emperor to be passed to the next, generation through generation. The royal family of Avalon must fight through the generations to stop the former heroes once and for all.

Romancing SaGa 2 is still an SNES game at heart, and that means its plot is generally straightforward. The script has been touched up, and it's focused on quick and accessible stories with simple but memorable characters. The Seven are distinctive, and the remake fleshes them out with hidden memories that show their previously unseen history — how they became heroes and how they eventually fell. It's not as big and bombastic of a plot as some modern RPGs, but the scale and scope are ambitious enough to keep it engaging.

The only issue about the story is that the "generation" concept makes little sense. In theory, hundreds of years pass between each generation, and in some cases, that is reflected, and in other cases it isn't. You may see a bridge built between time shifts, but the guy standing next to the bridge is the same one from beforehand. On the other hand, a guy not far away may have the same name, but he's the 12th of his name rather than the 10th. Quests left unfinished will sit for a hundred years, and in one case, I got a time skip. Thankfully, the quest-giver was glad to treat my new emperor as if they'd just been there yesterday.

To the game's credit, this inconsistency doesn't sour things. It embraces the weirdness wholeheartedly and makes little to no effort to poke holes at its own lack of logic. The time scale of the game is so huge (upward of several thousand years) that you can just shrug and accept the oddness — or not. The story focuses on the mechanics, the weird interactions, and the nigh-immortal Seven and your conflicts with them. I wish there were more of a sense of progress, but that was a complaint I had with the original version, too.

The basic structure of Romancing SaGa 2 is surprisingly freeform. Once you get past the earlier tutorial areas, you're functionally given the world to explore, with your goals are to form alliances with the various nations of the world and find and defeat each of the Seven Heroes. This is done through a huge variety of quests and optional content. You can basically choose a direction to walk in, and you'll find all kinds of things to do. It's impossible to see everything in a single playthrough, so you're encouraged to do what looks fun.

SaGa 2 does have a time limit. Rather than a traditional time limit, you have an invisible one that only progresses when you complete certain events. Once you complete such an event, your current emperor's adventure will end, and you'll skip a somewhat random amount of time into the future. Once this occurs, certain events will progress, new areas may open up, or things may change. It will take many generations to find all Seven Heroes because some Heroes might not come out of hiding unless certain events have been triggered.

The original version of Romancing SaGa 2 wasn't user-friendly when it came to these quests. It was designed around you exploring, potentially missing things, and even failing quests. The game adds a whole bunch of user interface options to make things easier, including a useful journal and icons on the map to show you exactly where to go. These options can be deactivated if you'd rather have the thrill of exploration, but they're a very nice addition.

Romancing SaGa 2's combat system is straightforward. It's a turn-based combat system where allies and enemies take turns attacking one another. Similar to Octopath Traveler, every enemy has a specific set of weaknesses that you can target that are tied either to one of the weapon types or one of the elements. Each character can carry two weapon types and three magic types at any given time. Hitting a weakness does more damage and is a central part of the combat system.

SaGa 2 still has an SNES feel, but it also has unique elements to help it stand out. One such element is the Glimmer system, which lets you unlock new abilities and attacks mid-combat. Generally, each character has specific preferences to various weapons or elements, and by using those weapons or elements in combat, you'll level up. Once you level up enough, you gain the ability to "glimmer" an ability, which randomly occurs in combat; there's a greater chance it will occur against stronger foes. Unique to the remake is a clear indication and menu that shows who can glimmer what, which attacks are used to glimmer, and how likely it is for your attack to glimmer a new attack. This makes learning and mastering new skills a lot easier.

The skills are largely distinct and interesting. There's only a small handful of skills that amount to "hit harder," and skills can offer different advantages and disadvantages. When using a bow, for example, you might have one skill that does critical hits to Beast enemies, another that does no damage but can stun an enemy, a third that hits all foes at once, a fourth that paralyzes foes, and so on. There are sword skills that function as counters or magic spells that can nullify all enemy ranged attacks. My favorite is a Fire spell which engulfs your character's arm in a flaming dragon aura that unlocks an entirely new series of martial arts moves. Collecting a variety of different skills is surprisingly addictive. You also gain the ability to glimmer evasion moves that make your character functionally immune to certain enemy attacks.

New to the remake is the Overdrive system. If you hit an enemy's weakness or score a Critical Hit, you'll gain Overdrive. Once the meter is full, you can trigger a special combo attack between two of your party members; the combo attack doesn't cost MP to use and does double damage. As the game progresses, you can do longer chains or save up multiple bars of Overdrive to unleash more complex combos, but to do so, you really need to master building your characters.

Romancing SaGa 2 has a tremendous list of different character classes, and each is distinct. They all have different stats, different preferences in weapons and abilities, and a distinct role. Some classes are locked to specific genders, while others may have a male and female version with different looks and abilities. New to this version is that each also has a unique ability. The tanky Heavy Infantry gets a chance to block attacks as long as he's wielding a short sword. The dirt-living Moles are immune to earth damage. The sneaky female Vagabond can occasionally steal two of an item. Not only do these abilities make characters stand out from one another, but once you use a character enough, you can master their ability, allowing you to equip it to a second character for further customization.

Another important aspect is the fact that the game takes place over multiple generations. Characters are shared between generations in that characters of the same class will begin with the same rough learned levels as the character from the previous generation, but the same class isn't necessarily the same character. Certain characters have glimmer attacks that their ancestor didn't, and as you gradually level up characters and skills, the baseline combat prowess of character classes goes up. You're strongly rewarded for swapping characters rather than sticking with one. In addition, any skills or abilities mastered in the previous generation will become permanently learned by your empire, so you can teach them to any character whose skills are high enough.

The exception is your emperor. Every time the generation swaps (aside from the first and last times), you get to choose an emperor from all of your unlocked classes. Whoever gets chosen as the emperor will inherit all of the abilities and powers of the previous emperor in addition to their own abilities. This compounds until your emperor is an unstoppable force. Likewise, each class in the game has a formation they can learn upon being made emperor. These formations give characters a passive boost in battle, ranging from making enemies target specific characters to making your entire party act first in combat. The more varied your lineage, the better your final emperor will be.

All of this sounds like a lot, but it's important because Romancing SaGa 2 can be a very punishing game. Enemies hit extremely hard, and you often need to have properly built characters to stand a chance against them, especially in some of the toughest fights. Your characters refill HP after every battle but have a limited amount of LP (life points), which goes down every time they die in a fight. If it reaches zero, then it's goodbye for that character. If your entire party gets wiped, not only do you lose your cast, but you have to pick a new emperor. There's a lower difficulty level mode (Normal) and an Easy mode for those who don't fancy that level of stress.

Romancing SaGa 2 has some new features, such as a lengthy hide-and-seek questline that involves the series mascot Mr. S and yields powerful bonuses. The bulk of these new features are largely polish and a more coherent and cleaner user interface, which goes a long way toward making the game accessible. I've always loved Romancing SaGa 2, but the remake has improvements on almost every level. Everything from making glimmers clearer to making it easier to discover quests just makes the game a lot easier to pick up and play without feeling like you need to open up an FAQ.

With these improvements, SaGa 2 is easily the best SaGa game to date. It retains all of the esoteric elements of the franchise, and the gameplay mechanics have enough polish and clarity. It's easy to recommend to people who would usually find the franchise to be inaccessible. The sense of freedom in exploration is bolstered by the fact that you feel like you've got a lot more solid ground under your feet. Like the similarly remade Live a Live, the Romancing SaGa 2 remake emphasizes the game's ahead-of-its-time elements without losing any of the charm or flavor.

It helps that the visuals are fantastic. The adorably dumpy little sprites of the original version of the game have been translated into lovely and colorful fully 3D models, and they're located in lush and beautiful environments. Weird enemies and cool designs have been revamped in a way that is both nostalgic and refreshing. It's night and day when compared to the very low budget of SaGa: Emerald Beyond. The music is also amazing, with fantastic remixes of great songs; it does wonders to set the tone and mood.

Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is everything a remake should be. It polishes and shines the strongest elements of the original game while adding just enough modernization and new features to make it feel accessible to a newer audience. Everything from the gameplay to the graphics absolutely sparkles, and it is easy to understand why Romancing SaGa 2 was a cult classic. Only a somewhat thin SNES-style story holds backthe game slightly, and even that is a minor complaint. In a year filled with incredibly strong RPGs, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven might still be one of the best.

Score: 9.0/10