Vidjama Gmaes Work

Script.

I played the demo for Romancing Saga 2: Revenge of the Seven on the Switch 2. This is a 2025 update for a 2024 remake of the 1993 title of a similar name, Romancing Saga 2 and you can play it on pretty much anything. Switch, PlayStation, PC, and definitely not the Xbox. The remake is certainly worth checking out if you live outside of Japan, given the original release never made it offshore. The Switch 2 upgrade costs $10 if you own the original version, and adds in higher resolution up to 1440p docked, faster load times, and a 60fps frame cap.

The demo is a beefy nearly two hour adventure through what I imagine being the game’s prologue. You select a character and then never see them in the demo. You take control of the king of Avalon Leon who is training his son Gerard to eventually take his place as ruler. There’s a whole plot building up about going to war against the seven heroes, which is a weird thing to say. They don’t really go into it much in the demo but I guess the heroes are evil or something. I don’t know why they’re called heroes. I’m sure they’ll be the major bosses.

Romancing Saga 2 has permadeath but you kinda have to work hard to get it, letting your characters fall in battle and then further take hits to the point where they die. Evidently in the full game this is more of a setback than a punishment and you can recruit new characters to replace them pretty easily. Also apparently your emperor can die and get replaced with a new heir that inherits abilities from the prior. Pretty cool. I am the kind of person who hates losing characters to permadeath even if they are expendable in the game’s mechanics. That’s just me though.

The battle system of course is where you’ll be spending a long time, this being an RPG. Battles are turn-based and Romancing Saga 2 gives you a good amount of information. You’ll have to beat up enemies to learn their weaknesses and the game catalogs them pretty handily. It’s perfectly serviceable in my opinion. Battles are frequent and mostly pretty quick to finish, with the occasional mini-boss fight and then the big boss fights. At least in the demo the fights were just about right for me. Not too short that they felt like pointless filler and not too long that they got tedious. Enemies are also clearly shown on the overworld and you can even sneak up on them to get some extra early damage.

One thing I really liked about the battle system is the way your characters learn new attacks. There’s a little lightbulb that pops up on the ability to tell you there’s something coming up. You’ll have to use that attack a handful of times before the new ability unlocks, but it does let you know your character is thinking up something. And then they use the attack immediately so you get to see the effects right away. It makes progression feel something in the way of natural as opposed to just gaining a new ability on level up.

And speaking of level up, your characters have a few separate level bars. They level up their health, battle points, and weapon skills separately.

I can also appreciate that the game restores your HP after every battle, so you don’t have to waste time and effort hoarding potions or spamming healing spells between fights. You do get a character that can spam healing spells during fights though. Romancing Saga does not restore your BP between battles, so you still have to use your special attacks wisely. There are points on the map where you restore your BP for free and that’s usually when you know the game is about to throw you into a boss battle.

Like I said the demo is roughly two hours and includes a good amount of cutscenes, fights, and more. You can save at the end of the demo and transfer your save data over to the full game should you buy it. Check it out on your console of choice, unless you’re on Xbox, and like and subscribe for more videos.