O Magnificent Avalon!

So. Over the past 16 days, I’ve spent entirely too much time playing Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven [Footnote 1]. And if that alone isn’t an indicator of how much I love this game, then allow me to put it straight: Revenge of the Seven might be my favorite game on the Switch. To the uninitiated, Revenge of the Seven is the remake of the 1993 game Romancing SaGa 2. Imagine that. There was a previous remaster of the game in 2017, but this is a kind of definitive edition which also brings the game into 3D [Footnote 2]. Extending the description, Revenge of the Seven is a turn-based RPG of a rather classical bent. It’s not without its unique flairs, but the base gameplay is fairly by the books. As for the story, the main premise is thus: long ago, the Seven Heroes defended the world from a great calamity and hordes of fiends. They vanished upon their victory, but it was said they would return the next time the world faced danger. And now that time has come. But they are the danger. Warped into monsters, they attacked the world seeking revenge for some unknown transgressions. As the Emperor of Avalon, they present an existential threat to your people. It falls to you to defend your people from these fallen heroes.

So what do I love so much about this game? First and foremost, the battle system. As stated before, it is rather by the books. You have a party of five, the enemies tend to run in groups of up to four. Every combatant has a movement speed which determines their place in combat order and a given round has each combatant go one at a time. Your characters can wield two weapons at a time and up to three schools of magic and enemies have weaknesses to certain weapons or magics, thus focusing combat around uncovering and targeting those weaknesses. Striking a weakness not only deals more damage, but fills the overcharge gauge which will let two units attack as one, boosting their damage strength and potentially bypassing turn initiative. But that’s just the beginning.

Part of what truly makes the game shine is its form of progression. Rather than gain experience to level up and increase stats that way, a given character’s stats are static. The only stats that can increase are their hit-points and battle-points — effectively mana — which will both gain a few points after several battles, more or less. Progression instead focuses on proficiencies. At the end of each battle, a character will gain experience [Footnote 3] which is divided among whatever weapons and magic school they used during the fight. The higher a proficiency is, the more damage its associated attacks will do and the more spells or techniques a character will be able to use with it. In that same way, when using a weapon’s attacks or certain techniques with it, there will be a chance to ‘glimmer’ a new technique off of it. In this way, you are increasingly rewarded for investing in a particular proficiency [Footnote 4].

What this particular system of building weapon proficiencies means is that you can effectively build any class however you want. They won’t necessarily be good at everything and — for example — your Heavy Infantry armored knight will never be as good at magic as one of your Court Mages, but it allows for a lot of customization. Classes will just about always be best in their default proficiencies, but if you’re missing a particular weapon in your party, you can pivot and build someone without that proficiency to fill the niche — especially in favor of one that you’re otherwise lacking. And on the other hand, with magic, everyone can use it, which opens possibilities for support options. Sure, you’re Heavy Infantry might not be good at damaging magic, but giving them buff or defensive spells which offer more static bonuses can be useful.

This mechanic is then in turn refined by the inheritance system. Perhaps the key conceit of the game is the inheritance system. Since the Seven Heroes present so great a threat no one person could hope to stop them, the Emperor of Avalon relies upon Inheritance Magic to pass down their strength and hopes to the future generations. What this means is that every once and a while, you’ll hit markers which force a timeskip. Your current Emperor and their party will, well, die of old age and you’ll choose a new Emperor to lead the realm. Every character class you have currently unlocked will then have their proficiencies bumped to match the Imperial Standing — a kind of aggregate proficiency level that takes its experience from every character’s actions in every fight. So not only do you invest in a given character’s proficiency, you invest in that proficiency for every class for the next generation. In that same way, spells, techniques, and evasions [Footnote 5] learned are stored at the end of every generation and can then be taught to all characters in every class, as long as they meet certain proficiency requirements. What this does mean is that it’s harder to build proficiencies outside of a class’ bases — they won’t get bumped up to Imperial Standing — but ever bit of progression you make contributes to future gameplay. There’s no real waste since the principle experience you build extends beyond any individual character or class.

This inheritance system also touches somewhat on a bit of strategy to the game. Every character has two pools of ‘hitpoints’. The first, HP, is a very traditional form of hitpoints. It’s the damage you take in battle and when you hit 0, you’re incapacitated for the rest of the battle unless someone revives you. If everyone hits 0, then you wipe. It’s impactful, but since it restores fully after each battle, it’s not the biggest threat. But what it does matter a lot for the second type of ‘hitpoints’. Each character also has a much smaller pool of Life Points — I think the highest you’ll ever see is 23 and that’s absurdly high — and this is that characters life in total. If they hit 0 LP, they’re dead and you lose all the progress you made on their class for that generation [Footnote 6]. And you lose 1 LP every time a you hit 0 HP. So there is something of a clock put on your fights; there’s only so much unmitigated damage you can take before you lose all of your progress on a character. And all your progress on a generation if you’re not careful and get too many characters killed. You do have to think about how much you’re willing to risk a character when they’re on low LP and what kind of challenges to approach given the resources you have. Which makes the combat all the more interesting.

Then there’s one more piece of customization. Each class has a unique ability that it can learn and then master after being used enough. Mastered abilities can then be equipped to another character [Footnote 7] allowing you to mix and match some of the unique features of the classes you’ve unlocked. This lets you play around with combinations to help min-max your party further. For instance, the Ranger (F) has the ability Corrupter which increases the odds of a status condition landing. But if you decide you don’t want a Ranger in the party, you could equip Corrupter to one of your mages so they can use the low-level, non-damaging status Techniques on their weapons while focusing on getting damage across with magic. Or if you find Heavy Infantry a bit too slow or magically frail for your tanking duties, you can equip their Auto-Parry to another sword-user so they can defend themselves more easily. It allows you, the player, to build your party in so many ways, to your own preferences.

Now how well is this balanced? Eh… It varies. Along with the Imperial Standing, there’s also the Monster Strength. The more battles you win, the more Monster Strength will rise (along with the money you get as battle drops) and the average enemies will become more difficult proportionally. This is broadly intended to discourage grinding and does help make sure that there’s a certain amount of challenge throughout the game, but… well… Since your stats are static, equipment tends to contribute more to your power than anything else. And once you reach a certain level of equipment and specialization across proficiencies and abilities, most fights tend to be somewhat trivial. I don’t personally find this a bad thing, since it lets you bask in the glory of your achievement — makes it really feel like your efforts have been worthwhile and you’ve built up your strength — but it still does mean the difficult graph of the game is more a parabola than a line. Broadly. On the other hand, most of the important bosses also keep up with the Monster Strength. So you never necessarily out-level any of the bosses, but… There is still a bit of over-equipping.

Then there’s the story. Now, granted, the story is fairly subtle, one might say. The focus of the game is far more on the combat and building up your party. But that’s not to say it’s bad. Most of the focus of the story is more on the individual problems facing each region of the world rather than any linear tale. The world is very open to you after the tutorial, more or less, so there can’t really be a linear tale. The connecting thread is that the problems all have their roots in the danger posed by the Seven Heroes, but that’s about it. These individual segments are very good, however, and often show the repercussions of the choices you make across generations; if quests aren’t addressed in a timely manner, then sometimes they will mutate and change their circumstances. And often times, you won’t have the time to address every quest before you in a timely manner. You, as the Emperor, have to make the choices you feel best and accept the consequences of these choices.

Furthermore, the heaviest chunk of story you get in the game is in the memories of the Seven Heroes. Magical terminals can be found scattered across the world which will each give a small cutscene detailing the background of the main villains you face. In that way, you can learn about the rise and downfall of these people who were once called heroes. Again, it’s not necessarily the most surprising or complex tale, but it is effective nonetheless. It helps paint a certain level of tragedy to otherwise monstrous figures. It certainly doesn’t excuse their actions, but it is enough to make what happened to them genuinely sorrowful.

In that same way, there’s a thread of sorrow throughout the most notable Emperors you play as — the first two and the Final Emperor. The first two are thrown into a conflict they are ill-prepared for and must struggle with all their might for a future they know they’ll never see. Even as you make it through the tutorial and achieve the first few victories for Avalon, you as the player and they as characters both know that there is no happy ending for them. They will inevitably die before the battle is won and must give their entire lives without any real reward. On the other hand, the Final Emperor discovers very soon after taking the throne that they are the last hope Avalon has. The culmination of generations of effort is thrust upon them and there is only victory or the world’s destruction. There’s a certain poignancy to the weight of expectations placed upon them as both the strongest soldier Avalon ever had and one who was never especially given another option. They chose to be one among many only to find out every responsibility was theirs. Particularly with what the final cutscene shows of their ultimate end.

All in all, I do think this game isn’t for everyone. If you need a strong story to carry you through a game, this probably isn’t the one for you. If you don’t like a very classical turn-based system, then you won’t like this. But if character customization and min-maxing appeals to you, this will almost certainly be the game for you. And if you just want a bit more of a traditional fantasy, this might appeal to you to. The aesthetic and vibes are just about as classic as they get. For my part, I can’t recommend it enough.

Footnote 1: To the tune of an average of 4 hours a day.
Footnote 2: Something I’d usually complain about, but I had no prior connection here. So. Hypocrisy it is!
Footnote 3: Tech Points, but that’s a quibble.
Footnote 4: “It’s like Final Fantasy II, but good.” — the Twisted Jerk
Footnote 4A: Oi! FFII is awesome and I’ll hear no bad about it.
Footnote 5: Oops. Never mentioned this. When taking enemy attacks, you’ll also sometimes Glimmer an evasion to that attack. Henceforth, you’ll never be hit by that same attack so long as you have its evasion equipped.
Footnote 6: I think. I’ll admit that I played conservatively enough that I didn’t let anyone die. Except for one time, but that was a bit of an unusual circumstance and we’re not going to talk about what happened there. Certainly in that case I lost everything glimmered on the character and all their proficiency progress. I think. I kinda didn’t use that class again because I was a bit disheartened.
Footnote 7: As long as the original class isn’t in use. Basically, you can only equip any given ability once.
Footnote 8: If you’re curious, this was my retinue heading into the final battle (minor spoilers, I guess).
Footnote 9: Also if you’re curious, this was my imperial timeline when I hit credits (definitely spoilers here).