After finishing the game, my thoughts on Romancing SaGa 2 haven't changed much from the status I made the other day.
There is very little story. There are tons of mechanics, but none of them are explained. There were quite a few instances in quests where I'm sure I would have gotten stuck for hours if I didn't consult a guide due to the old school lack of reasonable clues. The combat could be unfairly brutal on a regular basis. While there were no random encounters, screens were frequently flooded with far too many enemies, making some dungeons an absolute slog. The PC port controlled and ran rather poorly, having strange input issues that would cause the game to register many extra button presses at times.
Even with all of the fairly major issues, I ended up getting absolutely sucked into the stupid game. The story telling for the scenarios was quite basic, but had a charm to it that resonated with me. Combat was difficult, but had a surprising amount to offer for an RPG from 1993. I've always enjoyed SaGa style character progression, and RS2 was no exception. Building the empire through projects, research, and recruiting new units was very cool, despite the limited depth to the individual systems. Playing a string of successive emperors, each inheriting the powers of the past was really neat and led to a feeling of playing as the empire, rather than individual characters. That said, I accidentally chose a lady rogue named Beaver as my emperor due to the input issues and she went on to found the most important institution in the land -- the magic university. That's a character I'll never forget!
I actually had more fun with Romancing SaGa 2 than I did any of its SNES Final Fantasy contemporaries, including 6. Actually, to throw out a real hot take -- it might just be my favorite SNES JRPG now.
There is very little story. There are tons of mechanics, but none of them are explained. There were quite a few instances in quests where I'm sure I would have gotten stuck for hours if I didn't consult a guide due to the old school lack of reasonable clues. The combat could be unfairly brutal on a regular basis. While there were no random encounters, screens were frequently flooded with far too many enemies, making some dungeons an absolute slog. The PC port controlled and ran rather poorly, having strange input issues that would cause the game to register many extra button presses at times.
Even with all of the fairly major issues, I ended up getting absolutely sucked into the stupid game. The story telling for the scenarios was quite basic, but had a charm to it that resonated with me. Combat was difficult, but had a surprising amount to offer for an RPG from 1993. I've always enjoyed SaGa style character progression, and RS2 was no exception. Building the empire through projects, research, and recruiting new units was very cool, despite the limited depth to the individual systems. Playing a string of successive emperors, each inheriting the powers of the past was really neat and led to a feeling of playing as the empire, rather than individual characters. That said, I accidentally chose a lady rogue named Beaver as my emperor due to the input issues and she went on to found the most important institution in the land -- the magic university. That's a character I'll never forget!
I actually had more fun with Romancing SaGa 2 than I did any of its SNES Final Fantasy contemporaries, including 6. Actually, to throw out a real hot take -- it might just be my favorite SNES JRPG now.