Quick Links
Romancing Saga 2: Revenge of the Sevenis a pretty unique experience among RPGs. It is mechanically rich, but alongside that gameplay depth, there is a considerable element of mystery. This is a game that doesn’t like to lay things out for you. Thankfully, this guide is happy to fill in the blanks for you.
This guide is here to give you an excellent running start, and help you understand the most important elements at a glance. There are a lot of moving parts here, but we will, at the very least, get the ball rolling, and help you avoid the most disastrous mistakes - and this is a game that will quite happily let you commit some serious mistakes.
How To Deke Enemies And Shimmy Around Foes
A deke is an evasive maneuver where you convince someone that you are moving in one direction, and to then move in the opposite direction, allowing you to safely dodge around them. Not only is this something you can do in Romancing Sage 2: The Revenge of the Seven, but I’d argue it is one of the most important techniques to learn.
Run toward an enemy and you will garner their attention. Once they start chasing after you, carve a large circle (as large as the area will allow) around them. Do all of this while sprinting, of course. This is the best way to get past enemies who are blocking narrow passages. Additionally, you can use the environment to your advantage. Non-flying enemies won’t pursue you up ladders or climbable structures. Use that to your advantage and bee-line it to a climbable structure to get away from grounded enemies.
Additionally, if youwantto fight, you can do a variation of the deke that will allow you to deliver a back attack. This time, run away from themuntilthey stop (so you will want to have the camera aimed at them). Enemies will only track you for a limited amount of time, so you won’t have to run that far. Once they stop, wait for them to turn around and return to where they were, then sprint up behind them and attack their back as they do so to get the advantage.
HP Is Cheap, BP Is Precious
The dynamic in battle is a touch unusual. Since you will heal at the end of combat, it doesn’t really matter if you absorb a hefty amount of damage. However, BP, which powers all your abilities, is far less common. So, taking a few extra non-life-threatening hits because you decided to use less BP-intensive techniques is a wise trade-off. Take advantage of United Attacks, as they don’t cost BP, and hit extra hard.
Also, when you are starting to fill up on techniques, don’t always dump the cheapest ones. Sometimes the hardest-hitting ability will cost twice as much as another ability that doesalmostas much damage. Similarly, you’ll probably find that abilities like Life Water 1 provide all the healing you need when performed by an adept magic user. During the first half of the game, Life Water 2 is often just a waste of BP (depending on the character’s mastery of water, that is).
You Will Fail Certain Quests If Time Shifts Forward
This is a big one… If a quest involves a specific character, there is a good chance that a time shift, or the death of an emperor, will cause you to fail that quest. You can lose access to some key classes that way. As an example,the mermaid questline needs to be completed in one generation, or you will lose access to the dancer class.
How will you know which quests need to be completed in one go? Well, generally speaking, any quest that deals with clearing a specific dungeon is safe. Similarly, quests that target the seven heroes aren’t ever in jeopardy. Moreover, if a quest deals with a specific character, it is far more likely that you will need to clear it in one generation. This includes the aforementioned mermaid quest, the quest with the man searching for the Grimoire in Tsukijima, and this includes the quest in Yauda that involves Sakishusai.
Death Is Permanent, But It Isn’t Typically A Big Deal
Every character has LP. If a character loses all their LP, they will die. There is no Phoenix Down that will be able to resurrect them. There is no going to the local church to have them raised from the grave. They are permanently dead. Thatincludesyour protagonist. However, if your emperor dies, their abilities will be passed down.
Similarly, after every time skip, any abilities and spells learned throughout your playthrough will be registered, meaning that they can be equipped to any character who meets the minimum requirement for using them. This does mean that if a character dies, they will lose any abilities they have learned that haven’t already been registered. So, death isn’t completely without consequences.
Naturally, if a character has a number of abilities that you want to have registered, and they are running low on LP, you can just bring them back to the base and swap them out for another character. Though, keep in mind that you won’t be able to recruit another character with that same class as long as they are alive.
However, if you have a character who is low on LP, and they don’t have any valuable unregistered techniques, you may want to consider bringing them into a battle and intentionally allowing them to die. That way you won’t have to worry about them running out of LP mid-dungeon and leaving you a party member short.
Liberate Regions And Find Mr. S Should Be A Priority
While the primary goal of Romancing Saga 2 is to defeat the seven heroes, a secondary goal is to bring every region in the world to the empire. When you liberate these regionsyou will be rewarded handsomely.
Similarly, Mr. S is hiding in nearly every town and every dungeon. You will be able to find him a total of 50 times. You will be rewarded handsomely for tracking him down. One skill you will gain will shorten the time it takes to craft equipment, another will provide your troops with a second ability slot. These are not small boosts, this is some major stuff, so verify to track him down.
Mr. S is often found near bodies of water, or food. So, those are the two best places to look. This isn’t a hard rule or anything, just a tendency.
Don’t Fight Every Enemy You Encounter
I cannot stress this enough. If you try to grind in this game, you’re able to make life considerably harder for yourself. At least at the beginning of the game, that is. This is especially true if you play the game on the classic difficulty setting. Every fight you engage in will increase the amount of battles you have fought. As you fight more battles, monsters will gradually increase their strength.
What happens when you grind is that you functionally strengthen monsters; without acquiring new equipment to help enhance your team’s attributes, excessive grinding can leave you at aseveredisadvantage. Naturally, you will need to fight in order to acquire better techniques, so never fighting isn’t a great answer either. I’d recommend trying to avoid most fights, but going after the different treasures you’ll see. This will inevitably lead to you running into monsters here and there.
When youdofight monsters, attempt to target the stronger ones. Either way, the enemy encounter ticker is going up one, but stronger enemies will score you a larger amount of TP.
Don’t Flee In A Battle And Try Not To Block
Enemies increase their strength depending on the number of encounters you have engaged in. That means you are in a constant tug of war, attempting to build up your pool of techniques, while not engaging in so many battles that your foes outpace your party’s strength. If you run from a battle, however, you will increase your encounter number, strengthening your enemies, while not gaining any Technique Points. That’s the worst-case scenario.
Speaking of Technique Points, these are split evenly depending on what weapon-type the abilities you used were. So, if a party member is set to gain ten Technique Points, and they attacked with their sword eight times, and their bow twice, then they will get eight points toward their sword mastery, and two points toward their bow mastery. However, guarding will also take a share of points, though these points seemingly go nowhere. So, if you can help it, avoid guarding. Use techniques like the parry or counter instead.
For more information on how TP is distributed,check out our leveling guide here.
Save Often, And Don’t Hesitate To Reload
While I don’t think you need to be afraid of dying, a full wipe can most certainly still set you back, and there are circumstances where you will want to avoid changing emperors at any cost (especially if you have a bunch of unregistered skills). Especially since you will sometimes run into an enemy that you could easily defeat if you just changed some of your skill evasions, or swapped in a few key accessories.
Hell, sometimes you’ll just enter into battle with a formation that is poorly suited for a boss. The best thing to do in those situations is to reset the game, load your last save, and alter those elements. No need to start everything over as a new emperor. The game provides you with a save point before bosses for a reason. Make use of those saves!
