romancing saga 2 remaster thoughts

[highimpactsex]

when i started romancing saga 2, i did not expect to find myself immersed in a game so much that i scrambled for my friedrich nietzsche books and start leafing his works for epic quotations on mortality and death.

it is a video game that resonates with me because it speaks about history, philosophy, mythology, and most importantly (for my anti-humanist/literature brain) nihilism. i cannot stress how much this game is my shit and i want everyone to fucking play this game now.

passing the buck

but first, i should explain why i think it's one of the best games of all time.

the game begins with a prologue about how there were once seven heroes who saved the world from the monsters. but one day, they disappeared. the monsters returned, so everyone was waiting for the seven heroes to return. they did, but instead of helping out, they raided the world of the humans.

you play as leon (emperor of avalon) who is mentoring his two sons. but after one of his sons dies to kzinnsie (one of the seven heroes), he decides to team up with a mysterious figure to bestow the power of EUGENICS. if an emperor dies, their powers move to the future descendants who can then grow into good emperors in their own regards. and then, new emperors will inherit the previous emperors -- and so on.

you're going to need that power because you're actually up against a JRPG Party. they grinded against slimes longer than you did. you just started the game: you're just some bloke who can barely wield a club. you're going to need the power of HISTORICAL ACCUMULATION and attain the necessary Power Level to have a chance to beat the seven heroes.

you will see your emperors die and their powers move to the next emperor. and the next. and the next. this isn't exactly immortality but a burden being passed onto to the next person. you may have the powers of previous emperors, but you also need to think of how to contribute to this lineage. this burden becomes a responsibility to do something important in each generation because every life is precious, every second counts, every death matters. the burden won't end until you finally vanquish the seven heroes once and for all.

and so begins your strange quest through the passage of history to fight the ancient heroes of your mythology.

ecce ludology

how do you translate all that crap into the language of video games? well, you include a mechanic that reminds the player your characters are mortal.

in romancing saga 1, the strategy is simple: as long as someone is left standing, you can still finish the fight. it doesn't matter if aisha stays dead (that game has no revive function lol); all you need to do is dps race saruin with your remaining party members because lmao who cares, she'll be back up after the fight.

but romasaga 2 is all about mortality: it adds a mechanic called LP (Life Points); every character you play has a limited number of lives and can't be replenished without doing some bullshit later in the game. every time a party member drops dead, they are inching closer to actual death.

so not only are you doing an arms race with the battle rank system found in romancing saga 1 but you're also racing against death itself. i am reminded of philosopher jon bois's x-com 2 tweet where he said

to my dog while he’s trying to eat: the genius of xcom 2 is that it immerses you via accountability. if your ranger dies, you are left with a feeling that ultimately, they counted on you to lead them, and that even in a game that is often decided by chance, it was all your fault

you can savescum all you want or even realize that the characters' LP are a bit too generous so you can let people die a little, but i always feel bad whenever a member dies. i felt like i wasn't being a responsible leader and i pondered what the fuck i was doing to my own jrpg party -- something i never would consider playing any other jrpg.

but more shockingly, the game will do a force party wipe when you've done enough events; it'll skip to the next generation and you must choose your next emperor and their followers. without a word, the game just told me the party has done enough and left the stage.

i was left feeling the temporality of life itself. i was tasked to fight the seven heroes and i expected the generations mechanic, sure, but i didn't expect to change parties so quickly. i was left with the dread that i can only do so much in one generation as an emperor. what i'm able to accomplish and what i must skip will have consequences for the future of the game. routing is not only an important element in the game but it is also part of the Themes: you must choose which content to engage with and skip.

time is of the essence and therefore for the first time, i dreaded my own jrpg characters' mortality and the short lives they lead.

eureka

it doesn't help that the seven heroes you must fight are immortal. all you can do is move on and accumulate as much knowledge as possible by letting other people of different backgrounds be emperors.

unlike the previous title, romasaga 2 has an interesting class system where each class has different fortes. for example, an amazonian would be quite good at archery. but just like romasaga 1, you can train your amazonian to wield an axe for some reason. the catch is the 閃き/spark system.

the game never explains this to you, but the 閃き system is how you acquire new skills. each unit in each class has a specific predisposition that lets them 閃き certain skills. an archer wouldn't be able to 閃き the ultimate axe skills, no matter how hard they try.

as a result, you want to always diversify your units. you shouldn't pick amazonians forever because you might miss out spear skills (like i did); you want to try out every class and build them up as much as possible before moving on. these skills can be transferable to future generations because your units have taught the soldiers in the training grounds how to do these moves.

likewise, magic of different schools takes a long time to grind but can be taught to anyone willing to learn. level up enough of two magic schools and you might get a chance to create fusion spells, which cost a damn lot of money and one generation.

that's right: even the mechanics are about passing the skills down the generation...

this meta(?) strategizing includes who you should pick as emperor. each class has certain attributes that might influence how events could play out, but more importantly the emperor may know a specific formation only their class would know. formations in romasaga 2 are crucial because they affect stats. the first formation you start with, Imperial Cross, protects your middle and back units -- but they are prone to AoE attacks. so while good in theory, you wanna get something new. you could pass your emperor powers to an East Guard (romasaga 2's version of a samurai) who can give you a formation where every unit has a 20% of getting attacked. or you could try a nomad whose formation gives the three front units speed boosts. in other words, who you choose to pass the buck might influence how your game strategy will play out.

you are meant to experiment, replay, and optimize as much as necessary. each gameplay session leads you to new knowledge frontiers, to a deeper understanding of the mechanics, and to finally be one step closer in beating the final boss. it's demanding and i expect people to read this section in despair.

mortality, the greatest time limit

but not to fret, it's far worse once you reach the endgame because as it turns out the buck must stop somewhere: to the character you named in the very beginning.

the last emperor or empress is told that they'll not be able to pass their powers to another generation. this is their last chance as a human collective to do everything they can against the remaining seven heroes. if the mortality of previous generations bothered players enough, now would be the time to despair how finite life actually is.

you can certainly mitigate the LP of your emperor and last units through a limited number of potions, but the bigger problem is that you can't correct your past mistakes that easily. if you spent money on fusion magic in this last generation, tough luck. that's wasted money; you're the last empress and you should've prepared beforehand. either reload the save of a previous generation or continue and live with this build you have without the fusion magic you need.

indeed, the last emperor/empress and their team are more or less the cumulative result of all your actions (and inaction). you didn't learn to evade specific skills the final boss would like to spam with? welp, either live with it, grind A LOT to get the skill, or restart. the game's not just about DPS but about prepping your party to prevent the moves of a final boss you haven't seen damage you too much.

tl;dr: if you aren't remotely prepared, this run is doomed as hell.

suffice to say, this entire last leg of the game was a positively dreadful experience for me. you don't have any lifeguards saving you from your mistakes anymore; you're on your own, kid: drown or swim. and if you drown, congratulations for dooming all of humanity.

i can definitely see myself dropping the game if not for my stubbornness. i was already thirty hours into the game. i realized i lacked many things that would make the final battle easier and i was pretty exhausted. while i recognized video games weren't Real, i felt like i was doing a piss poor job at being the last empress.

man, i suck at video games.

the seven heroes

it was then i realized i was sharing the same dread that the seven heroes, the antagonists of the game, had: the fear of mortality.

like the seven heroes, i could fear my characters' mortality and never free them from the game. but unlike the seven heroes, they can't live forever. even with the powers of the last emperor, they remain simple living beings who can live and die.

and as i grinded my way to sparking new techniques, i started to sympathize with the seven heroes i'm beating up. while they are members of a JRPG Party that have gone to the dark side, they also share the same human sentiments my characters would have.

in fact, the difference between the seven heroes and my characters isn't that palpable. my characters are just beating up a million enemies the same way they're absorbing monsters and humans alike to gain more powers. the seven heroes' immortality is not that dissimilar to the generational powers of the emperors. the burden of responsibility to do good for the world is the same for protagonists and antagonists. and both the seven heroes and my party have the same skills more or less; i was whipping out the same attacks as they were.

however, there is one crucial difference: the seven heroes fear mortality so much that they strive for immortality. they fear death, which must mean they have to reject living -- that is why they deny mortality through a never-ending desire for immortality. putting an end to the dialectic of death and living begets the ceasing of any humanity and the start of something monstrous and decadent.

seen in this way, the seven heroes suffer from a case of being "all too human". in recognizing their mortality, they seek to control themselves -- but that is actually a symptom of losing control in of itself. each hero, pathetic they might be, represent a facet of wants and fears shared by many. the fleeting and transient moments of life are the fruits of labor they desire, yet the fear of never living to taste them has stopped them from living. in their zombie-like fugue, all they can gather is sins and grief.

in stark contrast, my characters' selfless motivation to risk and sacrifice their lives against the seven heroes is to let everyone -- not just the citizens of avalon but the salamanders, the armed merchants, and so many different people -- live to their fullest potential. to watch people thrive, new communities live peacefully, and hear new sagas told: this is the stuff my characters are fighting for.

this sounds heroic, so is this long lineage of emperors a generation of heroes in their own right? perhaps. we could qualify that statement by saying they're a family of antiheroes since they're fighting heroes who have lost their path, but i don't think it is quite right. my critical theory blogger brain suggests my characters should be rendered as "affirmers" of Life and the seven heroes its "deniers".

indeed, if i had to write a Serious Post, romancing saga 2 is a game about that dialectic nietzsche loves so much: the Affirmation of Life vs its Denial. what players are doing is to defend that affirmation of living against the profound nihilism and defeatism of the seven heroes. the fruits of mortality and what each generation is able to accomplish overpower even the combined strengths of the immortal seven heroes because players have chosen to Affirm, to Live, and to accept Mortality. Mortality is what gives the players and their characters agency to do something while the Immortality of the Seven Heroes has stopped them from achieving bigger things. defeating the final boss thus lets the players become the greatest appreciators of life and what the collective of humanity has achieved in this short span of time.

and so, i fought and fought until the deed was done -- until i can defeat my own dread about my own mortality. it took me fifty hours to beat the game. i could've shortened the hours by doing an NG+, but it's better that way.

yea to living and video games

what's truly impressive about romancing saga 2 is how it's able to evoke so much with very few words. it relies entirely on the players to get what it's trying to do with its ludic vocabulary. i have never been this won over by a video game and i am desperate to see people pick up the game and experience The Kawazu for themselves.

but i should also admit it's a challenging as fuck video game. i had to look up guides midgame because it was giving me so much cognitive load. that said, it's only difficult because you don't know what the game is like. i expect that i'll have an easier time in future runs, which i will have to do whenever i write a proper post on the saga games. i don't know if people are up for this, i guess.

still, it's perhaps one of the best video games of all time. i can't imagine the brain juices kawazu had in cooking up whatever the fuck this was. it's so unique and ambitious. i've played many jrpgs over the years and i can't tell you where the inspirations for the title come from. that's how "weird" and imaginative the game was for me -- it felt like i was a kid playing a jrpg for the first time.

at the same time, i don't know why i missed out on this game. i'm sorta beating up myself over this one. this could've been a game i adored since i was a teen. it's life-changing for me now, so imagine if i stumbled upon this title earlier in my life: i would've gone bonkers, man. i would talk about the saga games forever as much as wild arms...

but because i played romasaga 2 on new year's eve, on the year i will turn 30, i now have this nice realization there's still cool games of the past i haven't played. there's still stuff to do and therefore there's more reasons to Live and Write as a consumerist otaku. i might grow old and jaded, but i can't deny the attraction of finding something old and amazing because i didn't realize it existed.

so fuck this video game, not just because it's a fucking difficult jrpg but also because it's one of the best video game experiences i will ever have. i'm sure the rest of the saga games is good but man, this is the kind of game that's going to terrorize my brain because it taught me LIVING IS AMAZING.