Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven

Another remake of the Super Famicom RPG, which in turn had a mobile port/remake several years back, Romancing SaGa 2 gives it a major visual upgrade with 3D-rendered characters, animations and voiceover for all major characters in the story.  Per SaGa standards, it also plays with RPG mechanics in some clever ways; the series' trademark LP system returns once again, though unlike previous games, there is no way to recover it - once a character's LP drops to 0, they're gone for good.  In the case of the protagonist, this also ties in to the Succession mechanic - once they die or retire after a set period of time (and events completed), they choose a successor to inherit all of the skills and levels they have earned over their lifetime, which in turn get passed down to another character later on, gradually allowing the player to overcome progressively stronger challenges they wouldn't have been able to in earlier generations.  Skill levels replace the earlier entries' pure randomness, allowing the player greater chance to unlock ("glimmer") new skills as their level increases.  HP and BP likewise have levels and grant guaranteed gains once they fight in enough battles.  RS2 also incorporates some elements of a grand strategy game like Civ or Heroes of Might and Magic; conquering territory (by defeating enemies and completing quests) affects your revenue after each battle; and yes, it can fall into the negatives.  Revenue of course is spent to upgrade your characters' equipment, but can also be used to upgrade your castle town, adding new amenities like a smithy to buy newer gear or an Incantations lab to shuffle learned spells or synthesize new ones; these are not completed right away as soon as you invest in them, but require a certain amount of time to pass before they become available.  Per series standards it's a very open-ended experience; exploring every nook and cranny to find useful gear, money and potential leads for more quests is a key part of the experience.  The end result is a game with a lot of small-scale battles and dungeon crawling, with an emphasis on steadily upgrading your team over a long period of time to overcome difficult bosses and conquer more territory; essentially an odd combination of Japanese RPG gameplay and grand strategy design tropes with the curious absence of any large-scale war battles.  I'm not convinced its a fully successful experiment, but that's just the nature of SaGa - culling elements from western RPGs to make something that, for good or ill, is quite unique.  I can't even really give it a hard recommendation for that reason - if what I've described sounds interesting to you, give it a try.  If not, well, there's plenty of other SaGa games to try out, which all have their own unique blend of odd, disparate elements that may or may not come together in the end.

Developer: Square Enix, Xeen
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: 2024
Platforms: PC, Switch, PlayStation 4, Playstation 5

The Outer Worlds 2

The Outer Worlds was a clever and genuinely funny satire of the dark side of capitalism on the backdrop of a campy old space serial; it had its flaws for sure, but I still found it a compelling journey and an interesting character study.  By contrast, the sequel is just constant grating Used Car Salesman dialog trying way too hard to outdo what came before.  Brandon Adler and Leonard Boyarsky's idea of "improvement" is to just make every character their personal sock puppets, constantly belting out "Look how smart we are!  Pay attention to our writing style and rapier wit!" while forgetting they have nothing to say that hasn't already been said better and funnier in the previous game. The gameplay has at least improved a little, adding in Fallout style perks upon level-up and encouraging more focused builds, though it's often frustrating to try and complete quests when you need a specific skill at a particular level and simply don't have any way around it, other than to quit out and go do more filler quests until you do.  "Flaws", an interesting if undercooked concept in the first game, now seem actively engineered to screw you over by turning you into an ineffective master-of-none character; none that I encountered ever seemed to offer a benefit worth the drawback.  Gunplay is just Borderlands Lite with its moddable weapons and overly spongey enemies that lack any real variety, and your comrades simply don't have much of anything in the way of customization; well, they do have upgrades you can find and perks to assign every five levels, but they have almost no tangible impact on making the combat feel any more deep or rewarding.  Outer Worlds 2 is your typical self-proclaimed intellectual with no real personality and nary a novel idea in its head, but that doesn't stop it from running its mouth and laughing at its own stupid jokes for a solid sixty hours; which is about forty more than I could bear.

They wanted to sell this at $80 when frankly it'd still suck even at $0.  Talk about a lack of self-awareness from such an "anti-capitalist" game... 

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: XBox Game Studios
Released: 2025
Platform: PlayStation 5, PC, XBox Series, PC

Dragon Quest I/II: HD-2D Remake

The logical followup to the 2023 remake of Dragon Quest III, Dragon Quest I and II: HD-2D Remake revives the two earliest Dragon Quest games, adding a substantial amount of new content and of course updating their graphical styles and quality of life features to modern standards.  But does this revisit of two genre staples prove worthy of the name, or does this quest just get dragoned down?

Dragon Quest III was a definite game-changer in its time, bringing the JRPG genre to a new standard of quality, and it remains a beloved classic even today.  The first two Dragon Quests are not quite as well-beloved; while they did of course introduce the series to the world and sell like gangbusters in Japan, the first is a very short, fairly primitive game mostly occupied by farming experience and gold to progress and only a single party member, limiting your strategies overall.  The sequel is regarded as overly difficult, with three extremely specialized party members, some punishingly hard dungeons and an infamous dead stop at the end where you end up having to grind well over ten levels to have any chance at all of completing the final dungeon.

Artdink's remakes do attempt to address these shortcomings while at the same time adding a lot more in the way of narrative and design. The first game now has a considerably more involved narrative, with a lot of in-engine cutscenes, character interactions and a more standard progression - while you're still largely free to roam, you are gently steered in the right direction so as to not get wiped by enemies well above your current level, with many high levels areas also now being locked off until you find a particular key.  It also carries over many of the spells and abilities from the 3 remake, giving you a much wider repertoire of moves to utilize in combat; and you will need them, as there's more boss fights added and they are substantially harder than anything in the original.  Other things get carried over from their remake too, like the little hidden glades and random items on the world map, three difficulty settings and of course the series staple of Mini-Medals that can be traded for prizes.  Some skills are learned by finding scrolls hidden throughout various towns and dungeons, and reading them permanently adds them to your repertoire.  Overworld spells and skills can also be assigned to shortcuts accessed by holding R1 and pressing a directional key, which is a quick and handy way to access commonly-used utility spells.

The core plot of Dragon Quest I remains largely unchanged and fairly simplistic, though many more subplots, cutscenes and characters are added.  Some add more to the lore like a subplot about Zalen, the descendant of the legendary bard Galen, and some are just for levity, like the subpar adventurers trying to save the land independent of the protagonist and constantly falling prey to their own incompetence.  Some other objectives are added in too, with the most prominent being the Sigils.  There are five magical items of power strewn throughout the game, and turning them over to the fairies to craft into sigils will as adding benefits like regenerating some MP while defending.  Some will allow you to access "Souped up Skills" - more powerful variants of abilities only accessible under certain conditions, such as being at low HP or having a particular buff active.  These are incredibly useful in some fights (in fact the final battle is nearly impossible without them), so learning how to activate and use them is key.

So, in contrast to the original game which is a very short experience once you strip out all the grinding (I once finished the Game Boy Color version in about 4 hours), Dragon Quest I's HD-2D remake is now a pretty substantial RPG.  There's more towns, there's sidequests, there's an ongoing narrative throughout with voiceover and even a couple of clever twists, and in general it's considerably more strategic and challenging.  It's still recognizably the same game beneath the new stuff, but it's enough of a new spin to feel fresh even to fans who played the original decades ago on the NES.  And at about 20 hours from start to finish, it gives you plenty of bang for your buck as half of this package.

As for Dragon Quest II, the main protagonist (the Prince of Midenhall) still doesn't utilize any spells (a unique trait for the series), but does get MP and can use physical attack techniques; generally the ones geared toward dealing extra damage to specific enemy types.  The Prince of Cannock gets a combination of mostly-defensive spells and martial arts moves, while the Princess remains a fairly squishy caster, albeit with a more rounded skillset containing utility spells and some healing.

In addition, there's now a fourth party member to recruit; the princess of Cannock joins, and has a handful of offensive and utility spells and random "Goof Off" actions like Torneko that can be surprisingly powerful.  There's a fair bit of new story and side content (with some notably taking place under the ocean), effectively filling in the dead stop in the final stretch from all the prior iterations.  There are some more story threads added and the protagonists have more personality, which gives more of an ongoing narrative than the original version; one notable one being that the Dragonlord's castle is now a story-relevant area and not just an optional location to visit (and the Dragonlord's descendant is a tough optional boss fight later).  The five sigils are a plot point again in this game too, conferring Souped-up Skills and other bonuses as they do in the first HD-2D remake.

 

These HD-2D Remakes are definitely a different experience from the first one.  III's remake felt like they kept largely faithful to the original design and concept while adding more content.  For I and II, it feels more like they used the original games as a basis while largely doing their own thing; not dissimilar to Final Fantasy VII Remake or the numerous versions of Ys IV, which were all very different interpretations of the same core concept.  The battles are definitely more of a challenge, and the abundance of extra content and cutscenes, as well as some welcome balance tweaks, definitely help with the slow pacing and rigid design the originals had.  If you want a different take on the first two Dragon Quests with some clever new twists, this is one HD-2D remake worth considering.  If you want a more authentic '80s RPG experience with all the awkward balance and primitive quirks, though, check out one of the earlier ports instead.

 

Developer: Artdink
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: 2025
Platform: PlayStation 5, PC, XBox Series, Switch, Switch 2
Recommended Version: All versions seem to be more or less on level with one another as far as I can tell, though the Switch 1 version obviously runs at a lower resolution and framerate.  Curiously the PS5 version (at least) has a toggle between Performance and Graphics modes, though it made no visible difference as far as I could tell.