Romancing Saga 2 remaster keeps original 'quite intact'

A remastered version of classic RPG Romancing Saga 2 is coming to PC, PS4, PS Vita, Switch, and Xbox One consoles in the west, and during a recent interview with VG247, producer Masanori Ichikawa has discussed the game and its remaster, which he's a big fan of.

"Romancing Saga 2 hasn't rereleased for over 20 years! I can't believe that!," he started. "I love this game very much. I'm very happy to release it in the Western market for the first time."

In terms of the origins of the remaster, this came from western fans getting in touch with Square Enix via Twitter saying they'd also want it, and this motivated the decision. Ichikawa wants to keep the essence the same, however, because the original was just that good:

"We definitely have the feeling that the original Romancing SaGa 2 was a very complete game, and so in that sense there was nothing that we really wanted to add. Fundamentally we find the game to be very finished - there's nothing really to improve on."

"Not much has changed with regards to programming. The game itself remains quite intact to how it was originally with things like flag management, the battle stats, calculations and so on - that's all pretty much the same to how it was in the original," original director Akitoshi Kawazu adds. "There was a long process in how this happened - as you can imagine, with all these platforms, a lot of it took quite a while! Because of that there was an element of me having to leave it to the development team. Ichikawa-san has been in the lead travelling to different places - he's been to China and other places to have discussions with various different development companies that were helping us out. I had to kind of step back and leave it to them."

"One thing that I think is worth mentioning is that this doesn't feel like a twenty year old game," Ichikawa continued. "It feels like a very modern game and it's perfect for the market at the moment. Especially with the free scenario-based system where however a player plays it influences the options they have and how the story ends, so there's definitely going to be an element of sharing those stories with friends and online in the way that modern audiences do."

The western version will be released on December 15, and you can see a trailer down below. Did you play the original?