Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe is now available globally for Android and iOS, following a Japanese release in 2018.
Set in the same world as Romancing SaGa 3, Re;univerSe sees Morastrum—a cyclical apocalypse event that occurs ever 300 years—once again threatening to destroy the world. New heroes join characters from numerous other SaGa series games, including the Romancing SaGa trilogy, SaGa Frontier, Unlimited SaGa, and SaGa Scarlet Grace.
The battle system in Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe sticks close to the series’ core, with a focus on strategic use party formations, careful resource management, and a semi-random approach to learning new skills in combat. It couples these with some common elements of “gacha RPGs” like random character summons and level caps that can be increased by collecting particular items.
With that comes the option of buying premium currency to spend on summons, among other things, but according to SaGa series producer Ichikawa Masanori, “this game has been designed to absolutely not be pay-to-win. Whether you choose to pay or not, you’ll be able to play through the end on your own terms.”
Thanks to a pre-registration campaign that saw more than a million players sign up, new players will be given a few rewards when they first start playing:
- 9,000 Jewels and 40 Platinum Summon Tickets
- Two beloved characters from Romancing SaGa 3: Flurry (S) and Nora (A)
- 40 Small Stamina Potions
Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe also comes with the assortment of login bonuses that are typical of free-to-play games. They seem fairly generous, and between the current round of login bonuses and the pre-registration campaign prizes, you can get off to a good start with a bunch of 10 pulls right out the gate. At the same time, it avoids overwhelming new players with a big dump of items related to a whole lot of different meta-systems (like War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius did).
In celebration of the global launch, Square Enix will also be releasing the Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe Original Soundtrack on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music from 30 June. It features over 20 new tracks from SaGa composer Itō Kenji, and a variety of rearranged pieces from past SaGa games.
The worldwide release of Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe is part of a welcome new resurgence of the SaGa series, particularly outside Japan, where it’s always been more of a cult favourite than a runaway success. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen Romancing SaGa 2 and Romancing SaGa 3—originally released for Super Famicom in Japan in 1993 and 1995, respectively—get their first official English release with ports to current platforms. Last year, we also got a localised release of SaGa: Scarlet Grace – Ambitions, the most recent game in the series.
Hopefully, this trend continues. Even today, there’s nothing else quite like SaGa (though we’ve seen a few attempts at spiritual successors). I wouldn’t mind seeing SaGa Frontier and SaGa Frontier 2 make their way to current platforms, either.
Note: Japanese names in this article are written with the Japanese name order—that is, family name first, followed by given names.
