From our other sites
The story
Square Enix’s remake “Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven” has reportedly surpassed 1 million copies sold worldwide, sparking discussion on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Geha) board. The thread saw a flurry of comparisons to sales figures from past SaGa titles (SaGa Frontier sold 1.08 million, SaGa Frontier 2 sold 730,000, Unlimited Saga sold 560,000, etc.), with opinions split over whether the buyers were mostly longtime fans or a wave of newcomers, and some pointing out that overseas sales may not be as strong. Romancing SaGa 3 and SaGa Frontier were floated as candidates for the next remake.
What people said
Cumulative sales numbers like this don't mean much for a flop title.
What part of that is even a "cumulative" number?
It's not discounted to fire-sale prices like a Capcom sale, though.
Even on sale it's still 4,800 yen, which is pretty pricey.
SaGa Frontier 1: 1.08 million
SaGa Frontier 2: 730,000
Unlimited Saga: 560,000
Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song: 450,000
SaGa Scarlet Grace: 130,000
SaGa Emerald Beyond: 80,000
A miracle comeback.
This time it's worldwide, but did SaGa Frontier 2 never get a Western release, or did it just not sell when it did?
Unlimited Saga's 560,000 too… not sure if that's shipped or actually sold, but it sure made retailers cry that much…
but between its distinctive watercolor-style graphics, great story and music, and the wealth of guides and deep-dives that exist now,
it's popular enough these days to have a cult following among certain fans.
The real turning point that sent the series into decline was definitely Unlimited Saga.
Even Kawazu and Kyon (Koizumi) basically had to apologize for it, after all.
Unlimited Saga is the one where the Ultimania guide basically functions as the manual — SaGa Frontier 2 isn't nearly that bad.
About the only traps are the Sandmount Top and saving partway through the final dungeon.
It's obviously the culprit, Frontier 2 fanboy.
That "cult popularity," "great music," "great graphics" stuff applies just as much to Unlimited Saga.
It's basically not selling overseas at all.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HVSmaU3bEAAdPko.jpg
Hurry up and remake Romancing SaGa 1 too!!
Unlike 2 and 3, nobody's nostalgic for 1, so that's not happening.
The original was just too rough around the edges to begin with.
Romancing SaGa 1 just doesn't have the same pull as 2 or 3, so no chance.
What are they going to do after 3?
Even if they made SaGa Frontier full 3D, it probably wouldn't sell that well.
You can already tell that if they gave Frontier the Revenge of the Seven-style graphics, the combo tempo would end up terrible and it'd wreck the original.
There have been sales too, and I honestly thought it would've hit a million long before now — yet even using the Imperial Succession system, easily the most fun part of the game, this is all it got.
At this point don't they just have to make a 4 built around the Imperial Succession system, since that's clearly the most popular part?
Trials of Mana had 4,857 reviews and Final Fantasy Tactics had 5,848, and both went million-seller, so that's about normal, no?
I'd guess it's roughly 70% old-school fans and 30% newcomers who bought in after seeing the buzz.
Looking at posts on X, that ratio seems about right.
And overseas sales are pretty much dead.
Back in the day it went million-seller in Japan alone.
This one's worldwide shipment numbers.
Totally different thing.
The nostalgia-driven Romancing SaGa is a hit, while SaGa Emerald Beyond — which should be the pinnacle of command-RPG battle systems — gets no love…
Hope he doesn't end up like that bald ramen-shop guy from the meme, who grew jaded after his preferred mild broth flopped while the heavier one he didn't even want to serve became the hit.
He was probably bitter about it at first, but by now he's probably cheering on "Death Saga" himself.
Kawazu is contrarian to a fault.
You can feel his clear resolve to never give players what they actually want.
On YouTube he brought out some pricey champagne to celebrate and drank it together with everyone.
Saga Emerald Beyond needs to go this far just to sell at all.
That's the thing —
it's less "Saga Emerald Beyond" and more that the barrier-to-entry has literally become the barrier, huh lol
It's actually fun once you play it, though…
Setting the system aside, the story was pretty thin, so there's value in doing it as a definitive story edition.
Romancing SaGa 3 is full of cut, scrapped maps as it is…
and the story feels like it got trimmed down too.
The original SaGa 3 wasn't all that polished, honestly.
The graphics and music were great, though.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The Romancing SaGa series originated as a run of Super Famicom titles in the 1990s, and “Revenge of the Seven” was released in 2024 as a full remake of Romancing SaGa 2. The sales figures cited for comparison in the thread, such as SaGa Frontier 1’s 1.08 million, are domestic Japan-only tallies from their respective eras, so they can’t be directly compared to this title’s 1 million figure, which is a worldwide cumulative total including overseas sales. It’s also worth noting that only a small fraction of buyers ever leave a Steam review, so a low review count alone doesn’t necessarily mean a game “isn’t selling” — the same pattern has been pointed out for Trials of Mana and Final Fantasy Tactics. The thread features both the view that the game pulled in a wave of new fans and the view that sales were driven mainly by existing fans buying it again, but no official data breaking down the actual buyer composition appears anywhere in the thread.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry [Geha]) thread “[Good News] Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven Surpasses 1 Million Copies.”
Leave a Reply