The party, a motley crew of adventurers from all backgrounds who combine their strengths for a shared goal, almost always under the command of a chosen main character, is one of the most recognizable elements of a JRPG. The Live A Live majority of the game centers around one particular character, though the rest of the cast may receive side quests and plot arcs. It is as typical of a trope as they come.
But in 1994, Square launched Live A Live in Japan, a game that turned the genre on its head by “What if the primary protagonists in a JRPG were multiple? And every single one of them featured a completely developed plot, various settings, and unique gaming mechanics?” A significant turning point in the history of video games was Live A Live. Takashi Tokita, who previously served as the head designer for Final Fantasy IV, was in charge of this ambitious project that sought to combine various, diverse stories into an one experience.
This interesting undertaking served as the first well-known anthology RPG and included anything from tales of forlorn love in prehistoric times to analyses of mankind’s perilous drive of ever-improving technology. Unfortunately, Live A Live’s SNES release was limited to Japan. We’ve just started looking for fan translations of cult classics like Mother 3 and Magical Vacations in order to catch up on the crucial overseas releases we missed in the United States.
About
Developer: Square Enix
Publishers: Square Enix, Nintendo
Release Date: July 22, 2022
Genre: RPG
Platforms: Nintendo Switch
Players: 1
Size: 4.6 GB
Price: $50
System Requirement
Memory: 8 GB
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon RX 550
CPU: Intel Core i5-8400
File Size: 20 GB
Platform: Windows 10 / Window 11
Features
Additionally, Live A Live is several of the mechanics are annoying in general or don’t function as intended. We have to manually adjust everything because the “suggested equipment” tool is faulty and rarely gives the ideal gear for your character.
Random encounters are a different gameplay element that only appears at the game’s finale, despite popular belief. This is without a doubt the aspect of JRPGs that we dislike the least, hence we find it puzzling that the creators included it in the game’s highlight. It was stressful to constantly have to flee from interactions.
Don’t worry about the sequence you play them in if this is your first time playing the game; they are not at all directly connected. The Live A Live main narrative is not shared by any of the individual stories. These stories are ultimately supposed to stand alone, however you might catch a few glances or indications of stuff from earlier arcs.
Design
Live A Live has a very interesting narrative structure. Each chapter is almost flawlessly written in and of itself, yet it still manages to flow into the overall narrative, which leads to what I believe to be a spectacular event that you must see for yourself. I could talk a lot about the many stories in Live A Live, but we firmly believe that you should experience the most amazing events firsthand. Known for his numerous political and contentious mangas, Yoshinori Kobayashi created Pogo, a prehistoric caveman.
Yoshihide Fujiwara, well known for his mangas, notably the manga version of Virtua Fighter, created Shifu, a martial arts instructor from Imperial China. Oboromaru, a budding ninja from the Japanese Edo twilight. He was created by Gosho Aoyama, best known for the Detective Conan manga. Osamu Ishiwata, a maestro of action dramas like B.B., created The Live A Live is a Sundown Kid, a wandering gunslinger from the Wild West.
Masaru Takahara, a roaming fighter from the present day, competes against masters of many disciplines in an endeavor to be the strongest. He was created by Ryji Minigawa, who is well-known for both his character designs in numerous of the later Tekken games as well as for mangas like Spriggan and ARMS.
Akira Tadokoro is a futuristic wanderer on the lookout for a motorbike gang. He was created by Kazuhiko Shimamoto, a character designer for the Live A Live fantastic unrated game “Rival Schools” as well as a ton of fighting-focused manga like Kamen Rider and Skull Man. A cute little robot from the far future named Cube was almost given the moniker “Roundy” by his maker. I intended for you to remember this, just a little suggestion.
Sound
Don’t forget to mention the Kingdom Hearts and other works by Yoko Shimomura’s music. Even while her original music for Live A Live was already amazing, it has only gotten better thanks to more advanced audio technology and her own 2022 improvements. Megalomania, the boss theme, is justifiably regarded as some of her best work, and I’ve been listening to the remade version nonstop for days.
Imperial China’s settings captivate you with their beauty, from the Live A Live breathtaking hillside to the ethereal bamboo forest where danger lurks around every turn. To top it off, the soundtrack for this chapter flawlessly encapsulates the mood, plot, and characters. One of the Live A Live most bizarre things about her soundtrack was that she had to essentially recreate everything by listening to Live-a-Live because the original files had long since been lost. An amazing soundtrack goes along with the pictures.
One of renowned composer Yoko Shimomura’s earlier works for Square-Enix is Live A Live, and her skill is on full display here as she provides a variety of musical genres to accompany the numerous adventures. The original 16-bit tunes have been completely redone with top-notch instruments, increasing its bombast and occasionally even including song lyrics. Additionally, the game’s primary character dialogue is all voiced, which helps to bring the main characters to life and gives the story’s most bizarre and startling turns more flair.
Gameplay
This kept the gameplay interesting and helped the story. For instance, to effectively handle the boss encounter in the Wild West arc, you must coordinate your time-setting traps with the locals. In imperial China, you had to disperse your students’ instruction to keep them moving at the same pace as one another and level them up using particular exercises. A series of bosses are offered to you in the Present Day storyline, and you must trick them into using their special moves so you can learn them.
We think you’ll really like Live A Live as long as you don’t expect a conventional JRPG. Because everything happens so quickly, there are almost never any lulls in the gameplay where you feel like you’re dragging your feet to reach the next plot point. There is a lot of back and forth walking, which can be annoying because such situations might have been simply resolved with a cinematic, but the gameplay helps the narrative.
My 30-hour voyage was kept interesting by the game’s varied gameplay and narrative elements, stunning visuals, and excellent soundtrack. I still got the impression that the game contains a few secrets and minor plot points that we may have missed. It’s quite an accomplishment that Live A Live still manages to surprise, confound, and captivate audiences even 30 years later. Due to its timeless traits, it merits your attention both today and in the foreseeable future.
Character
The Live A Live very last chapter, which places you in a situation where you can select your primary character and enlist the support of the others, is possibly the most guilty of being ambiguous. One or two of them can be really difficult without a guide, requiring a lot of back and forth, especially if you forget a crucial item or don’t know where to look for the character. Even though there is a helpful radar that directs you in the right path, it is undoubtedly not a map, particularly if you get stuck in one of the character dungeons in the conclusion.
Nevertheless, we adored it for the difficulty and the joyous sensation of the protagonists’ eventual reunion. Expect some surprises, but don’t expect a lot of engagement. It took me around five hours to get through this chapter, which involved going through the Middle Ages and performing trials for each character in order to get their unique ultimate weapon. The Live A Live character exchanges were entertaining despite being brief and nice. There is just so much that these unrelated characters can say to one another; more would have been wonderful.
Unlike the majority of JRPGs, Live A Live also features at least some replayability. Depending on the character you select as your protagonist in the final chapter, there are a variety of alternative outcomes, including one of the best design concepts we’ve ever seen in a JRPG. You see, the antagonist is one of the options for the last chapter. You can play as the different bosses you’ve faced in all the past chapters against the characters you spent so much time leveling up by selecting the antagonist.
Final Words
The long wait was definitely worth it for Live A Live. With a kaleidoscope of many gameplay elements, musical compositions and visually stunning images that somehow work together harmoniously, this remake successfully reintroduces an influential, distinctive JRPG to the general public.
Keep in mind that it’s still a live-a-live game that has many of the problems of the 90s RPGs, even if it looks like Octopath Traveler and retains the HD-2D visual style. However, we applaud Square Enix for not making too many changes with this remake and offering a real and faithful update of the game that most gamers outside of Japan missed almost three decades ago.
