Live A Live Review: A Beautiful Mess

This review will contain spoilers for Live A Live.

I almost immediately bounced off Live A Live as soon as I booted up the game. I chose the Present Day chapter and was caught off-guard by the fighting game-esque setup with Mega Man qualities where the abilities you gain by defeating one boss will be extra powerful against one of the others. I had a level (level 2), but I was not gaining experience by defeating my enemies. Nor was there any exploration element. “How is this a JRPG?” I asked myself. Luckily, the experience only lasted maybe an hour or so, and I was free to choose my next chapter. This time, I chose The Wild West.

I almost bounced off the game again. There was more exploration this time, but contained towards the back end of a very short chapter. There was only one real battle against the boss at the end of the chapter (one before it ends with a single hit), and once again, while I had a level (this time 9!) I was not gaining experience. Then the chapter ended, and I was free to choose my next chapter.

There is no way anyone reading this will possibly believe me, but I chose every not-at-all-like-a-JRPG chapter in the game first in this JRPG. I followed up The Wild West with The Distant Future, a combination Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey homage that plays like a survival horror game, once again with only a single boss fight at the end of the chapter. My initial five hours with this game I spent wondering what I was even playing, why they bothered giving me ability or equipment menus, why I had a level at all on any of these characters, and what the point of any of this was (though I was noticing that the villains all had similar names like Odie O’Bright, O. Dio, and OD-1O and disappeared in puffs of red and black smoke when defeated).

Finally, my fourth chapter choice would be Imperial China, and I fell in love with Live A Live. Imperial China provides a story of found family, loss, determination, and most importantly, the ability for characters (though still not the playable protagonist) to gain levels and abilities, as well as explore the world around him. It also features a (devastating) choice of which of your disciples you will focus on raising into your successor, and that successor will become the protagonist from this chapter in the climax.

The remaining chapters all play as JRPG versions of different genres. Twilight of Edo Japan has you play as a ninja, and gives you the choice between killing no one (save those necessary for the plot) and everyone; Prehistory is a dialogueless tale of love and rescue in caveman days; and The Near Future is an approximation of a tokusatsu show with a big mecha. Imperial China remained my favorite, but all of these tickled my JRPG itch in some way that those initial three chapters didn’t. I still couldn’t really see what the point of any of this was, though. And then, just after beating Prehistory, I unlocked an eighth chapter: The Middle Ages.

The Middle Ages is the most JRPG segment of the game. You play as silent hero Oersted in his quest to defeat the newly returned Lord of Dark, who has kidnapped the princess and his bride-to-be. You recruit a full party, including Oersted’s mage friend Streibough and previous hero-healer combo Hasshe and Uranus, and defeat the Lord of Dark, only for Hasshe to promptly inform you that it was a pretender before dropping dead of a hidden illness. At this point, The Middle Ages takes a turn for the dark, as Streibough dies shortly after, we’re tricked into killing the king and made a pariah and presumed to be the Lord of Dark ourselves (as well as blamed for the deaths of Hasshe and Streibough), Uranus dies freeing us from prison, and when we return to the seat of the Lord of Dark, we learn Streibough had faked his death and betrayed us. Everything that happens completely breaks Oersted who, after fighting his final boss, finally speaks as he turns against humanity and becomes himself The Lord of Dark.

The various chapters of Live A Live exist as a counterpoint to Oersted’s final philosophy that humans are fundamentally selfish, cowardly, weak creatures. Each hero represents something that a typical JRPG protagonist should be (Masaru’s strength, the Successor’s determination, Pogo’s love, Cube’s pure, caring heart, The Sundown Kid’s selflessness, Oboromaru’s loyalty). In the final chapter, the heroes team up to defeat the Lord of Dark and make this clear, and even shine through to Oersted himself, who is able to break free of his hatred at the very end.

Live A Live is one of the most unique JRPGs out there, even as it has successors in Undertale and the Octopath Traveler games, there’s still something special about this game’s narrative. The entire game is also soundtracked by Yoko Shimomura (most known today for the Kingdom Hearts series soundtrack), which means every track is at least decent and most are beautiful. And the HD-2D style used in this remake is just as beautiful as it always is.

The one arena where I would argue the game falls short is in combat itself. Characters stop learning new skills at around level 15-16, and later skills are usually just better than those you start with, giving each character a kit of maybe (maybe) 2-3 useful skills and a bunch of others that were only used to grind you up to them. The grid system seems interesting at first, but most of the time it just means you start on the opposite side of the screen from the enemy and have to waste time inching closer (until you get your screen-clearing moves, at which point you barely, if ever, have to move at all). There’s a lot of room for depth in this system that unfortunately just isn’t there.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play Live A Live, however. You absolutely should if you like JRPGs at all. There is no other experience quite like this one, and the chapter structure ensures there’s something for everyone to enjoy. Just… maybe don’t pick The Present Day as your first chapter.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm Breaking Up With Final Fantasy X: A Review

You don’t have to keep dancing with the one what brung ya. Final Fantasy X means a lot to me; I named my dog after the game’s heroine. Shortly after I received my first Playstation 2, a friend moved away and gifted me three games for the system (I only had Kingdom Hearts 2, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 , and a couple others lost to time). Final Fantasy X was one of those games, and I poured hundreds of hours into a number of playthroughs. My parents didn’t often buy me games, so I wore through what I had. There’s this idea in Final Fantasy communities that generally, someone’s favorite Final Fantasy is the first one they played. I’ve never personally believed in that, partially because while Final Fantasy X brought me to the party, when I finally got my hands on a copy of XII a couple years later (worth noting my gaming years were as a teenager; I got that Playstation 2 when I was 12 in 2006, the same years the console’s successor released, so all games I played had also been...
Read more

Keylocker Review

             I won’t pretend to fully comprehend everything going on in Keylocker . At its core the game is a scathing, if heavy-handed, critique of capitalism and the systems we create in the name of perpetuating the status quo, which you play by defeating your incredibly difficult adversaries in a grid-based, turn-based system. Keylocker is an incredible game.             It’s also incredibly frustrating.             I have one complaint about this game and that is its teeth-grinding difficulty, mostly due to the inconsistency of the parry mechanic. When an enemy flashes white as they attack you, you’re meant to press the block button, negating all damage. Failure to do so can, in some instances, lead to you being one-hit-killed. However, sometimes, the flash is not indicative of the actual timing, which can lead to hair-pulling, want-to...
Read more

Making the World a Better Place, One Step at a Time

A recent gameplay element I’ve found myself particularly attached to in a couple of games, namely Okami and Unicorn Overlord , is the effect the player has on the world around them, represented in a very visual and impactful way. These games excel at making you feel as though not only are you on a grand quest to save the world, but part of that quest is improving the lives of the souls that inhabit that world. Take Okami , as my first example. At the beginning of that game, the world is shrouded in darkness, nature is decaying, and people and wildlife alike suffer greatly. But as Amaterasu regains her abilities, she is able not only to defeat the imps that serve Orochi, but bring life back to the landscape, both in massive waves of regrowth when she revives a guardian tree sapling and in minor ways as she revives small groves of flowers and individual cherry blossoms. What really caught my wonder, however, were the animals. As you revive nature, animals will return to roam the world. D...
Read more