Live A Live Review

Here it is, folks, the big one. Live A Live.

Genre: JRPG

Platform: SNES

Note: This game was never imported from Japan, so unless you can read Japanese you need to get a patched ROM. The English patch I used can be found here.

Live A Live Title Screen

Plot Synopsis: Strictly speaking, the overarching plot is almost entirely impossible to summarize without massive spoilers. Here, though, is what can be said: The game takes place in eight different chapters, plus a finale chapter tying everything together. Each chapter takes place in a different time period– the Caveman chapter, which centers around rescuing a cavewoman from a malevolent rival clan; the Ninja chapter, which centers around rescuing a man unfairly imprisoned by a power-hungry shogun; the Kung-Fu chapter, with an old master who wishes to find a worthy inheritor of his school of fighting; the Wild West chapter, featuring an outlaw with a mysterious past and the man sworn to tracking him down; the Present chapter, where you take control of a fighter with the goal of becoming Strongest Man in the World; the Near Future chapter, featuring a psychic who unravels a huge military conspiracy; the Science Fiction chapter, where you play as a robot on a cargo vessel journeying to Earth; and the Medieval chapter, where your knight attempts to rescue the princess who was to become his bride. Each chapter is unique, while still mostly adhering to the same basic structure.

Gameplay Score: 18/20

This game blew me away. There’s a nice variety of enemies in every chapter (at least until the final one, where nearly all of them are just palette swaps), and LOTS of secrets to discover (almost to a fault– we’ll see that later on.) The only issues I had were with the Sci-Fi and Ninja chapters. The Sci-Fi chapter, having practically no combat, became somewhat monotonous, but its saving grace was that this actually built a wonderful atmosphere. The Ninja chapter just dragged, mainly because of how huge and complicated it was– while the rest of the chapters are just straightforward enough to make sense, the Ninja chapter is frigging insane, and if it isn’t twice as long as all the others then it sure as hell seemed like it. Still, it’s very entertaining and challenging, and challenges your logic far more often than most RPGs.

PROTIP: You just wasted five seconds of your life.

Tolerability Score: 4/10

But for everything great about the gameplay, there’s a bunch of stupid crap that I don’t have the patience for. There are nearly-impossible-to-find secret areas and items, like the Monolith that you find in the caveman chapter by examining a rock exactly 100 times and heading left, or the robot you find in the ninja chapter by defeating the robot-man in just the right way and then inserting exactly three coins into a slot you probably missed.

Then, of course, there’s the practically unbeatable enemies that require superhuman grinding to defeat, like the King Mammoth in the caveman chapter, who is hard to find to boot, or the giant fish in the ninja chapter.

NOT PICTURED: Giant fish taking one damage, then using an attack that not only does ridiculous damage, but covers the entire screen in water field (bad).

Oh, and lest we forget, all the different traps in the ninja chapter which dump you down to a jail cell, and the special dungeons in the final chapter that are required for you to get decent equipment, not to mention that you need to get every character’s best weapon to get the best ending. If you are both a completionist and dedicated to not reading guides, I pity you if you play this game.

The bosses are jerks, too, but at least they can be found and beaten by someone without OCD and/or superpowers. What? You didn’t grind the cavewoman up to level 6?! AHAHAHAHA! You’re going to die now. (I would have had more images in this section, but I can’t find any for the life of me. It’s like google is somehow averse to incredibly specific screenshots of Japan-only games! If you find or screencap anything helpful, send it to me and you’ll get props.)

Plot Score: 9/10

Each chapter is a bit cliche, but almost all of them are still entertaining and put an interesting spin on things (except, of course, for the ninja chapter). They often use (self)parody to mitigate this, and even when they don’t the writing team were very good at drawing me into the plot. It all gets wrapped up in the final chapter, and I feel they did a good job of it. If that weren’t enough, bizarre running gags abound (In every chapter, except possibly the Present, Watanabe’s Father dies, prompting the same hilariously overblown expression of bug-eyed grief from Watanabe Jr.) and you can often find hidden backstory by doing some poking around.

Graphics Score: 5/5

The graphics, as noted, are varied, detailed, quirky and fun to look at. Every enemy’s facial expression conveys their personality perfectly, be it desperate, egotistical or infuriated.

Pictured: "Broken by a conflict of directive and logic"

Music Score: 5/5

The music is brilliant, and incredibly catchy to boot. Of special note are the Buriki Daioh and boss themes– they will be stuck in your head for at least three days after you hear them.

Overall Score: 41/50

The game is great, but the fake difficulty and all the random crap you have to find and bizarre leaps of logic you need to take really take their toll. If you enjoy having a huge amount of extra challenges, I highly recommend it. Even if you don’t, it kicks ass and you should play it. Just don’t expect the SUPPER DUPER HAPPY ENDING.