Thanks to generous donations from viewers like you, I was able to purchase and play the remake of LIVE A LIVE. To get your first question out of the way, I’m pretty sure it’s officially pronounced [lɑɪv ə lɑɪv], as in “a live broadcast”. Here’s my review of my Tuesday night saga these past few months – massive spoiler warning and all that.
Quality-a-Live
The remake included a lot of polish, from the HD-2D graphics update, to the orchestrated score. All very nice! But I would exchange all of that in a heartbeat for the thing every girl wants for Santa Day: Quality of Life.
Call me selfish all you want, buddy
While random encounters are generally avoidable, certain areas of the game make it difficult or impossible to avoid optional battles. Once in a battle, it can be a bit slow to clear enemies even if you’re overleveled, due to lengthy, flashy attack animations. And I mean literally flashy – I wouldn’t just like the option to turn off or simplify animations for speed, but also to reduce eye strain. (There’s also screen flashing every time a boss is defeated, which at least was somewhat predictable.)
Okay, but it’s a legitimate complaint
You can seemingly always successfully Flee encounters – I don’t remember this option ever failing. But this too is slow, and depending on the map, not very effective. The relentless encounter rate really ruined multiple chapters for me. It’s certainly a big discouragement in terms of exploring the map. I often found myself just heading straight for objectives to avoid being bogged down.
You don’t have to tell me twice, Hasshe
I think it’s fair to say that the whole point of LIVE A LIVE is to…live…some lives. By that I mean, to experience the multiple worlds and lives of the myriad cast of characters. I didn’t play the original, so I don’t know if maybe the encounter rate or difficulty was, in fact, reduced somewhat for the remake. But no matter what adjustments were or weren’t made, it sure felt like Too Much.
It’s true, I’m too old for this encounter rate
There’s some other QoL that I would bring up – the often unhelpful ‘radar’ system was another big point of frustration – but it doesn’t matter. Playing the SEGA AGES version of Phantasy Star, with the original graphics, the original FM score, was made possible because of the QoL updates made, and particularly the dungeon auto-mapping. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear these kinds of updates don’t necessarily make for an impressive release trailer, where gorgeous graphics and a soaring score really shine, but they really need to be priority one.
Spoiler alert: like all of the in-game maps, it did not guide me well.
Fight-a-Live
Speaking of the battles, I found the combat to be good, despite the slowness. The game also suffers from what I would call “Too Many Status Effects Syndrome”, but just like Etrian Odyssey (another ailing patient), you can largely ignore them.
The best part of battle is the sprite work, really.
The menu-ing can be a bit clunky, and sometimes the grid-based movement is also a little clunky, but overall it was easy to pick up. Again though, it seemed like there was far too much depth for what really is the least important aspect of the game. I found myself just using the same couple attacks over and over again, without issue.
I just realized looking at this screenshot that you can Turn in place. After finishing the entire game.
Anyways, onto the important part, The Stories!
Escalated HR Complaint
The Saga of Chicken Orb
I started with the Distant Future chapter, which features no combat besides the Final Boss. Instead, you’re a cute little robot on a terribly-managed spaceship.
Given my extensive point-and-click adventure game experience, I had no trouble navigating through this story.
Yeah, buddy, that’s how this game genre works
The writing was very good, but this was my first introduction to a running theme in LIVE A LIVE – the attempt to make a grand statement about humanity that ultimately falls a bit flat due to a wonky set-up.
Buddy, this is why you don’t work on the same spaceship as your ex
A lot of philosophizing and soliloquizing here about how great humanity is despite its flaws…flaws like four whole-ass people not intervening to stop two coworkers from dating each other. On a tiny spaceship. Twice.
Says the first guy who dated and broke up with his spaceship coworker (yes, she subsequently went out with…another crew member…)
At least the military man character turned out to be a pleasant surprise rather than a trope.
A ship where you’re allowed to date your coworkers, sir. It’s a complete mess.
Anyways, Chicken Orb’s story is tied for my favorite with the other mostly combat-less chapter.
I decided the Behemoth is a Dragon/Poison Legendary
Thanks, I Hate It
The Saga of Lime Jell-o
Let’s put aside for a second the psychic damage of the …milieu. By removing traditional dialog, I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to progress this chapter. Sometimes I just needed to try to do something more than once, or leave and come back – other times I had to do something else to trigger a state change. The grunting, emojis, and physical comedy also made the cutscenes extremely tedious to sit through.
The radar system telling me to talk to an NPC…who doesn’t talk.
But yes, there’s no way around it. The smurf/smurfette caveman setting was painful to experience. It really confirmed why I try to avoid games where there’s no girl protagonists, as there’s less chance of this nonsense.
At some point, our gorilla friend gets five gal gorillas, who are of course bright pink so you know they’re ladies
Certain aspects of the chapter also felt poorly thought out in general. For example, the mechanic to combine items to form new equipment could have been cool, but Gori couldn’t really equip anything, and Smurfette- I mean Beru, was often absent. Due to being kidnapped. To be sacrificed.
At least the dino boss was really cool. But then the ending was really terrible.
C’mon, Hit me!
The Saga of Bluey
Short and to the point. Basically a boss rush with a blue mage gimmick.
The different fighters were interesting; I loved Legally Distinct Hulk Hogan the best.
Though, the Aloha Slap was my favorite move, if only because 地獄のアロハ started playing in my head every time I used it.
Another chapter that illustrates LIVE A LIVE achieves its mission best when it just goes for it.
Too Many Minibosses
The Saga of The Only Girl
This chapter has a lot of combat padding I think to try to account for players spreading experience between the three disciples, but it ends up leading to a lot of tiresome repetition. For example:
If you’re already set on a disciple, you end up fighting the same disciple 12 times…
The boss dungeon random encounters which aren’t easily dodge-able…
The dozen or so miniboss rush at the end…
Also, killing off the other two disciples I get is par for the genre, but added to my annoyment. I considered bumping this up to three stars solely for the lady factor, but that ending was so rough I can’t.
Lei, we just fought like, thirteen bosses. I want off.
ＬＩＱＵＥＦＡＣＴＩＯＮ
The Saga of Yuusuke
A good portion of this story is fairly confusing.
Can you share, lady?
The flashbacks don’t make a whole lot of sense when trying to figure out characters’ ages, and there’s multiple sequences that are a bit head-scratching, including the end. I feel like it could have benefitted from an extra round of editing.
This line actually does make sense, in context
Speaking of editing, some of the dialog had some interesting grammatical constructions – I strongly suspect whoever wrote this chapter spoke a different variety of English than others on the localization team.
This occasional variation was perfectly fine, of course, especially compared to A Disastrous Grammatical Choice that was made in a later chapter. But it does make me suspect that, common in many projects, everyone was their own editor.
Okay, but how old are you? I’ll take human or dog years.
This ended up being one of the longer chapters for a few reasons:
A gimmick that effectively makes you talk to every NPC twice,
some RNG item mechanics,
and a lengthy dungeon towards the end. But it pays off in a cool Big Robot Boss Battle against Bird Buddha, and the story is pretty interesting, despite some hiccups here and there.
Odeo, you were too precious for this world…
Mothers, Don’t Let Your Sons Grow Up To Be Horse Girls
The Saga of the Kid
Very strong writing in this chapter, and a very strong localization along with it.
Bonus, it’s relatively brief with no random combat, but instead has a very interesting trap-setting mechanic.
I mean, I guess.
The twist sure was a twist, but I accidentally set the game dialog on auto-advance at some point before, so I kinda missed it. Also, I probably wouldn’t have fought Mad Dog at the end had I realized I could flee the fight – I was so stressed out from the boss fight (the first that I ever lost and had to retry), I wasn’t thinking straight.
Uhh, what’s your point, bucko
Luckily it doesn’t affect much, but this was the only chapter I would be willing to replay in order to do it “perfectly”. Yet another notch in the “No Random Encounters Equals A Much Better Time” column.
Wink wink, nod nod, say no more, friend
Wish I Had An Actual Minimap
The Saga of Murasaki
(with a guide and knowledge of Bakumatsu tropes)
You have three options when approaching this chapter: try to achieve the necessary objectives by proceeding normally, go for a pacifist run, or kill the maximum number of human enemies.
Yep, I only killed a bunch of cute little warehouse ghosties to grind levels
I went for the pacifist route using a guide, and thought it was going to be really rough based on forum threads, but it only took me 3 hours.
You might not need a guide for the chapter pictured above, but I would totally grab one for Twilight of Edo Japan
I also didn’t attempt any of the optional boss fights. I do very much get that without a guide, it would have been Really Bad to navigate this chapter, even if I wasn’t trying to do the very specific route needed for the pacifist run. The radar system is more-or-less useless here, and the map you’re given almost seems like an insult.
“Rough sketch” is generous…
But once again, even more evidence that the less combat a chapter has, the better. The story was a bit thin, and likely overly relied upon players’ familiarity with the Bakumatsu setting.
Uhh, what?
Unfortunately, since talking to NPCs can potentially trigger unavoidable encounters, I probably missed out on some story beats here and there by taking the pacifist route, so I took that into account as well when giving my final rating.
How To Overkill Kelp
The Saga of Ren Faire
Right from the get-go, we have to talk about The Grammar.
It turned out to be the writer’s attempt at putting all the dialog into iambic pentameter. Not only did it take me right out, but there were times I had trouble grasping what people were talking about.
Wait a sec, Uranus, let me try to parse that
Later in the story I realized just how crystal clear the Japanese voice lines were in comparison to the attempt at Shakespearean poetics in the dialog box.
Uh-huh…
This decision on the part of the localization team was so terrible that I’m actually working on a separate post about it – don’t expect it soon however.
If only they could wish me well in normal dialog…
Anyways. It was inevitable I wouldn’t enjoy this chapter. I usually hate these kinds of chivalry stories, and this one was no different. It also introduced truly random encounters, which made the experience even more painful.
Yeah, it sure was a challenge…
But perhaps worst of all, it suffered from the recurring issue of the game trying to make a grand statement and failing due to the set-up. Here, in addition to the quagmire that was the dialog, the decision to go with the classic silent protagonist meant that the volta had no impact. Once he finally spoke, my reaction was more-or-less limited to “Oh! He finally spoke!”
Uh, buddy, your meter’s off…
His friend’s earlier accusations about his overcompetitive nature also had me shrugging my shoulders – by design, we never really know who this guy is, so learning anything about him at that point was Too Little, Too Late.
Um, okay?
This narrative choice meant the Big Bad, the Final Boss, the Ultimate Evil, was Some Dude Who Spoke Once. Unfortunate.
Are We Done Yet?
The Dominion of Hate
While not as bad as the mansion grounds in the Bakumatsu chapter, this area is deceptively confusing to navigate, and the constant random encounters sure didn’t help. I quickly realized I was overleveled from all the fights just one trial in (out of seven) and started fleeing every subsequent encounter, but that’s still very slow.
The enemies seem to be drawn across all the chapters
It won’t be any surprise to hear that my favorite Trial was Chicken Orb’s, as it had no combat (save for an optional boss that I skipped), and all puzzles.
Happy to hear it, buddy!
Many of the other trials seemed a bit phoned-in – run up and get that character’s ultimate weapon, maybe fight a boss, flee from a bunch of random encounters, and run out. A couple gave me a lot of trouble due to a combination of labyrinthian design and the ol’ unhelpful radar – Murasaki’s trial adds an RNG element of getting keys from a specific enemy encounter to be arguably the worst waste of time.
I think literally an hour later…with a guide…
What could have been the most interesting, the Trial of Heart, I ended up doing last, and I didn’t have the patience to constantly flee from random encounters to navigate up and down unmapped dungeon stairs to talk to all the spirits for the bits of lore.
I mean, I guess? Not sure why no one’s giving Streibough credit for his expert deception
I did fight a couple of the optional bosses for the cosmic equipment, as the guides I consulted recommended doing so. This brings me back to something I mentioned at the top of the post: Too Many Status Effects. You see, apparently the final boss likes to cast Petrify a lot, which is a particularly nasty status effect. And equipping one piece of the cosmic equipment nullifies Petrify. But I was so used to ignoring status effects, I didn’t even know equipment could protect you against status effects, let alone where in the UI that info is shown.
Okay, but I’m a lady, so I’m using a guide.
Anyways, it’s hard for me to judge the final boss fights – I was likely simultaneously overleveled and underprepared. But I managed fine. The boss rush did stress me out a little, as I had de-equipped a few characters I wasn’t using, and some of the fights weren’t originally done solo. But everything went without incident.
Not quite, there was like, nine bosses to go at this point.
I of course made Lei, the only leading lady, my leader, and her final speech didn’t disappoint. But as I mentioned before, I had no real connection to Ren Faire- I mean Oersted, so there was no real plot catharsis on that end.
But I’m gonna blame them on the lack of mini-map.
The ending sequence was otherwise nice.
Farewell, Chicken Orb…
Let me Live-a-Live
Weirdly, I don’t think it’s fair to really judge this game on an overall basis, given that different people worked on different scenarios. The general concept is cool, and sometimes it was executed well. When it wasn’t, it was due to the scenario writer relying too heavily on checking the RPG boxes instead of trying to tell a story. But unfortunately, by making the Middle Ages chapter the unifying thread, the whole game’s ending ends up resting on how well you connected with that chapter, and clearly I didn’t connect with that chapter one bit.
Sounds like a you problem, buddy
Again, putting the painful dialog in the Middle Ages aside, I really think the remake should have just let me live-a-live. By that I mean, give the player the ability to decrease or remove random encounters entirely. The graphics were nice, the music was nice, but at the end of the day, it’s about the gameplay, and too many times I didn’t want to play because of the encounter rate.
kelp 