Live A Live's story is spread across nine chapters, eight of which feature a different protagonist in a different time-period. There's the modern-day martial artist who seeks to become the world's strongest fighter, the feudal Japanese ninja who attempts to sneak into an enemy fortress to rescue a prisoner, a robot in the distant future which gets wrapped up in a mystery on board an earth-bound spaceship, and many other interesting stories. Each character's story at first glance appears to be unrelated to the others, but after playing a few, similarities in theme start to become clear. These themes are what really impressed me about the game as the game deals with issues embedded deep within all humans, rather than simple "the princess has been stolen" conflicts of other games. Each character has his own struggles, be it with following what they believe to be correct when told to do something that they don't agree with, or even trying to find redemption from evils in their past.
The 8th and 9th chapters of the game become available once the first seven characters' stories are experienced. The final chapters really tie together the themes featured in each story and bring the story to a climax with a set of decisions which will decide which of the multiple endings to the game will be unlocked, sealing the fate of the eight worlds.
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| There are actually five ninja's on this screen. See them? |
It is difficult to describe the gameplay in Live A Live as each scenario offers its own features and style. Each story uses the same turn-based grid combat system for battles. All characters can equip weapons and armor to increase their stats, though in some scenarios no armor or weapons are found. In some stories, the protagonist fights enemies, gains experience, and levels up like in most common JRPGs. In others, you are given a character with a set level and you do not gain any experience or stat boosts and are required to gain skills by having an enemy use them on you in order to become stronger.
This vast difference in styles between each scenario really blew me away. The creativity in how to use the base game engine in so many different ways is incredibly impressive, and keeps the game interesting even through nine chapters. In the modern fighter's story, the game takes on more of fighting game persona, giving you the ability to choose from six combatants to fight in any order. The select screen greatly resembles other fighting games of the era, and is nothing like anything else in the rest of the game. The Western scenario sees the protagonist searching for items that can be used as traps to make the huge swarm of incoming enemies less of a daunting task for a character which cannot level up. The Ninja scenario plays out mainly like a normal JRPG, enemies are defeated for experience points which make you stronger, but the scenario is actually very open-ended, giving you the opportunity to do the mission in any way that you want and includes stealth elements. Add in the fact that each character has a special ability, and you have eight very different stories to enjoy.
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| Don't make the fist angry... |
Each scenario's length varies from around an hour to almost 4 hours with a grand total of around 12 hours for the entire game. Yes, this is a rather short JRPG, but the uniqueness of the game design makes it worth so much more than the sum of its parts.
For the most part, the fan translation is very well done. There were only a few instances in which I was confused whether a character was supposed to say something strange or if the translation was just awkward. I did have a little bit of trouble trying to figure out what I was supposed to do next in some scenarios, however. This is more a relic of older games than a problem with the game. If you don't talk to everyone in the game, there is a chance that you will miss something big. The only scenario that was kind of annoying was the ninja one. The open-endedness of the story really got annoying as I would often find myself in an area that I thought I was supposed to be in, only to find that the enemies in the area were much stronger than I was prepared for.
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| Time to buy some delicious red pixel fruit! |
The game's art is very pleasant. The scenery in the many different time-periods keep things interesting and are each very detailed when you consider what the limits of the technology were at the time. The protagonist characters each have much better designs than the random NPCs throughout the game, but I suppose that is understandable considering they are the characters that you will spend the most time looking at.
I found myself repeatedly wishing that this game had been released in the United States while playing the fan translation. I would have loved to experience the game when it was new, rather than now when it is clearly outdated. The unique structure of the game is unlike anything that was seen at the time, and even in the modern day. The game literally feels like eight different games all in the same game. I can kind of understand why Square didn't bring the game over to the US, as there are a few more mature themes throughout the game which wouldn't sit well with American game ratings boards. These mature themes are what, to me, made this game so special. I don't like it when companies sugar-coat life and pretend that there aren't darker things happening around us. In the now common "games as art" argument, Live A Live definitely poses a great example of a game being art, just as a movie or book would be.
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