Live a Live (Switch): I Lived, I Laughed, I Loved

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What Scenario will you start with?
	Prehistory (Caveman)
	Imperial China (Martial Arts Master)
	Edo Japan (Ninja)
	Wild West (Cowboy)
	Present Day (Wrasslin)
	Near Future (Mecha)
	Future (Sci Fi)

[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

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ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

This is genuinely a great argument for taking old SNES-era RPGs and just giving them better UI/QoL features because honestly there are just a billion small things that make the game smoother to play and the improved visuals go a really long way to helping the fairly simple stories work. Even Present Day, which is still my least favorite, works a lot better with the goofy voice acting and better spritework and everything.

It's a genuinely good remake in that it basically just adheres to what the game was going for but with polish it couldn't have at the time, which helps emphasize a lot of its strong points. (And occasional weak points.) Also the translation is really good and while I'm kinda 'eeeh' on some of the accents they've mostly done a good job with the voice acting and tone.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2022 06:43

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 11:22

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

Finished the remake and just overall super pleased with it. It has some annoying bits still but by and large it stands the test of time *really* well. Not every chapter is a hit but that was true in the original and the overall smoothing out of gameplay helps a lot.

Genuinely a top tier remake of a weird cult game that thrives on the love and attention

# ¿ Jul 25, 2022 02:32

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

EclecticTastes posted:

There are a number of theories on the topic of why Live A Live was never localized, but according to Tokita, the main issue is that not even the Japanese sales numbers were particularly impressive, and it was a truism at the time that JRPGs performed worse outside of Japan (this was also mostly true prior to the Playstation; the domestic numbers for JRPGs were always much higher than the global), so Square just decided it wasn't worth the effort.

I think it is also worth noting that even for the time the original version of Live A Live wasn't a particular visual masterpiece. Compared to Chrono Cross and FF6 it looks a hell of a lot more basic. The remake does a fantastic job of taking dumpy little sprites and keeping their feel while updating everything, and it also helps contribute a *lot* to the environments as well.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2022 04:28

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

SettingSun posted:

It�s interesting. The Edo chapter is visually striking and received significant visual updates. But in function it is still *identical* to the original, down to the layout, enemy placement and behavior, and item placement. Really this is true for all the chapters.

Yeah, Live A Live Switch adheres extremely close to the original but that is entirely in its favor. It's the sort of high-quality redo that any SNES-era game could hope for, updating everything with great care while not actually losing anything that made it unique.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2022 04:41

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

EclecticTastes posted:

It didn't stop Nintendo from releasing Earthbound up against Donkey Kong Country, to the former game's detriment. The "people want pretty graphics" thing was more of a retrospective analysis, not something anyone realized at the time.

Earthbound looked a hell of a lot better than Live A Live did. (Also Nintendo and Square had different priorities. Even at the time Square was starting to bank on visual prowess being one of their centerpieces and FF7's success just skyrocketed that.)

# ¿ Jul 26, 2022 05:01

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

Actually I do have a question about the Far Future chapter.

I don't quite get the point of the hidden reveal at the very end of the game if you go back and use the JUDGE password. I feel like I was supposed to take something more from it than I did considering how hidden it is and instead it was just kinda ... okay?

# ¿ Jul 26, 2022 05:03

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

Well I think I've played through the whole game now and am just gonna post my opinions on all the chapters as a big ol' scattershot, in the order I played them:

Present Day: Probably the least interesting chapter, and that's saying a lot given that it's a Mega Man/Street Fighter RPG storyline. Pretty barebones, and I'm glad I did it first because it was all combat and the learning mechanism made me pay attention to how enemy attacks worked. I don't think I worked out the all-important knight placement from this chapter alone, but I did figure out that I could basically cheese the boss by spamming Fleetfoot at him, interrupting his charge attack and making him waste turns turning to face me.

Imperial China: Easily my favorite of the bunch. If I were to fault the other routes, most of them have a protagonist who barely if ever speaks, but Roshi was a chatty dude who was just good and wholesome. It's also nice to start out as the kung fu master and have it represented by the gameplay, you just beat the dog piss out of everyone until your students are barely able to fight back towards the end, and then the dojo is just a gauntlet of pushover grunts. This is a great example of what Live-A-Live can do and worked due to the game structure, while a feature length RPG would have to abandon the concept relatively early on. Then you get to the end and the enemies start to actually pose a threat, represented by their stats in the gameplay and the Shifu tiring in the plot because he's literally dying from exhaustion and old age, but fortunately it also coincides with the student approaching his level and coming into their own and being able to kick asses without him.

Also I read the blurb about only one student succeeding him, but I figured the others would still be around for the chapter, so I went 2-1-1 for all the training sessions. I missed out on optimizing Lei's stats but it didn't matter because she was still a total shitwrecker. Roshi apologizing to his dead students and Lei's eulogy at the end as she wrecks the rock were also really touching. Definitely sold on the game at this point. Also Unto the Birds the Heavens, unto the Fish the Seas is a fuckin banger of a theme.

Prehistory: Picked this one early-ish, because I figured I wouldn't really care for it, caveman stories are not my cup of tea. Turns out I was wrong, because it had the simple and, in retrospect, obvious idea of having no spoken language and communicating everything in gestures and grunts. I'm sure it was difficult to actually implement, but they pulled it off and I loved it. It had slapstick and poo poo and fart combat and Flintstone cars and caveman Dalton and was somehow the most straightforward RPG of the bunch, down to a rudimentary shopping/crafting mechanic, and you know what, it earned it. I wound up looking up a guide for this one, curious to see if I'd missed anything, and learned about the King Mammoth and Rock of Rocks. King Mammoth taught me a lot about positioning and I managed to beat it at level 12, but I was not going to bother grinding for the coke bottle. Kinda sad Beru is barely in your party, she ruled.

Distant Future: I think this one is probably the one that suffered the most from the game's age. I've seen plenty of survival horror, even in the specific genre of on board a spaceship with a rogue AI, which were in a more suited medium than the sprite-based RPG. I'm sure it was a lot more novel for its time, but dang it is frustrating to watch the characters get repeatedly bamboozled by ship systems spontaneously failing and doctored communication logs and not suspect the one obvious culprit. It was pretty novel to play through it as the adorable little robot who wouldn't fight, especially once we finally get to the boss and they obviously can throw down. Also I saw someone mention that all the protagonists were male, including the robot, but the chapter exclusively gives Cubert they or it pronouns, depending on how much the speaker respects robots. I'm assuming it's the work of either the remake team or the localizers, but I do appreciate it.

The Wild West: A nice little romp that served as a break between the longer stories. I forget the Wanderer's default name; the Sundown Kid maybe? I named them the Tequila Sunset Kid, and it fit. Music was cool, Mad Dog was cool, but I feel like the gimmick was almost too simple? I just looted the entire town, and gave traps to everyone in the bar, and then gave more traps to the ones that came back while the clock was tickin, which was enough to take out the entire Crazy Bunch even though I don't think the mariachis ever managed to complete planting a trap.

This is also where I noticed the pattern of Watanabe's dad and the villains all being named variations of Odio; O. Dio was kind of on the nose. Didn't really care for the running orphan gag with comedic exaggerated crying sprites, nor what to make of the latter, but O. Dio was the coolest villain. Gatling gun ghost horse with impeccable manners, heck yeah. I killed Mad Dog, but apparently there's an alternate ending where you flee instead of shoot his face off? I don't regret it, he clearly wanted a fight to the death and it was the obliging thing to do, but I think I prefer the idea of them eventually burying the hatchet, he was a good egg.

Twilight of Edo Japan: Jesus gently caress was this a complex one, and the gameplay is apparently entirely unaltered from the 1994 release? That messes with my head. I went for the pacifist route and appreciated how insanely free form the chapter was, after bungling and savescumming my way into the main castle; I fell into a pit, went to jail, and saw the prisoner right beside me. Naturally I did what any reasonable person would do, and reloaded my save and went in the exact opposite direction, working my way up the floors. I didn't do any combat until the contraptions attic, and it was neat to figure out the fights and see that I could get levels without incrementing the kill counter. I got to the robot boss horribly underleveled and managed to muddle through by abusing the knockback and tile damage from Waterspout, while avoiding attacks with the knight position, and it made me feel real cool. Then I saw a plot flag on the fifth floor, plus a fight that looked like they might be humans, but I couldn't figure out if they were because I couldn't beat them. I figured the prison was where I needed to go, but I wasn't gonna fall into the cage like a goon, so I scoured the map looking for the employee entrance. I found a prison, but it didn't have the Prisoner in it, which took me a long time to figure out was because I'd triggered a plot flag. By the time I realized I had also stumbled upon the storehouse and found the lost souls you were supposed to grind out as a pacifist player, and, hey, I didn't need that to get this far, obviously I'm just a badass.

Eventually I made my way back to the coin slot and had enough cash to operate it this time around, which netted me a robot buddy who immediately died to unlock the boss door once I found a way to take it outside without dropping it down a death pit. Then I finally hit some plot and found the Prisoner, who I of course took all the way back downstairs to try to kill that fuckin fish, which didn't succeed. At this point I looked up a guide to see if I missed something, and learned that there's a way to get the prison key early on without violence, but at that point the prison didn't have anything I needed. Also there's an even harder superboss than the carp that I didn't even bother finding. It did get me the Geta-load-of-these Geta, which is a nice pun, but I think I'd have been happier not knowing about any of this, ah well.

I see a lot of people mention that this chapter is really obtuse to try to pacifist, but I didn't think any part of it seemed that inscrutable and it certainly felt like you had a lot of leeway. I get the impression I might just have lucked out and stumbled into the optimal routing. I did savescum a lot, but I also talked to every NPC who didn't chase me and a lot of those were human fights, so that felt fair. Some of them gave me food and goods, and some were demons I was allowed to kill.

The Near Future: Saved this for last because it seemed like an FF7-style dieselpunk romp, and Akira obviously looked like someone with a personality. Delivered on both of these fronts, and I didn't even know about the Golden Sun mind reading mechanic until I started. Definitely the darkest of the storylines, with the body horror tubes and all the dead parents, but it managed to hit those emotional beats. The ~~panty~~savings snatching was real unnecessary, but I'll write that off as a product of its time. My second favorite after Imperial China, just a nice little self-contained story of its own. I do not particularly dig giant robots, but the steel titan was cool, and the villains were by far the worst people of the game.

I wish it had spent a little longer on explaining some of the themes. Liquefaction is obviously an insanely evil thing to do, what with the horror tubes and the robot screaming in pain as it's ordered to fight you and can't resist, but also it's okay to do to a dying turtle and it's happy about it and becomes your robot buddy, and you kid sister volunteers to be juiced because she's terminally ill? Dogg you gotta explain exactly what makes it okay sometimes and body horror at others. Also matango; there's a lite version that's a healing item, there's a bar where people get hosed up on it and it overrides their thoughts, and at one point a character eats a whole pile of them which overclocks his brain and makes him a powerful psychic, but eventually kills him. At no point, unless I missed it, does anyone mention what it is. I had to google it, and apparently it's a reference to a village of mushroom in Secret of Mana, which in itself is a reference to an old Japanese horror movie where people get addicted to mutagenic mushrooms that turn them into cannibal mushroom people? A throwaway line about them being psychadelic mushrooms would have been nice!

Broader spoilery remarks: Obviously a cover for the remaining chapters, but I didn't want to give that away in case someone hasn't gotten there yet! I gave Middle Ages a hard time for being an extremely standard medieval RPG with a silent, and I was also really unsettled by the princess' voice actress who managed to read all her lines as though she really didn't want to be married to �rsted, and the complete lack of communication between him and Streighbough about the latter obviously being infatuated with the princess. I expected the chapter to make up for this, but I honestly did not expect all of that to serve a purpose. Uranus in particular was such a stand-up dude and his Divine Voice is clearly the best attack in the game and it sucked that he got such a raw deal. It kind of bothered me that we couldn't hear �rsted speak up in his defense at any point, but it's eventually clear that he did and what he said is left to the player's imagination because it ultimately doesn't matter. Alethea Julietting herself inspiring �rsted to finally speak and condemn the world was insanely powerful and I am so glad I had none of this spoiled for me, probably the single coolest moment in the game.

Also everyone speaks in some kind of Shakespearan or Middle English or whatever the actual term is for this particular kind of prose, and I'm really glad they added that touch.

I'm also psyched they had an Odio version of the final chapter. The fights were easy and the ending wasn't anything much, but it was pretty cool to get to play as the final bosses, and I absolutely loved his tender little monologue to each of them. It made the obvious final confrontation with him on the heroic route all the more impactful.

The Actual Final Chapter was one of the weaker ones, but I came in with tempered expectations because I know how these stories tend to get when they open up and let you use anyone, and it greatly exceeded those. The gameplay was everything I could have wanted, just gathering up your favorites and throwing them at meaty optional dungeons and watching them reach their full potential and getting them geared up to absolutely clown on things. The random encounters got a bit long in the tooth towards the end, but not overwhelmingly so, and of course I didn't have to get everyone to level 16 and plow through their optional dungeon.

I made Lei my main character and am glad of it; game could certainly have used more than one eventual optional female protagonist, but at least she is awesome. Excellent stats, even without optimized gear, and she gets two obscenely powerful attacks that could basically wipe every random encounter. Plus you get to see her unique line for finding loot and it's "Would you look at that! A <item>!

The weak part is that it had basically no plot to speak of. You meet a party member, they introduce themselves, maybe they'll pick a fight, and bam done. Only unique interaction I got is that since Lei is a girl, Pogo will swoon and make his sex noises at her, and she'll comment that he's obviously taken a shine to her, which would have sat a lot better with me if it wasn't literally her only voiced line to another protagonist. Only other dialogue you get is that exposition carp that requires you to clear two dungeons (which I did last because those were for the party members I didn't feel like using), and the ghosts in Akira's dungeon, which were cool but would have been a lot cooler if the characters had reacted to them in any way.

Then there's the final confrontation, which was fuckin hype. Odio actually gets some unique lines for every character and they respond in kind (I made Lei and Akira my core party members because they were cool and had good attacks, then shuffled around Cubert, the Tequila Sunset Kid and Oboromaru before settling on the first two for my party. The ninja was easily a far more well-rounded party member, but the cowboy was cooler and could do pretty wild damage with his last few moves). The final final fight of all characters clowning on their respective Odio, then coming together to wipe the floor with his final form, only to wrest �rsted free so he could kill his own Odio was insanely cinematic and cool.

Then it ends on your chosen character giving a speech to �rsted that at least manages to soothe him a little as he tries to come to grips with his deeds. Lei opens up with a pained realization that he reminds him of herself; she used to be jealous and resentful, but had a kindly mentor and eventually realized that everyone struggles and has aspirations and you can't know the hardship of strangers. She's doing her best to be a better person, and sometimes she stumbles, but she keeps soldiering on. �rsted respects and admires that, and sends you all on your way. Everyone gets a parting line, and I particularly liked Tequila Sunset Kid's "We'll survive. It's what humans do," and Lei's "Wish you were here, Old Man," wondering if they'd truly saved the world and if they could have done a better job somehow, and settling on "We did our best. It'll have to do." obviously the coolest protagonist and correct choice

this game is pretty cool, will recommend it to friends

I particularly like the Sunset Kid's final line because it actually shows growth for his character, since prior to the events in the town he was explicitly just using himself as bait for lovely people until one of them killed him and by the end he's willing to genuinely try surviving.

Of all the characters I've tried though Lei really feels like the most fitting for the main character of the last chapter. She resonates really well and is a strong counterpoint to Odio because she was a selfish thief who learned to improve herself and act for reasons beyond personal gain or glory which is such a nice contrast to "I was the hero but I acted almost entirely with the expectation that my strength would reward me with everything I wanted and didn't care who I hurt doing it." Other characters are okay but Lei just hits home extremely hard. It also helps that she is so frigging cool and her updated design looks awesome.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2022 01:27

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

Unlucky7 posted:

Question on the Final Chapter: i found a full party (Started with Oboro, got Akira, Pogo and Masaru). Is it possible to find any more protagonists? I did find Cube but he needed a part I haven found yet.)

Also I could do it a way to make battles faster if they are going to force Random Encounters

Edit: At least running away is 100% effective. And I got Akiras ultimate weapon it looks like!

You can and should recruit every character.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2022 02:57

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

Terper posted:

Voice acting is great but I want to give special notice to the Imperial China ending where the English dub sounds like this, but in Japanese, they add some extra special flair to it.

Holy poo poo the Japanese dub is so much better there, I should have gone for that.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2022 00:20

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

SettingSun posted:

If this game had achievements there would certainly be one for facing down the entire Crazy Bunch at once.

I am sure the inevitable PC port is going to have plenty of fun ones

# ¿ Jul 29, 2022 18:49

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

They absolutely had an existing romance of some kind. Almost all of her opening dialogue is her trying to convince both herself and osty that she is okay with suddenly being wed to another. It is framed at first like her being romantic but the actual dialogue is exclusively her going 'okay I guess this is my life now.'

# ¿ Aug 4, 2022 17:00

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

Item Getter posted:

Am I really the only weird one who likes Yun? I feel like narratively it makes for the best story to choose him / he would be the protagonist of that type of story if it was in a non-interactive medium like a movie where you couldn't choose. You know what with the other two already being fairly strong from the beginning, and his whole recruitment arc with him being physically weak and the shifu calling him "stronger" than his physically intimidating bullies since he has the strength of spirit to stand up to them, him having to beg the shifu to accept him as a disciple etc. And just generally it seems like the best story for the one who seems physically weakest in the beginning to have the most potential and growth and eventually inherit the title of master. Similarly with how the game designs its mechanics to reflect narrative, you could reasonably expect the one who initially has the lowest stats/level to have good enough stat growths to become equal to or surpass the others, though I suppose that's not the case at least for his max HP. Still it's not an issue in most cases if you avoid putting him in a risky position, and outside of maybe some optional bosses the game is not really difficult enough that you have to min/max everything.
It just seems like everyone in discussions about the game is always on Team Lei outside of a couple people who like Hong, granted it's understandable since they're all likeable characters and choosing Lei is the only way to prevent the cast of the game from being all dudes + 1 robot. I guess I just feel like Yun is really underappreciated, I think he's a cool choice for the reasons I stated above.

The issue with Yun is that he's the most expected and generic one. It isn't statwise, it is that he is absolutely the kind of dude who would end up the protagonist in another JRPG and that is exactly why nobody wants to pick him. You can get Yuns in all sorts of JRPGs. Lei is extremely cool and has a great arc that fits well with the narrative of the game and Hong is so outside of the norm that he fits the 'weird-rear end protagonist' concept the game is going for.

He isn't terrible or anything but he's a dime a dozen type and I don't need a dime a dozen type in my game about Adorable Circle Robot, Cowboy, Caveman and Psychic Biker Mecha Pilot.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2022 06:20

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 11:22

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

Terra-da-loo! posted:

I have been juggling multiple games lately, so I've not played much of LAL since I got to the middle ages portion, but... I just wanna say that, like, what I have played has been fairly genius and excellently made. I wonder what its legacy would be if this game had gotten an international release when it was new.

It's an interesting question because what we would have gotten would *not* have been what it is. I can't see LAL getting past US censorship stuff unchanged at the time.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2022 02:02

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