A remake is almost always a little exciting, let’s be honest. They give a new generation a chance to tackle an old classic, or older gamers a chance to pick up something they might have missed or want to revisit. Then there’s the third option; the remake of a game that only saw a limited release initially. Live A Live is in this third camp, a game that was previously only released in Japan, refreshed and released upon the whole world.
Before I start, it isn’t possible to discuss this game without a few spoilers. I’ll avoid story beats but as the varied mechanics are where the game shines, I’ll have to speak about a few of them, so just a little warning for you.
As opposed to a single narrative from the outset, Live A Live opens with several individual stories which the player can tackle in any order they please. So whether you want to start in the Wild West or the Near Future is entirely down to your preferences. Each chapter is reasonably short, a few hours on average, so you can finish most in a single sitting, but an auto-save feature means you can jump in and out of stories at will.
In fact, every one of the narratives is a perfect little slice of story, each with a satisfying conclusion. What truly makes them stand out from each other, however, is the wholly distinct nature of each one. These tales encompass a variety of genres and styles, including some that aren’t often seen in JRPG settings, such as Far Future’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ inspired space thriller. It feels almost like a compilation in terms of the overall story, but really works here.
As a whole, this game feels close in tone to the SNES classic, Chrono Trigger. This isn’t surprising as the director of Live A Live, Takashi Tokita, was also involved in that time-hopping gem, but the tone that is shared between several of the chapters and the expressiveness of the characters, really hammers home the similarities between the two games in the best possible way. Essentially, if you enjoy one, you’ll likely enjoy the other.
Stripped to the basics, the general gameplay of Live A Live is your traditional JRPG. You talk to people, level up, gain increasingly better gear and abilities, and you take on enemies in turn based battles. Well, kind of. The battles take place on a grid, using a modified Active Time Battle system where different abilities will extend or shorten the time between turns and where moving around the field will push along your enemies’ gauge, allowing them to act.
Each one of your abilities will cover a different pattern of squares on the grid and moving around the field, while risky, is key to efficiently defeating foes. Also, some abilities might cause a variety of status effects to turn the tide, whether that be in your favour or against. Finally, each enemy has strengths and weaknesses to particular types of attack, which will be shown as icons under the name of the enemy in the corner when highlighted.
So, the main unifying aspect that ties this whole package together is the basic gameplay and combat, even if the latter doesn’t fully appear in all chapters as the primary focus. The outlier is the Far Future, as it only really has combat inside a video game on the ship (an excellent video game, mind you, with a complete ear wig of a theme track). But Live A Live is not content with letting this unifying aspect dominate the experience.
Each chapter introduces a new mechanic that dramatically alters the flow and gameplay. The simplest of these appears in Edo Japan where you can simply make your character invisible to sneak past enemies in the palatial grounds that form that chapter. Coupled with the fact that you character counts each kill, if you let that affect you of course, creates a huge amount of tension as you try to avoid encounters.
These mechanics do vary in how complicated they are though. The Present Day features a fighting tournament against a variety of one-to-one opponents with differing weaknesses, with your character acquiring the abilities of your foes as you go. This tale has the aesthetic of classic fighting games with the deeper mechanics of a Mega Man title, and was honestly one of the most fun chapters.
This isn’t to say that this game is flawless though, as there are a few things that let it down. Live A Live is a 90s SNES JRPG, and suffers from a few of the problems with games of that era. The biggest, and most prevalent, is the lack of signposting. In simpler chapters like Present Day and Far Future, it can be almost impossible to get lost, or the mini-map will get you through, but in the more complex chapters of Edo Japan or Near Future, you can end up getting very lost, especially if you take a break for any reason. It’s not enough to wholly damage the experience, obviously, but it has to be pointed out.
The variety between the chapters encompasses everything from the writing, to the visual style and music, too. The remake has rendered everything in the gorgeous HD-2D style of Octopath Traveler, with some phenomenal voice acting added alongside. Each tale also has a unique visual identity, with different styles of writing in each that is not only completely different each time but thematically appropriate.
I would particularly recommend the writing in Pre-History, which is hilarious in its simplicity. There’s almost no dialogue for the entire chapter, with the characters all interacting through sets of noises and visualised speech bubbles containing pictures, and yet the story is remarkably easy to follow. Take a look at every item description in this chapter as it definitely got a smile out of me, if nothing else.
Musically, this game is a tour-de-force. The soundtrack by Yoko Shimomura (of Kingdom Hearts fame) is full of beautiful tracks that work to further the distinction between the stories, with all of the Far Future tracks being ominous in nature and Imperial China having a soundtrack that adds to the kung-fu movie feel of the entire chapter. Then every chapter has the same, phenomenal final boss theme to tie everything together in a simply stunning aural package. Progressing through the game unlocks the soundtrack to be listened to at any time in the Jukebox menu.
