Well, look before you meme, I guess. I don’t know what I was really expecting with this one, but this game definitely managed to fall short of most of my hopes. The general structure and battle system of Live A Live were recreated pretty well, but a lot of the adaptation work misses most of the best parts of the original.

For instance, what if the China scenario had only one disciple you train for slightly different stat boosts, dulling the decision making and removing the strongest story beats of the original? What if Wild West had the enemies come in easy waves, and the boss on her lonesome, meaning there’s no point to picking up items, which was the entire challenge? Even the chapters I enjoyed like Ninja tend to coast off the successes of the original instead of improving anything. So many things don’t come together that one of my friends, watching my downward spiral playing this game, called the developer a type of fan who only saw Live A Live as a cool obscure game to copy off of.

And I find “fan” to be apt as Touhou A Live also trends towards really vapid shoutouts of both the original and other games. At the very least, the undeniably true Touhou lore that Yun LiveALive trained Meiling is funny, and most of the Live A Live cameos don’t take up much space. Meanwhile, the generic video game references were what really got to me. Like, Wild West has you play as a fox person, so Mad Dog is named after James McCloud and names you Fox! (In fairness, this one could be part of the translation, but there’s so many other references that it seems likely the joke could be in the original) The evil cavemen are crows, which obviously means Zaki has to be a Murkrow for some reason and his boss fights are you baiting out Brave Bird recoil damage. I guess this isn’t the biggest deal in the world, but it just gives off the vibe that whoever made this is like… really annoying about why Cube should be in Smash, if that makes any sense. These sorts of basic callouts really sap the immersion out of any story when they happen.

Speaking of the story, it’s a complete mess. The most immediate example is the end of the Knight chapter, something that in the original evidently inspires lots of thoughtful essays, including on this platform, from people probably better at writing than me. Here it’s just… Marisa mad that she’s the “Luigi” of Touhou. On some level, I get it. Touhou characters are more just funny than anything, and if Touhou A Live wanted to entirely divorce itself from Live A Live’s discussion of narratives, that would be acceptable. The Wrestler chapter is a strong example of this, with Masaru’s quest to become “the strongest” naturally imposed onto Cirno, who in typical Cirno fashion gets her shit kicked in by really strong bosses until you finally figure out their patterns. The chapter even has other good gags like the cast being 5 Touhou girls, as well as the entirely unchanged Moribe. Something silly like this is a perfect adaptation of Live A Live into the Touhou universe.

However, the narratively focused chapters still try to be “serious”, generally replacing the original plot with some incredibly insipid “who is truly correct in war” babble from a boss before a big fight. I simply don’t find a Touhou version of Live A Live a worthwhile way to examine themes like this (even putting aside hacky “we’re not so different” lines). At the point at which like, Gensokyo is planning a goddamn false flag operation to kill a whole village of their civilians in order to enrage the population to enlist in a war against Makai, the game has just forgotten what makes either of these properties appealing. And then the chapter inexplicably just becomes Knight again after this nuclear MAD false flag nonsense wraps up. The only time I think any of this works is in Mecha where you get to see the people in the process of liquefaction, which shows where Live A Live just kinda told us to care. Also, Wild West gets filled with pervy jokes towards the main character, and there’s a disgusting assault scene in the Knight chapter. The conversation around these sorts of games are usually shitposts about their general nature from people who haven’t played them, so I think it’s responsible having finished it to inform people who would play this for themselves about any disturbing content.

I know someone’s going to get on my case with “what about the gameplay though”, and general issues with chapters aside, I think the battle system is still fun here. Porting this whole real time grid thing to RPGMaker sounds like a headache, but it generally works. Sadly, in later chapters with more complex moves, “generally” often isn’t enough, and there are softlocks if you play fights the wrong way (like using a recoil move to KO a commander enemy, causing a BREAK DOWN). Of special note is the final boss, who softlocks if you KO one of the sentries while hitting another. That was very fun when my best damage dealer hit a whole row. On the other hand, the second phase glitched so bad that everyone but Cirno got stuck charging but the boss didn’t attack so I kicked her to death for like 9 minutes. We fucking take those.

Despite some mechanical issues, there are also some genuinely impressive fights. Towards the start of the Knight chapter, you need to rescue a woman from some bandits, so your main crew starts the fight in a far off corner while all the bandits surround their victim. You have to try to evacuate her ASAP since her vanishing from the field on death will cause a Game Over. This serves as a unique challenge and storytelling opportunity that Live A Live never tried. Even simpler ideas, such as a miniboss in Mecha who kills you in cardinal directions, forces you to strategize on the fly, dancing around the deadly attack while still keeping up pressure because the boss will heal too. Of course, in typical Touhou A Live fashion, this is balanced out by fangamecore bosses of “wow the mother computer goes into a third phase that instantly kills you if you dont spend 5 minutes using high update first so cool”. Taken as a whole, there are good ideas floating around in the game’s various fights despite it all.

Unfortunately, most of the best ideas here really are drowned out by the bad. I couldn’t even fit in other grievances like how the final chapter is even more bloated and dull than the original. There’s a lot of passion that goes into redoing a game like Live A Live, adding new sprites (including bombastic boss ones), even giving the whole soundtrack an infectious SiIvaGunner energy. But the mere presence of passion isn’t enough to make a good game, not when that passion goes toward a nonsensical tone and overlooks simple gameplay decisions, bulldozing over the best parts of Live A Live while seldomly providing much in return. If I wanted to be a news anchor I could say there’s still some interesting stuff here to check out, maybe the insanity of it all is compelling enough for some people, but really, this year I gained a massive appreciation of Live A Live and severe Touhou brainrot. If I could barely tolerate this game long enough to finish it for the bit, what is anyone else getting out of this?

except the best version of mecha omg stan mokou shes so fuckin epic

A complete parody of Live a Live made on RPG Maker which makes complete justice to the game its based off, some chapters had to be adjusted to make more sense in a Touhou related plot but some remain unchanged besides some minor details.

The very main feature of this fangame its the final chapter which main focus is very much the same but expands it a whole lot.

As for side content, there's at least 1 superboss in each chapter and a lot of superbosses in the True final chapter, optional dungeons for all the characters, optional dungeons that help a lot telling us hidden lore of the last chapter and some other references to other games.

Now, I know Live a Live was not a very grindy game but this one will be a grind fest to preparate yourself for the TRUE Final Boss because you will very much need all the best weapons and armor, and this is (At least for me) a very bad design choice.

Let's now talk about the music, being an RPG Maker game, most of its music are now MIDI remixes of Touhou and Live A Live themes which are actually very good, specially Megalomania, they did great justice to that theme.

Overall its in my book one of the best fangames of a Touhou game, and one of the best games i've played in my life, totally recommended if you want more Live A Live with a different taste.

P.S. Try to do a complete pacifist run when you play as Youmu and try to spot all the references to other games outside Touhou and Live A Live, trust me.