On so many levels, Live A Live succeeds with its promise of delivering a very unconventional RPG experience. Playing through eight different characters and timelines each with their unique mechanics and fun stories is an incredibly compelling prospect to me. It baffles me that the ideas for this game were originally made all the way back in 1994 with its original release. We seldom see this sort of take on the RPG genre from big developers anymore so that automatically makes this game stand out. It truly is a unique gaming experience that sadly doesn't fully succeed moment to moment.
My main pain with this game is that the turn based grid is really not that interesting. I was bummed to find that was the only way combat was presented in the game. Rarely does the game present encounters as something other than spamming your strongest moves until you win which in turn makes most encounters trivial. I understand that the game instead focuses on the unique story its telling with each time period, but without a satisfying combat system most of the other gameplay boils down to "walk here", "talk to this person", "walk back to original place". I was a little bummed to see this format be consistent with good chunk of the chapters.
That being said there are standout chapters that do a good job of really differentiating themselves. The Wild West, Edo and Present Day chapters all successfully create an interesting spin on the moment to moment gameplay. So much so that I really wished the other chapters were more focused on specific gameplay ideas that actually changed how you would play normally. I did play all the chapters in a weird order so that's probably one reason as to why my enjoyment was all over the place but I know regardless the final bit of the game would be annoying no matter what.
My other major gripe is that I don't think the final chapter of this game is really that fun to play. The simple inclusion of random encounters in almost every part of the map really killed my drive to take my time and instead replaced it with "just let me beat this as quick as I can". This mindset really hurt the final bits of narrative at the end of the game since I was just so ready to be done at the end. This is a shame since I think so much of the presentation and themes are incredible and had excellent buildup especially with the penultimate chapter. It just sucks that it was dragged down by the slog it took to get there and I am a little surprised the remake didn't contain some sort of quality of life adjustment to this.
Even though I have my problems with Live A Live, I am still glad I played since it is such a unique take on a genre that can be a bit bloated and stagnant.
My main pain with this game is that the turn based grid is really not that interesting. I was bummed to find that was the only way combat was presented in the game. Rarely does the game present encounters as something other than spamming your strongest moves until you win which in turn makes most encounters trivial. I understand that the game instead focuses on the unique story its telling with each time period, but without a satisfying combat system most of the other gameplay boils down to "walk here", "talk to this person", "walk back to original place". I was a little bummed to see this format be consistent with good chunk of the chapters.
That being said there are standout chapters that do a good job of really differentiating themselves. The Wild West, Edo and Present Day chapters all successfully create an interesting spin on the moment to moment gameplay. So much so that I really wished the other chapters were more focused on specific gameplay ideas that actually changed how you would play normally. I did play all the chapters in a weird order so that's probably one reason as to why my enjoyment was all over the place but I know regardless the final bit of the game would be annoying no matter what.
My other major gripe is that I don't think the final chapter of this game is really that fun to play. The simple inclusion of random encounters in almost every part of the map really killed my drive to take my time and instead replaced it with "just let me beat this as quick as I can". This mindset really hurt the final bits of narrative at the end of the game since I was just so ready to be done at the end. This is a shame since I think so much of the presentation and themes are incredible and had excellent buildup especially with the penultimate chapter. It just sucks that it was dragged down by the slog it took to get there and I am a little surprised the remake didn't contain some sort of quality of life adjustment to this.
Even though I have my problems with Live A Live, I am still glad I played since it is such a unique take on a genre that can be a bit bloated and stagnant.