This review contains spoilers
(theres a fire emblem: awakening spoiler somewhere in here so if youre still spoiler dodging that game watch out)
I'm gonna cold take with you for a second. Live A Live is good. Ridiculously, miraculously good. It's not one of those games your friend tells you is a masterpiece, and how much of a shame it is that it was never released in the west, only for it to just be alright. It's forward thinking in consistently mind blowing ways, its throughlines somehow gleem out as gorgeous and harrowing despite how pastiche-y it is at its core...It's a fuckin’ classic. And playing it through a remake this genuinely appreciative yet gaudy is like having a birthday party in a Burger King.
Off the cusp of the release of Final Fantasy VI, Live a Live feels like 90s Squaresoft flexing that they finally understood how to imbue their dinky little games with tone, showing how they’ve risen beyond riding on childhood wonder or nostalgia. The game thrives on its mastery of set piece in ways that feel 20 years ahead; so you’re a cowboy of hazy details, and you’re standing in a crowd with the sheriff breathing down your neck. A boy tugs on your shirt, pleading that you might be one of the “good guys”, and your only 2 replies are “...”, and “I ain’t a saint, kid”. This consistent motif runs through the Wild West chapter: that staying silent feels easier than speaking up, but speaking out feels right. Despite the joyful simplicity of it, every single time it presented me with that little “...”, it managed to stop me in my tracks for a few more seconds than the last. And to be honest…even as I write this, I’ve never checked if there’s some whimsically different dialogue if I chose to stay silent at the times I could, and I don’t think I will now. Twilight of Edo Japan presents you with this genuinely complex brand of playstyles - a pacifist stalker of the night, a cold blooded killer, or a unique mixture of both. So when you realize that the reward is superfluous - a cool sword that isn’t even the best sword, I can imagine someone might feel underwhelmed.
On the other hand, we have Imperial China, where the genuinely distinct fruition of our choices is obfuscated and hidden behind deceit. This story’s initially portrayed as a management sim of our 3 students, each day having its own stat theme, Present Day having conditioned me into considering things like “maybe if i hit them with certain attacks they’ll learn them???”...yet it all crashes down on us. Our journey as an instructor ends unsatisfyingly soon, before anything can feel truly fleshed out, purposeful wasting of the players time over presenting us with the direct appeal of our choices from the get-go.
My intuitive gaymer brain was able to immediately get the obvious truth regarding Imperial China’s branching paths as well - sure, it’s not thaaat impressive that there are 3 extra playable characters. Surely, they’ll all have just as little dialogue as everyone else, and the differences in their moveset will be entirely cosmetic. But just like that, Live A Live gets you. It’s not a game of routes and replayability, but interrogation. The game’s very logo presents us with a branching path despite it only having one true end, because the introspection is in our hands now. That’s when the game finally hits us with the Middle Ages arc, where we are forced to look back through time and question RPGs as a whole. The pure cathartic energy as Live a Live tears the classic RPG narrative to shreds - the intertext of our 2 faux-leads, Oersted and Streibough’s personalities being ripped straight out of Final Fantasy IV paying off. Oersted is forced to confront that his hero’s journey is a scam, written on lies promised through the corpses of ruined men, while I sit here, thinking “man they really couldve tuned down the random encounters in this section”
this game came out in 1994 holy fuck. video games? they might be good u might wanna check em out
Most importantly about this game’s remake shedding light on it for a whole lot of people, is talking about what it represents in this very climate. In my retrospective context of 1994, Live a Live feels like a cold critique of the increasingly insular pool of influences in its genre. Why not make a game where you take down the status quo of heroism, rather than enforcing it? And more humbly, why not just make an RPG that takes place in China instead of Medieval Europe! Sorry, not like that. Ironically though, when I look at Live a Live as a 2022 product, its most unique trait is its warmth. The simple details are truly where it rules: I found it chilling how all 100 people in the Edo Japan Castle had their own name. I appreciated that Oersted fought against bosses named after phobias while the real protagonists fought against philias - the game wants you to consider the fine details of where you might have it easier than someone else. If there’s anything truly ever present here, it’s the sentiment expressed towards electronics (and by extension, the good ol’ video games) during Distant Future - that like any art, these things are fundamentally humane due to how much of ourselves we put into our craft.
When you get to the game’s bad ending, and kill Oersted for the crimes he committed out of pure, unadulterated hatred, you’re left with the solemn ending message on your screen
The cycle continues
And the cycle did continue: Live a Live was a commercial failure in its home country, and its team and genre as a whole would be thrown back into the Middle Ages. I think we’ve all run into some unfortunate occasions where an RPG just feels cold: just some recent examples for me, the at times genuinely lovely Dragon Quest XI feels brittle and conservative, because it isn’t interested in criticizing the framework of its series. The critically acclaimed, yet plainly awful Fire Emblem: Awakening gives us a grand ending praising sacrificing ourselves for our country like a fucking military recruiter, shooting you a bad ending where everyone sounds regretful if you refuse. So to play Live A Live, a game so gentle that it’d simply ask you to simply consider not shooting your suicidal cowboy friend, without dangling some sort of fancy good ending behind that behavior, is the most refreshing thing I could ask for.
In every heart the seed of dark abides. The makings of a Lord when watered well…
With hate. Sweet hate. She springs eternal. Sings…
All-tempting draught. We’ll drink of her again.
-Oersted’s last words. I’ll be taking a drink next time I play a Fire Emblem game
I'm gonna cold take with you for a second. Live A Live is good. Ridiculously, miraculously good. It's not one of those games your friend tells you is a masterpiece, and how much of a shame it is that it was never released in the west, only for it to just be alright. It's forward thinking in consistently mind blowing ways, its throughlines somehow gleem out as gorgeous and harrowing despite how pastiche-y it is at its core...It's a fuckin’ classic. And playing it through a remake this genuinely appreciative yet gaudy is like having a birthday party in a Burger King.
Off the cusp of the release of Final Fantasy VI, Live a Live feels like 90s Squaresoft flexing that they finally understood how to imbue their dinky little games with tone, showing how they’ve risen beyond riding on childhood wonder or nostalgia. The game thrives on its mastery of set piece in ways that feel 20 years ahead; so you’re a cowboy of hazy details, and you’re standing in a crowd with the sheriff breathing down your neck. A boy tugs on your shirt, pleading that you might be one of the “good guys”, and your only 2 replies are “...”, and “I ain’t a saint, kid”. This consistent motif runs through the Wild West chapter: that staying silent feels easier than speaking up, but speaking out feels right. Despite the joyful simplicity of it, every single time it presented me with that little “...”, it managed to stop me in my tracks for a few more seconds than the last. And to be honest…even as I write this, I’ve never checked if there’s some whimsically different dialogue if I chose to stay silent at the times I could, and I don’t think I will now. Twilight of Edo Japan presents you with this genuinely complex brand of playstyles - a pacifist stalker of the night, a cold blooded killer, or a unique mixture of both. So when you realize that the reward is superfluous - a cool sword that isn’t even the best sword, I can imagine someone might feel underwhelmed.
On the other hand, we have Imperial China, where the genuinely distinct fruition of our choices is obfuscated and hidden behind deceit. This story’s initially portrayed as a management sim of our 3 students, each day having its own stat theme, Present Day having conditioned me into considering things like “maybe if i hit them with certain attacks they’ll learn them???”...yet it all crashes down on us. Our journey as an instructor ends unsatisfyingly soon, before anything can feel truly fleshed out, purposeful wasting of the players time over presenting us with the direct appeal of our choices from the get-go.
My intuitive gaymer brain was able to immediately get the obvious truth regarding Imperial China’s branching paths as well - sure, it’s not thaaat impressive that there are 3 extra playable characters. Surely, they’ll all have just as little dialogue as everyone else, and the differences in their moveset will be entirely cosmetic. But just like that, Live A Live gets you. It’s not a game of routes and replayability, but interrogation. The game’s very logo presents us with a branching path despite it only having one true end, because the introspection is in our hands now. That’s when the game finally hits us with the Middle Ages arc, where we are forced to look back through time and question RPGs as a whole. The pure cathartic energy as Live a Live tears the classic RPG narrative to shreds - the intertext of our 2 faux-leads, Oersted and Streibough’s personalities being ripped straight out of Final Fantasy IV paying off. Oersted is forced to confront that his hero’s journey is a scam, written on lies promised through the corpses of ruined men, while I sit here, thinking “man they really couldve tuned down the random encounters in this section”
this game came out in 1994 holy fuck. video games? they might be good u might wanna check em out
Most importantly about this game’s remake shedding light on it for a whole lot of people, is talking about what it represents in this very climate. In my retrospective context of 1994, Live a Live feels like a cold critique of the increasingly insular pool of influences in its genre. Why not make a game where you take down the status quo of heroism, rather than enforcing it? And more humbly, why not just make an RPG that takes place in China instead of Medieval Europe! Sorry, not like that. Ironically though, when I look at Live a Live as a 2022 product, its most unique trait is its warmth. The simple details are truly where it rules: I found it chilling how all 100 people in the Edo Japan Castle had their own name. I appreciated that Oersted fought against bosses named after phobias while the real protagonists fought against philias - the game wants you to consider the fine details of where you might have it easier than someone else. If there’s anything truly ever present here, it’s the sentiment expressed towards electronics (and by extension, the good ol’ video games) during Distant Future - that like any art, these things are fundamentally humane due to how much of ourselves we put into our craft.
When you get to the game’s bad ending, and kill Oersted for the crimes he committed out of pure, unadulterated hatred, you’re left with the solemn ending message on your screen
The cycle continues
And the cycle did continue: Live a Live was a commercial failure in its home country, and its team and genre as a whole would be thrown back into the Middle Ages. I think we’ve all run into some unfortunate occasions where an RPG just feels cold: just some recent examples for me, the at times genuinely lovely Dragon Quest XI feels brittle and conservative, because it isn’t interested in criticizing the framework of its series. The critically acclaimed, yet plainly awful Fire Emblem: Awakening gives us a grand ending praising sacrificing ourselves for our country like a fucking military recruiter, shooting you a bad ending where everyone sounds regretful if you refuse. So to play Live A Live, a game so gentle that it’d simply ask you to simply consider not shooting your suicidal cowboy friend, without dangling some sort of fancy good ending behind that behavior, is the most refreshing thing I could ask for.
In every heart the seed of dark abides. The makings of a Lord when watered well…
With hate. Sweet hate. She springs eternal. Sings…
All-tempting draught. We’ll drink of her again.
-Oersted’s last words. I’ll be taking a drink next time I play a Fire Emblem game