- Tested on Switch in nomad and with earphones cramped on the ears!
- Code transmitted by Nintendo and home gameplay captures.
- Game finished in about 20 ds in normal.
- Some regrets not playing hard...
- 3/4 of completed purposes.
- I didn't try the last one that's a slight variation... where you have to let yourself die! (Not at home!)
- Famous characters: Arthur, R2D2, Zatoichi, Sega Sata, K7, Akira and... Manuel Valls faithful man of Cro-magnon! We don't change a winning team!
Super Nintendo's wild role play, Live Live Live is a JRPG that takes us through eight epochs from the dawn of humanity to the future by embodying heroes with a well tempered character. Marked by a generosity of all time, back on this timeless classic finally out of Japan where he was (too) long confined. A pitfall caught up almost thirty years later with this colorful remake. After Octopath Traveler and Triangle StrategySquare Enix signs a new oath of allegiance to Nintendo with this exclusive weight for retro JRPG fans.
Choose your fighter!
LLive was headed by Takashi Tokita, best known to the public for his work on legendary franchises Chrono Trigger, Parasite Eve and Final Fantasy IV. If Live A Live may have a somewhat confusing side at first, it is by the initial freedom left to the player. Past the title screen, we are immediately invited to choose a chapter that corresponds to an era and a character. We then chain the adventure in the order we want.
And let's say that we're going to travel in time over eight major periods: Prehistory, Far West, the Near Future, the Middle Ages, the Far Future, the late Japan of Edo, Imperial China and the Present. At first glance, these chapters all seem to be independent of each other since each of them ends with a full generic. Yet all these little bits of dissipated scenarios will eventually weave each other to form the same patchwork.
Each chapter was designed by well-known artists from the world of manga, which is widely felt in terms of game mechanics and narrative. It is therefore a little disconcerted by this freedom which offers us that one chooses a chapter according to his affinities and curiosity. I for my part started with the Far West. Being amateur of westerns spaghetti, imagining a JRPG in this universe has a jubilatory side. It's not every day that we see this kind of universe in our Japanese friends, who often shun some parts of history and are more inclined to be inspired by feudality, when they don't transcribe their own traditional folklore.
Pixel Art in the firmament!
As far as graphics are concerned, we find the same technique of Triangle Strategy at the crossing of 2D and 3D. The depth effect is of all beauty and the nostalgic player of stereoscopic 3D surprises himself to imagine how much the game would have been magnified on a 3DS steroid. It's a real treat to see the pixel art sublimated by juxtapositions of plans that give the impression of looking through doll house windows. The colors are shimmering and each chapter has its own graphic style and musical atmosphere.
The animations are superb with a very expressive cartoon side of the most beautiful effect. It's fascinating to be able to transcribe emotions with such small bits of pixels. We have to measure the work done since the version Super Nintendo and say that we are already dreaming of a similar remake for the franchise Chrono Trigger. And why not even give them the license Golden Sun sadly forgotten through a partnership like Zelda and Capcom at the time of the excellent The Minish Cape ?
A big name is worth it.
Special mention for OST Moreover, one can consult in the jukebox with jazzy tunes, lyrical hearts, mariachi music or electro pop to name just a few examples of the musical richness of the title. These 50 songs were remarkably remastered by Yoko Shinomura, emeritus composer of the series Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy XV. The ensemble is all the more pleasant as Square Enix put the small dishes in the big and the replicas of the characters are almost entirely doubled in English.
It is felt how much the performers enjoyed themselves, from the raucous voice of the old cowboy to the literary English of the Middle Ages or the strident projections of the Karaté Kid It's the raw. A symphony for lovers of Shakespeare's language that we discover in all its ways. Even in the midst of the fighting, the characters allow themselves well-feeling comments that increase the dynamism of the game, already particularly well rhythmic.
Live A Live's 2.5D is to fall down! pic.twitter.com/PfREihsmmR
— KillerS7ven (@killer_se7ven) August 16, 2022
In its construction, Live Live Live is a permanent surprise. The various artists on the stand each proposed their vision with an overflowing freedom of expression. In Prehistory, the dialogues of the characters are reduced to simple borborygmas, while the chapters of the distant future largely favor writing to fighting by proposing us to incarnate a small robot that officiates in a mother ship in the air of Nostromo. There are also explicit references to Alien (tested) Here), The Thing (tested) Here) or 2001 LSpace odyssey.
The other episodes are more focused on fighting. In Prehistory, Pogo can smell and spot the monsters, Far West on Sundown Kid and Mad Dog can lay traps to protect the village from bandits. In the Middle Ages, gamedesign is much less narrow and the card opens to the player. As for Japan Edo, it's a labyrinthic dungeon typical of the decade 8O We let ourselves be carried away by writing and staging a 2D that even manages to make us jump into the distant future where a beast hunts us without respite.
Live A Live's chapter of the Far Future is one of the most successful tributes to #Alien with a touch of The Thing as a bonus! Memorable memory and prowess of writing for a 2.5D RPG with an into that imposes its style in 30 chono seconds! Hat! pic.twitter.com/9JuguBgIVO
— KillerS7ven (@killer_se7ven) August 16, 2022
This great permanent gap between radically different eras and a register, sometimes comic, sometimes dramatic, is particularly enjoyable. We can also leave a chapter to return to it later story of varying pleasures. A refreshing idea welcome and perfectly suited to Switch. Juggling between the SF and the western through the Shakespearean tragedy is the successful bet of Live A Live. The game sucks love of cinema, video games and pop culture in general without ever falling into the trap of permanent tribute to more modern licenses like Retro city Rampage.
There is a small number of blinks of the eye supported by King of Fighters, Great. Metroid, Shinobi, Megaman and even Castlevania for certain components of gamedesign or writing but the whole articulates in good intelligence. A few screenwriters will join together with malice but we let you discover the surprise by yourself.
Control mechas on Live A Live? Check! pic.twitter.com/2M80uPIb8w
— KillerS7ven (@killer_se7ven) August 16, 2022
Is the loop closed?
If you are still reading these lines, you may wonder if Live A Live end up at the video game pantheon because of my enthusiasm shown before his eye-catching plastic and writing. Live A Live is certainly a very good bill. We would like to see all modern productions show so much ingenuity but is it a good RPG anyway? Already, we must be ready to accept an old-fashioned progression with a remote side in the approach.
Most of the time we follow a radar from one point to another to move the plot forward, which can in 2022 throw some of them away. As for the gameplay itself, some balancings need to be reviewed from top to bottom. Where Triangle Strategy know how to articulate intelligent mechanics and where blind fergoes often led to punitive punishment, Live A Live is otherwise more permissive, even if it distorts its own gameplay proposal.
The quality of Live A Live animations and counters is an example of the genre! pic.twitter.com/AZeUOJUtr9
— KillerS7ven (@killer_se7ven) August 16, 2022
Three quarters of the game is a real health walk and the mix between turn by turn and real time would have gained deeper. With his checker on which we move, Live Live Live Yet had an interesting idea of gamedesign to be developed. The enemies do not have magic points but action bars that progress with time or when we move our troops. Yet few times our opponent surprises us or interrupts one of our attacks.
That's a shame because it doesn't really encourage tactics. In addition, the positioning of enemies only influences very little on the outcome of the fighting that is too often shipped with attacks from areas that occupy all space without necessarily bothering to move. Electrifying, freezing or burning the soil to cause long-term damage is underexploited. As for most of our skills, we have the impression that they have been balanced at the trowel. A side attack can be spamed while the enemy literally throws himself into the wolf's mouth. Only in the final chapter will more caution be required.
A much more muscular epilogue
Curiously there is then a wall of difficulty on which comes to crush the player with particularly strong bosses and adherents of permanent care or one shot attacks quite stupid. Nothing insurmountable but the gap is of the order of the ditch. It is in the last bosses that the game takes a little more meaning with the system of resistances and weaknesses that it will take (a little) to exploit to get the real end of the game. Paradoxically I enjoyed this way of playing with us, of making ourselves believe a certain invincibility before stabbing us in the back.
Live a Live, fortunately, does not require farm and he intelligently asks our curiosity to find the way to return later better run and with care accordingly. Each additional level gain is most of the time coupled with learning about a new attack, each time with beautiful animations.
To appreciate Live a Live at its fair value, it is more than recommended to finish the four ends of the game. This teased RPG will push you to solve its mysteries by choosing the characters and its narration that is looking for whatever it manages to catch up with. Don't stop at the final credits. There is a distant irreverent way The Stanley Parable in the relationship with the game. We're looking for the cost of regaining control of what we're missing. Hard to say more without revealing what makes her charm. A little like that seller of Links who were being duped by turning around, the player is invited to show curiosity to literally pull his pin from the game.
True Live a Live is a bit far in its gameplay that just overdoes what could have done its specificity. There is no doubt that this party would have deserved a reshuffle rather than a simple ripolining. Some gamedesign mechanics from Hyper Light Drifter or Fire Emblem could have given more body to the formula. However, one is willing to close one's eyes before his faults, carried away by the generosity of a indeed short but crazy density adventure. Live a Live is a declaration of love for pop culture, an endearing game that picks up with greed and favours experimentation before anything else. Perfectly adapted to the switch and its nomadic side, Live a Live is certainly one of the must-haves of summer!
For
- Splendid marriage of 3D and 2D
- A crazy OST of 50 pieces
- Almost fully doubled in English
- Variety of chapters and environments
- Quality writing
- The originality of the Far Future and the Middle Ages
- Goodly-measured references
- The love of pop culture with each sprite
- A meta side assumed
Against
- Finally quite rigid in his framed freedom...
- Underexploited and poorly balanced gameplay
- Three quarters of the adventure too easy
- Some chapters are much shorter than others
[...] multiplies cared RPGs to the smallest detail. Triangle Strategy and Live a Live (read our review) had already placed the cursor very high. By choosing again a graphic bias [...]