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Live A Live was originally released in 1994, but gamers were recently blessed with a remake on July 22, 2022. The former Super Famicom title has been remastered in beautiful HD for the Nintendo Switch, and has plenty of content to enjoy.
As a JRPG title, Live A Live takes a considerable amount of time to complete. In total, most players have reported that the game can take anywhere from 20-32 hours to run its course. This is reliant on how much extra content players are willing to do, or if they're content completing the main story instead.
Regardless, 32 hours is quite on the short side for JRPG games. Despite this, Live A Live is a very enjoyable experience from start to finish.
Live A Live: What to know about the newly-remastered title
To bring the Super Famicom title into 2022, Square Enix employed a 2D-3D art style similar to the likes of games like Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy, both of which were recently released by the company as well.
This art style keeps the 2D sprites of the characters and enemies while rendering backgrounds and levels in 3D as players navigate them. This presentation pairs very nicely with the game's story, which is told in several components. In a way, Live A Live uses JRPG mechanics to tell multiple short stories throughout the game.
Players take on the role of a total of eight different protagonists in Live A Live, each with their own distinct scenarios that span multiple ages and settings throughout time including Prehistory, Imperial China, Edo Japan, and even the Wild West and the Future Age.
While the game employs turn-based RPG gameplay similar to other recent Square Enix titles, there are unique elements that pertain to certain characters such as stealth gameplay.
Furthermore, a telepathy mechanic is used to orient players with gameplay challenges and to instruct them on how to perform certain tasks.
Battles take different forms depending on which story players find themselves in, with some being random encounters a la Final Fantasy or Pokemon, while other battles are completely scripted and unavoidable for the most part.
Players have a significant amount of freedom to choose which protagonist to enjoy the game with, and each character is unique in their mechanics and backstory.
At the end of the game's story, players will be brought to the Dominion of Hate, where the protagonists are drawn together in a final confrontation. From here, they have the option to outright defeat the final boss, or to spare them for a tougher endgame experience.
However, this difficult endgame fight sequence is rewarded with an improved ending.
Lovers of time-hopping titles such as Chrono Trigger should thoroughly enjoy what this title has to offer. Though the game is short by JRPG standards, that may very well be what some players prefer.
For those that enjoy a shorter gameplay experience that have grown weary of the hundred-hour grinds that some JRPGs provide, this remade title might be exactly what they're looking for.
