Live A Live

"A unique and fun RPG"

Live a Live breaks all the rules and provides an unusual experience. Instead of having one huge quest, it's broken into 7 initial games (in different time periods, with different heroes). After these 7 an 8th is unlocked. Then comes the final chapter where you can choose a party made up of characters from the other chapters.

The first thing you'll notice are the graphics, and they're pretty bad. Even for its time (1994), you'd expect much better. Sprites are very simple and have hardly any animations. Live a Live looks a lot like Final Fantasy V. . . in other words, not much better than many NES games. In battle, however, it uses higher-quality sprites. Battle scenes look much better than the rest of the game, but they are still poor. The enemies have no animations at all, they're just static images. Overall the graphics are bad but they don't keep the game from being fun to play.

Live a Live's music is simple but catchy. Most of the tunes sound a bit like old NES music and that's a good thing. For the most part the music suits the rest of the game very well. I found myself bobbing my head on at least a couple occasions. The music in the near-future chapter and the ninja chapter stand out as some of LaL's best. My only complaint is that there just isn't enough music. Some chapters have you listening to the same song almost the entire time and it gets a bit old. Since the music is generally good, though, this isn't that big of a problem.

Live a Live, instead of having one central story line, is broken up into several that meet at the end. Some of these ''mini stories'' are good, while others are just ok. Cube's chapter stands out as having a very cool story line. I didn't expect much from a chapter that has no battles in it (more on this later), but I was pleasantly surprised. Other chapters, however, had very predictable and uninteresting stories to them. Also, I got the ''best'' ending and it wasn't very good at all. I won't ruin it, but when you reach the final boss you might be wondering how many times you've heard that ''last boss'' speech before.

Live a Live's gameplay is its strongest point. Having so many chapters lets LaL try something different for each one. The caveman chapter has no dialog and instead they communicate with body language. The wild west chapter has you setting up traps to avoid fighting. The ninja chapter lets you decide whether you want to kill everyone or slip through unnoticed. The kung fu chapter has you train a successor so your art isn't lost. The wrestler's chapter is set up like a fighting game. The near-future chapter has you fighting against an evil corporation. Finally (my favorite) the sci-fi chapter is nothing but story line, and it is executed amazingly well. I left the sci-fi chapter until the end, expecting it to be boring, but I was amazed at how well a ''story only'' game could be done. Each chapter is a lot of fun to play.

The battle system is also unique. Instead of having your characters standing at the side, you have to move them around on a grid until your enemies are in range. Each character has a large variety of special moves, each with its own range and effect area. Also, there are no magic points. All skills are free to use (although some have charging times). Unfortunately, many of the battle animations take way too long and aren't very fun to look at. I got sick of watching the same attack over and over. Still, the battles are fun to play.

Overall, Live a Live offers a large variety and manages to pull it off well. It's not much to look at, and it has its share of faults. Still, Live a Live is fun to play, and that's what counts.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/10/02, Updated 01/10/02