I started with Near Future because Akira seemed cool, and his gimmick of being able to read NPC minds was cool even if it kind of becomes tedious to use.Įach chapter has been given voice-over as well with this remake, in both English and Japanese. Prehistory was the weakest for me by far, but I still found it charming in how it conveyed its entire story without actual dialogue. But they are all generally good, with the weaker links not taking away too much from the whole. Not all scenarios are made equally, however, or even half as good as this one. However, a pre-release review is not the place for that, but I will say that I think you should definitely play this close to the end. I’d love to gush about this scenario further because I think Mechanical Heart is now single-handedly the greatest thing ever on SNES. It’s unreal how well Live A Live holds up, it was ahead of its time. When I finished it I was left bewildered when I remembered again that what I had just was a faithful remake of a game released in 1994. There’s brilliant usage of foreshadowing, and the dialogue was wonderfully written. It wears its influences strongly on its sleeve but excels despite that. Outside of being an incredibly ambitious survival horror segment built into an RPG, this also had my favorite story segment of the bunch. The sound design, pacing, and visuals are expertly done. This chapter, titled Mechanical Heart, involves you playing a recently born robot on a spaceship. I’ll just give you the gameplay hook: There is largely no combat in this chapter and the entire thing is an atmospheric horror game. I don’t want to spoil it so I’ll avoid revealing too much, but its inspirations lie heavily with the Alien franchise. My personal favorite of the scenarios has to be The Far Future, which snuck up on me and completely surprised me. It was the longest scenario for me, and the one I’d probably recommend people start with because it does a great job showing off the variety Live A Live has to offer. If you decide to go for a no-kill run you’ll be met with a series of challenges, but are essentially rewarded with a well-designed stealth game. The detail of this scenario comes from how intricate the palace is, because if you aim to get the extreme of no kills or every kill you’ll need to explore every inch. If you run from one end of the mission to the other, killing only when you feel like it and not exploring, this can be over rather quickly. How you choose to approach this will result in a wildly different experience. The first cutscene mentioned that you can approach the mission by using stealth or killing. The Edo Japan chapter involves you playing as a Ninja, infiltrating a palace to rescue a prisoner. While some chapters have only light influence from other genres, Live A Live pushes the gimmick quite far. Movies inform the premise and aesthetic of each scenario, but not the gameplay. They’re all charming, and there really is something here for everyone. The Near Future is quite literally a massive nod to Akira, where the protagonist is a boy named Akira with psychic powers. Imperial China echoes kung fu movies, where a dying master is looking for a successor. Live A Live’s inspirations for each of these scenarios seem to be popular films, which they’ve emulated quite well. The scenarios on offer are Prehistory, Middle Ages, Imperial China, Edo Japan, The Wild West, Present Day, The Near Future, and The Far Future. You are essentially getting multiple slices of different game genres built into the backbone of an RPG. It’ll probably net you anywhere between 20-30 hours depending on how you play it, with each scenario being anywhere between an hour to five.Įvery scenario in Live A Live is different from one another in tone, setting, and gameplay style. I imagine that back then this would have been just as long as most RPGs on the market, but its brevity has become a tad evergreen based on modern trends. It was not as common to have RPGs that would last you well over 100 hours back then, especially not on the SNES. Live A Live is not a very long game, and that’s built into its core design.
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