Live A Live in the test: The JRPG for everyone who doesn’t like JRPGs

If Nintendo hadn’t advertised Live A Live as a remake when it announced it, few would probably have realized it was one. After all, the original game is almost 30 years old and was released exclusively for the SNES in Japan at the time.

Now, thanks to Square Enix, the rest of the world can also enjoy a new, graphically and technically improved version of the oldies. The studio is sticking to the popular HD 2D look that was already well received by Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy.
From a purely visual point of view, Live A Live has good prerequisites for building on the success of its two genre relatives. But it also often deviates from the classic track. Instead of a story monster with a typically gigantic playing time and endless possibilities, you can expect compact, varied role-playing adventures with humor and exciting stories. But deviations from the norm are usually fraught with risk – our test clarifies how Live A Live goes its own way and does a lot of things right.

With most Japanese role-playing offshoots, you can expect an epic story and many hours of gameplay. Not so with Live A Live. This presents eight short stories that appear incoherent at first glance and differ in characters and gameplay.

Each chapter takes place in a famous epoch of human history, and you can be part of it. A strong boss awaits you at the end of each chapter. The rough gameplay is the same in each episode, however the developers vary in the distribution and importance of the different gameplay elements.

As is typical for role-playing games, Live A Live is divided into exploration and combat. Accompanied by text boxes and speech bubbles, which sometimes contain more, sometimes less relevant things. Exploration is for progressing through the story or finding items and differs depending on the short story you are playing. In some, the choices you have as you walk around the world are limited. In others you can find your own path to your goal.

Where the will to explore has to slow down, fighting is in the foreground. The nature of the fights is the same in each chapter. You and your opponent face each other on a rectangular battlefield that is set up like a chess board. On this you can move freely and thus increase or decrease the distance to the attackers. Each character has different attacks, these belong to different categories. Depending on who you are facing, certain attacks are more or less effective. Tactical action is therefore important.

In each short story, you play a different protagonist, each with unique abilities. You slip into the role of a Chinese kung fu student or a lovable robot. Each one has its own charm, you can even name some characters yourself. You can read more about the individual chapters on the next page!