#game-review #finishedgame2023 # Live Alive  [Console:: Nintendo Switch] [Status:: Beaten] [Approximate Start Date:: 2023-08-17] [Finish Date:: 2023-11-26] [Clear Time:: 25h 25m 4s] [Total Play Time:: 25h 30m] [nReplays:: 0] ## [Rating:: 91] I really enjoyed it ,despite sometimes struggling to play it. Part of it was the fear of missing out or doing it wrong, but I quickly realized that I shouldn't really worry about that. # Playthrough Notes Playing on switch. Started with "Near Future", then Prehistory, Imperial china, Present day (90s), Twilight of Edo Japan, Far Future, then the WEST, then The middle Ages # My Thoughts - It's like you're actually watching 8 different movies - [[Live Alive's Influences on Undertale - Gamer Morality]] - Wow the music in this game is really incredible, Shimomura's first outing at Square is an incredible showing, and the care put into remaking the music is so audibly present. And the fact that they had the original singer for Dragon Ball Z's opening theme (Hironobu Kageyama) perform lyrics to the Steel Titan theme that themselves were written based on fan submissions to Famitsu in 1994 shows that they really wanted to make this game be a true love letter to the original fans. It shows that Square gives a hoot about making these older games both accessible to new audiences and to appreciate the love-time fans. Shimomura kills it here. ## Near Future Thoughts - What's the deal with Near Future's focus on washing your hands and toilet humor? - This game is really goofy, or at least Near Future is. - the idea of liquefacted humans really reminds me of [[The End of Evangelion]], which is neat because this game came out a full 4 years before EoE. - I wonder where the trope of liquified life came from. - I love that I chose the Gundam route to start my playthrough, the Steel Titan portions were so cool, and I understand it's cool to get in a big machine and fight smaller machines. - The fight with Odeo / Great Inko was absolutely gnarly, I love that iwas essentially a slug fest. - I guess I missed the fact that I could refine items and that I should've unequipped the items from Taroimo? Whatever. ### I played it wrong, oops >"Akira's tale is easily one of the most out there in the entire game and it's also crammed with stuff to do. The **walkthrough** below will help you navigate through this sci-fi world, showing you h**ow to get the best items through upgrading**, **acquire the most powerful abilities** and **sell a LOAD of taiyaki**." - Fuck, whatever. Who cares. ## Pre-History - So they managed to make an entire story without an entire line of spoken dialogue until the last section of the game where pogo is implied to have sex. No notes. - I love that the final boss of this route is just one giant evil looking dinosaur - This is a route where the player can shit, fart, and cum all in the span of 5 minutes if they're smart. ## Imperial China - It's incredible how this part plays out like a Kung Fu movie, complete with goofy action sequences, fun character dialogue, many moments of the master completely ruining any obstacles in his way. It's fun! - It's an example of the gameplay being simple in order to execute the proper "vibe" - My third decision, I find it interesting how you have basicaly three options for a person you want to train. - wow they actually kill off the two units you don't raise - for me this was hong and yuin ## Present Day (aka 1990s) - The main fights weren't too tough save Maybe The Great Aja and the Russian Grappler guy whose name eludes me - I love !notHulkHogan ![[Pasted image 20230904222431.png]] - While fighting the great Aja the first time I had a can thrown at him by an off-screen heckler, and then aja went and just fucking attacked the dude and I could hear a kid say "no that's my dad!" like, holy lol - Dude Odie O'Bright is actually fucking hard wtf. - I ended up beating him by spamming Aloha Slap and the toss that pushes him away. Keep space was essential in winning this one. I think I have sort of understood the combat. It feels almost like a dance. If you know the ways the opponent can move, you can move yourself accordingly so that they have to burn a turn to get into position. Odie O'Bright taught me how to really make use of the movement on the grid in a meaningful way. - I love that when you lose, you get a "continue?" screen like the old arcade fighters. That's so fun. ## Twilight of Edo Japan - Was [[Undertale]]'s pacifist and genocide runs inspired by the option to either kill everyone or kill no one in this route? I feel like it had to be, right? - You get a reward for a pacifist run and the genocide run presents changes to the end of the game and the character's whole vibe. It's definitely an inspiration, given that Megalovania was inspired from the major boss theme of this game, Megalomania. - this one's friggin huge and kind of a maze but I really dig it. The idea of this castle big one giant maze is pretty fun. - apparently if you save the Prisoner you automatically lock yourself out of the non-lethal ending which feels INCREDIBLY counter-intuitive and really annoying. I spent all that time going toward avoiding every enemy, grinding on weak-ass spirits for like an hour only.to have my non-lethal run terminated because I tried to help a Prisoner? That's some kind of awful game design imo ## Distant Future - SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN STONED WHILE PLAYING THIS ONE - Cool space horror vibe that mashes up Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Genuinely had me scared at some points with the behemoth jumpscaring me the first time. - really inspired choice to give Rachel an Aussie VA, kinda love it. - I love how the "tips" that appear on the loading screen might occasionally turn into the scary text from OD-10 (Decimus) ## Wild West - Wow I actually know the VA who plays the Sheriff (Cyrus Rodas)! How about that. - This chapter feels REALLY fast. I imagine a lot of the challenge in this chapter comes from being able to quickly explore the town without getting lost / wasting time, etc. In the grand scheme of things, this chapter feels a lot more like a cinematic experience rather than a JRPG experience, especially when you can mitigate almost all the fights in this chapter, sans the fight with O. Dio by thoroughly exploring the town - You have to thoroughly explore the town and appreciate its construction to save it. You have to be able to figure out which townsfolk are the most relaiable people, and you can only do that by stopping and listening to them even in a tense situation - You can spare Mad Dog at the duel, which is another case of Toby Fox choosing the spare / kill option that we later see in [[Undertale]]. ## Middle Ages - The twist that we're playing as the eventual incarnation of Odio is a cool twist all things considered. That Oersted is just so beaten down by everything that he embraces the villainous label that has been thrust upon him by the malice of Streibough is a pretty cool twist. Definitely not something you'd see in older RPGS - One too many random encounters I feel ## The Final Chapter - So I wish there were a way for me to swap out party members more easily beyond finding them on the overworld. I want to be able to do every character's specific dungeon but that means basically rotating out a fourth party member and rolling with three mains. That's fine though I guess. - The first few fights in this area with underlevelled party members made me SHIT MY PANTS - The Instinct Trial is a good way to develop Pogo early on. Pogo was SUPERBLY underleveled but he's been really useful after getting his most powerful weapon - I started with Oborumaru and he's been wicked useful. - Pogo does a FUCK ton of damage - Finding the Trial of the Heart (Akira's trial) caught me off guard because I was fleeing from a different fight in the Trial of Power (Masaru's trial) lol. Got kinda bailed out there haha - My final boss squad was Oborumaru, Lei, Akira and Pogo. They had the skills that I was most comfortable with. I probably could've used Cube or Sundown more but I was ready to see the end of the game (which went hard) - There's not a doubt in my mind that [[Undertale]]'s final decision to spare Flowey is from this game's ending where you have the choice to kill off Oersted or to leave him be and eventually destroy Odio and save Oersted himself - It's not about the difficulty, it's about the DRAMA - It has come to my attention to the True Final Boss in this game was not present in the SNES version of the game, wowza, what an excellent and incredible final boss series, complete with GIGAlovania. That is so incredibly cool that they added it othe whole game. ## General Thoughts - I love that the minimap always has the objective clearly labelled so that if I forget what's going on I know where to go. I know some of the fun of these older games is to figure out where to go and not be told where to go, but this ultimately is a positive for me since I could in theory turn this off if I wanted to. - Item descriptions that are in character, that is to say, the flavor text is modelled after the unit's language and speaking mode is great. I love that little charm. - this game is only about 25 hours long? Sign me the frick up. - Wouldn't ya know, 25h 25m to beat the game. Nice work, me. - My joycon drift is particularly annoying for combat, I should get that fixed. - I'm not a big fan of Masaru's English VA. He does great battle sounds, but his line reads feel really stiff to me # Favorite Moments / Memories # What were you doing when not playing this? # Relevant Links