Live A Live

Holy SHIT, I've been meaning to get around to this. And YO THIS GAME FUCKING OWNS. I started with the Prehistoric chapter (I'm going in order of chronology, although I'm not sure which comes first, sci-fi or mecha, LOL)

Contact: The Caveman Pogo

• I wasn't big on this one. It follows a lot of RPG conventions (encounter enemies, fight them, raise levels, grind) but it was still unique enough on its own. The smelling mechanics and lack of any concrete terms for actions (or events!) made things interesting.
• The humour was hit-or-miss, maybe funnier if I were a kid when playing this. Oh man, as a kid, this game'd blow my MIND...
• Bel is cute, and I love that she gets the most MASSIVELY POWERFUL ATTACK of that chapter. She was my introduction to the girls in this game being Very Good.

Inheritance: The Master of Xin Shan Quan

• Now THIS. This is when this game totally fucking won me over. I'm already weak to kung fu movies so that the game played out like one got me right in the gut. The whole game is very cinematic, I've found, and so the lighthearted comedy and slapstick of the caveman chapter is justified, really.
• Li Kuugo. The first pupil I encountered was a girl, and not just that, but a bandit trying to mug the Master -- oh man, I was so fucking IN, now. I love her character design, I love her rash attitude and way of speaking, and I love her story of finding direction in martial arts where she was originally a criminal and an outcast.
• Yuan and Sammo were great, too. Sammo in particular impressed me. He's the fat kid, so naturally he's almost always depicted eating or wanting to eat (sigh), but there was an underlying current of the Master trying to teach him that he isn't lesser because of his weight -- he is agile and capable with his build. I'm not used to this sort of fat-... What's the opposite of fat-shaming? Fat-praising? I'm not used to that! It warmed my gay old heart when the Master comforted the boy about something he was very self conscious of.
• THAT BEING SAID I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY FUCKING DIED. I honestly thought they were just gravely injured, and Master and Li were going to save them! But I guess this does play out as a kung fu movie, so naturally there was that scene of loss and the following quest for vengeance and justice. The dread I felt when I saw Li on the ground was palpable, and I felt relief when I saw Yuan and Sammo, because I thought they'd make it... I don't know how this game got me so attached to them so fast. It must have to do with the presentation, because it's all done so superbly.
• The way Master seemed to get weaker as the story went on, from the practice stages with his pupils to the later parts of Odi Wang Lee's castle, really got me. I thought he'd make it until the end, but this game followed the conventions of a movie, not of a game -- Li taking on the part of the final battle while he fought off the lower mobsters was amazing. Him passing on all that he'd taught her about the martial arts... The fact that she lost those she learned it with and he she learned it from is sad, but she's such a fucking strong person by the end, it still feels rewarding to see her sparring alone, paying respects to the three tombstones on Mount Da Zhi.
• OH MAN, and that final blow from Li that knocks Odi Wang Lee through his throne and then dramatically into a gong, which resounds, signifying the end of the battle? That was so fucking awesome, I was grinning the whole time. I didn't see it coming but it was so damn corny and just YES ugh idk man I can't even talk, I just love this shit
• So yeah, as of this chapter? Totally fucking sold. Love this game. Wasn't sure if it could get better than that.

Secret Orders: The Ninja Oboro-maru

• Well I'm just as big a weeb as the next guy so I fucking love ninjas so I was already so fucking into this, and the stealth elements were fuckin' cool! I chose the path of killing all 100 people for the sake of the EXP (I don't know what the endgame is like, but I assume I'll be playing as Oboro again at some point, and levelling up on dead spirits could get old fast). It was stressful and it hurt to kill innocent people as well as criminals, but it was all in the name of his ninja duty. I'd like to do a no-kill run sometime, though that level-grinding isn't very appealing...
• THAT ONE SCENE. When I say "stressful," I mean that scene where the masked man is flanked by four warriors and you have to run around him and defeat them before he does, even though he picks them off, one by one, at this fuckin' HYPERLIGHT speed. I don't like using savestates, but I had to break one out for this part. I'm not agile enough for the quick movements that required, but it was still cool that it was a thing at all.
• By which I mean, it's cool that this became a stealth game as well as an RPG, and in that moment, it felt like a horror RPG to me, too. Of course there isn't blood everywhere and jumpscares, but being chased and running against the clock and keeping track of the peoples' passwords all reminded me of 00s era rpgmaker horror games, but in a good way. Having to race around and kill before he killed brought it together for me -- it was stressful. Even in this game where I was playing the aggressor, not going the peaceful, no-kill route, this game managed to make me panic a bit and get frustrated and feel like I had to work to succeed. It made me question my goals, too: is a strong-ass sword really worth slaughtering all these people? Does Oboro benefit from me murdering those men before they'd be murdered anyway by the masked fellow? I don't know. This chapter definitely had me question my morals.
• Picking up Sakamoto Ryoma after I'd just played .hack and learned who he was was pretty cool, LOL. (I need to study more Japanese history)
• Oh man this chapter is a MAZE, though. Semi-ashamed to admit that I used a walkthrough because it was so convoluted and my sense of direction is so poor. That didn't at all impede on my enjoyment, though.

Wanderer: The Cowboy Sundown

• Okay, now THIS. If a game can make me love a fuckin' Wild West chapter then it can do anything. The palette of Sundown's story is the sort I'm not fond of right off the bat -- the washed out beiges and tuscan sand only occasionally interrupted by dark green cacti -- so I felt like I'd lose interest immediately, but the game sucked me in.
• Alright I'm a gigantic fujoshit and Sundown/Mad Dog? That's good shit. Like listen here, I've only seen that "No one else can kill you. We'll work together, because only I am allowed to kill you," shit in samurai stories and whatnot. Seeing it with cowboys was a new take I'd never been introduced to and it gripped me, not just because That's Good Gay Shit but because it felt particularly unique. I like how Sundown is one of the more quiet protagonists, too -- Mad Dog acts as his haughty and impulsive voice, but Sundown himself only mutters a word or an order or two.
• Even the townsfolk grew on me. Of course they didn't have particularly deep plots, but racing around town against the clock (again), collecting items, figuring what could be used as traps, trying to find time to make molotovs, etc... Especially at night and with every passing hour indicated by a long chime of the bell, it felt tense. But everyone working together was fucking excellent. That some of the townsfolk were slower than the others at their traps also worried me -- but even the slowest, Gibson, managed to pull his shit together before the final bell. And I felt proud of him. Proud of this dude with hardly any personality. This game actually made me feel like this was a town of people working together to outwit and defeat the bandits.
• Sundown refuses to kill Mad Dog because he has feelings for Mad Dog, this is apparent in how willingly he will kill anyone else, and Mad Dog doesn't understand because he's an idiot and a fool. But that they're always running into each other, time and time again, trying to kill one another, is the sort of fucked up but weirdly warm romance I've come to expect from the aforementioned samurai stories, but never this.
• The side story of the sheriff being a coward and learning from Sundown was great, too. When he let Sundown keep his badge I got A Feel.

The Strongest: The Wrestler Takahara Masaru

• When I saw that this was the "modern day" story, I was sitting back, expecting something a bit less hammy. I forgot that this game TOTALLY came in the midst of some of the hammiest fucking shit of all time. It opens like an 80s martial arts movie with a training montage. I was so immediately won over.
• That being said, the whole plot fell a biiit flat with this one -- you can fill in the blanks (he's learning the techniques from his opponents, so his enemies are his closest allies in defeating the sinister Odie Oldbright) but without any scenes speaking to them after the battle, communicating their wins or losses, their being slaughtered by Odie and Masaru's avenging them feels a bit, well, forced.
• Certainly still an excellent chapter, though. I like the Mega Man approach to choosing which enemies to destroy and gain the abilities of first and progressing based on the tactics you receive. This could get fairly challenging since, like with Sundown's chapter, there were no opportunities to level grind, and it was all left up to skill and luck.

Flow: The Psychic Mecha Pilot Tadokoro Akira

• Alright what the fuck this chapter was a roller coaster. I expected a hotblooded mecha anime and instead got the existential crises of a Gundam or some shit. The violence in this chapter reached a new level for this game, too.
• This story had a particular focus on familial ties, and so Akira's relationship with his sister and his late father, all the kids of Chibikko House and Taeko, and Akira's relationship with Matsu (and Matsu's with Akira's father) all tied together quite nicely. I'm impressed by this game because each story is short and there's not a lot of room for character development, but the story is still compelling and driven. I'm not sure if that's because of the writing, the atmosphere, the execution, or what, but it's very much so a success.
• What the FUCK with the whole liquefying humans into robot blood thing! What the fuck? What the fuck! I'd be lying if I said I didn't find the concept morbidly cool, though. This game also seems to have predicted the 100% fatal brain upload that humankind developed recently, only instead of of downloading a brain, it's just straight-up juicing people.
• Watanabe wondering where his dad went only for you to find out that he was one of the subjects to get liquefied and crammed into a robot was heartbreaking. You have no choice but to fight the robot containing what's left of that child's father, and you have to just stand there as he manages to cry out for his son before shutting down permanently. This was so incredibly dark, but it oddly mirrored Akira's story, too: he also had a father that was killed by someone he saw as a friend, if not as a mentor. Akira was forced to become what Matsu was to his dad, and it's bleak as hell, but a fascinating story nonetheless.
• Kaori slowly getting weaker until she asked for Toei to kill her and make her into Buriki Daioh's blood was fucked. I love how Akira refused to let her make that sacrifice, though, and Matsu took it on instead -- since he had debts to repay and actions he wanted to avenge.
• The MUSIC in this chapter is SO GOOD, Shimomura Yoko has all my love and respect. Buriki Daioh actually having a theme song with lyrics was adorable and good.
• I love how the encounters were visible when playing as Akira, but when you board Buriki Daioh, they become random encounters. It makes sense -- Buriki Daioh is fuckin' huge, so of course mere tanks or jet planes wouldn't be particularly visible from his vantage point.
• The liquefied humans in the lake absorbing the people that abused them was fucking wild. What was this chapter?
• The unique gameplay element of this chapter was mind reading, which was certainly interesting, although not particularly cool. I mean, most of the minds you could read didn't really add to the setting or the story, and sometimes people shared rather bland thoughts (like everyone in the bar just thinking about how much they love them some Matango), and you really only got the opportunity to read the minds of people, which I think limited the scope of this skill's potential. Reading the mind of the liquefied humans was cool as fuck even though they were also all the same (simply crying for help despite being beyond repair), though, and that's probably as "out-there" as the mechanic gets. Oh! Learning about Akira's father's passing through Matsu's begrudging memories was pretty neat, too. Sad, but neat.

Mechanical Heart: Worker Robot Cube

• This chapter starts off on such a cute note, with a meek, bespectacled engineer bringing a spherical little robot to life, full of hope for its future. I immediately got attached to the engineer, Kato, and then everything went to shit. The fuck.
• This chapter was so tense even without combat! The fucking atmosphere was so suffocating and nerve-wrecking! Only being able to sit back as everyone falls apart and turns on each other while they're all isolated in their own malfunctioning space coffin is excruciating! But the story was so engrossing, and so freaky, and so well-done. I'm amazed at the sort of story-telling that can get done in 16 bits. A particular detail I liked was how crew members would pick up and place Cube on the seat when they're at the table in the break room -- it's a very small detail, and usually your sprite would just be able to hover over the background art, but they were obstacles in this chapter just so you could receive help. Being able to tell what someone was doing when they looked at Cube and lifted him was really sweet -- it just reminded me of everything this game manages to get across with so little.
• The plot of this chapter was particularly heart-rending. The robot was built to help others, and he did! But the human inclination to distrust and fear the unknown led to everyone turning on one another and getting plucked off, one by one, in the claustrophobic confines of a ship in the void of space. Rachel's meltdown hitting a climax with her stealing the corpse of a man she thought was wrongly killed by a lover she jilted was just fuckin' weird and harsh. Darth's softening toward Cube was incredibly sweet, though, especially considering how he was the first one to write off Cube as an enemy.
• The arcade cabinet built into the ship becoming the interface with which you battle the mother computer controlling everything was awesome. I was wondering how they'd manage a final battle in a chapter with no combat, but that worked, and it worked well.

King of Demons: Oersted

• I love how the final chapter begins with the most generic plot that the game had avoided for so long... it's like, here's where the game BEGINS, the game you thought this'd be, and yet the game this probably isn't going to be...
• And BOY HOWDY how it subverts expectations! You play as you gather together a team of comrades, old and new, to rescue the princess, only to slowly lose them to untimely death and betrayal and sacrifice -- until you're left by yourself to save the princess, the last person that put her faith in you. The story makes a point of emphasizing how as long as one person still believes in you, it's worth fighting on. So of course, Oersted has the princess -- until Straybow steals her away. Then Oersted has no one.
• And rather than the usual hero story where the protagonist overcomes all difficulty and adversity, Oersted succumbs to despair, and becomes the final boss you've been fighting incarnations of all along. The final chapter seeming so typical but turning out to be the origin story of your greatest, most consistent enemy? Fucking BADASS!!!
• I feel like the moral of the story is to believe in yourself and not hinge your self worth on someone else. It's interesting how Oersted was silently able to go on, and didn't utter a word until the princess took her own life. He had stayed strong up until that point, with her memory in mind, but once he lost the one thing Hash and Uranus told him to keep fighting for? He was fucked. That's when he finally spoke up and said his first words of the chapter -- his first and final declaration. Fucking fantastic.

The Final Chapter

• To the ones who still embrace their delusions of humanity.
• Pogo: You, who gained the illusion of love.
• Xin Shan Quan Master: You, who gained motivation.
• Oboro: You, who seek to shape the path of history.
• Sundown: You, who gained fame as a hero.
• Masaru: You, who gained the title of the world's strongest fighter.
• Akira: You, who gained bravery from your anger.
• Cube: You, who gained a human heart.
• I had to restart the final chapter from every character's POV just because of how all their stories of being summoned were different. This was worthwhile just to see the different ways that Oersted despised the protagonists -- they all accomplished something he could not, from love, to being a hero, to being a human. All of them took something from him, something he couldn't get on his own, or in any other incarnation. It's so cool realising that these stories that you played and cheered for were all the motivations behind the final boss, who is so full of fury and hatred that the mere success of others tears him down.
• I'd love to play the final scenario from every character's POV, but for now I'm doing Li's, since she's my obvious favourite. Her recap before she gets summoned even felt more emotional than the others; granted, Cube's was somber and Masaru's win was fleeting. Li's has her reflecting on her time as a pupil and her new role as the new Xin Shan Quan master. Li's story has her praying to her late pupils and master to have them watch over her as she fights on in their memory. This is hard-hitting shit, man! I love her!
• Li's scenario is great. She's not particularly eloquent, and when confronted by the evil demon lord about her compassion and motivation stemming from someone she didn't even know well, her response was just "So what?" Like, yeah, attagirl. I love you.
• The gameplay of the final route was not my favourite since it was heavy on random encounters. However, I did like how every character is recruited slightly differently, and how their presence in the party shakes up what can be done as a group -- Oboro runs fastest if he leads, Pogo has his smelling mechanism, Akira can read the consciousnesses leftover after what seems like a frozen apocalypse, Li can destroy parts of the environment (LOL), etc. The last route maintained what made each route unique, including in the dungeons: Cube's had only puzzles, no battles; Sundown's dungeon was a race against time with the ultimate consequence of getting attacked by a ferocious enemy; Li's dungeon lets you murder a lecherous creep -- really, this game has it all!
• What really got me about this game was the juggling of themes. Pogo's story is love and joy and human contact; Li's is of motivation and tradition and benevolence; Oboro's story is about honour and mercy (or lack thereof); Cube's story is one of trust, distrust, and fear; Sundown's is cooperation and community and isolation; Masaru's is challenging the concept of "strength" and discipline; Akira's is about a desire to protect and persevere and having the capacity to forgive; Oersted's is about hope and despair and inherent cruelty of humankind. Oersted's contrasts with everyone else's stories because where everyone manages to find peace and solace in someone, Oersted does not -- he loses everything, so even compared to Cube, who watched humans betray one another and die as a result, or Oboro, who has the option to slaughter or save innocent lives, he has the most tragic background and outcome (i.e., Cube still has Kato and the Corporal and the Earth on the horizon; Oboro still has his honour and his companion in Sakamoto Ryoma, as well as the rising sun of a country with a future). I like how the demon kind wasn't just someone that existed because Hell exists, but rather was a result of someone yielding to the pain and suffering that other humans inflicted on him. The demon originated in human hearts, so it's no question how different variations of Odio found themselves in different times throughout history -- as long as humans are present, so can be the darkness.
• Now, when you play as one of the main characters, you can get the best end, and the outcome is different if you play the final scenario as Oersted. Both are fascinating, really.
• Good: The good ending had me emotional, just watching Cube leap back into Kato's open arms, Akira catching Toei back up to his old antics, Masaru packing it in for the night, Sundown running into his old friend, and Li TRAINING A NEW GENERATION OF XIN SHAN QUAN PUPILS had me choking up. And then! And then the end credits, which had little scenes where Li trained in the bamboo forest at twilight, Masaru kicked on a rooftop as the sun set over the city, Sundown watching the sun go down, Cube on the deck as the sun began to fall over the Cogito Ergosum... It pulled everything together wonderfully. Seeing all their silhouettes running against the same sun, interspersed with those scenes of them at their own times, yet all lit by the glow of the same sun... it got me, man. It got me.
• Bad: But then there's the "Sad End." I must say, it lives up to its name. When you play as Oersted, there's really no good option -- the only way to save Oersted is to save him with someone else. Oersted can only be saved by being shown compassion in the Good end (you can also kill him, although he's weak and it accomplishes nothing), where he'll be able to die and move on from the evil that gripped him, although he warns of the pain that can pervade any time and any heart. In Oersted's final route, however, there's two endings: there's the Sad End, and Apocalypse.
• Here's something I loved: OK, first of all, I've never played a game where, yeah, there's the crazy final boss and then the boss rush, but then a fucking reverse boss rush where you kill all the protagonists. Perhaps that's been done before but I've never seen it and definitely never played it. What I liked was not only how this managed to put you deeper into Oersted's shoes by being able to control Odio's every incarnation, but how it gave you the option to be cruel and to let evil win. Not by losing, mind you, but by winning the game with the right person. At some point, if you let the protagonists hurt you (as you'll curbstomp them unless you don't fight back), the option to "Run" will be replaced by "Apocalypse." Which is basically, well, a very nuclear option. You can either die, or you can die and take everyone with you. Apocalypse forces you to watch as everyone is wiped away -- it reminded me of the ending of Hotline Miami (or was it Hotline Miami 2?), but to think that this obviously came many years earlier is jarring.
• Of course, you can defeat everyone. You can rewrite history to let the evil win. The result is a husk of a planet that Oersted explores in silence and solitary, occasionally reminiscing about what he had (or almost had). The visits every spot in Lucretia where the heroes are transported: every location is empty, save for him. It's a very somber ending, but I love that it exists. Just... when it was all over, you didn't get to play from Lavos's point of view in Chrono Trigger. The games aren't that similar, and that's an unfair comparison to make, I just found it fascinating.

So yeah. Live A Live is a story about a lot of things, but one that is ultimately the battle between love and hatred. Every hero fights with a different form of love in their heart (for example, Pogo's is romantic love, Li's is respect and admiration for her Master, Akira's is his platonic guardian instinct toward his sister and loved ones, Cube's is toward his creator and those that reflect love back) except for Oersted, who is robbed of the love. Oersted's story is ultimately different in how rather than love in his heart, he put his faith in Alicia's unknown love that others assured him of, and fell into despair when Alicia didn't actually harbour this one key to his livelihood. I like how the game goes about all of these themes, and I'm so damn impressed by all it managed to get done with 16-bit sounds and graphics -- like, shit, man, this game was incredibly cinematic, and not just in scenes like Masaru's opening or ending scenes that actually have a slightly different art style. Every chapter felt like a different genre of film or animation and it was fantastic and fuck, man, I love this game.