See, Live A Live’s chapters all take place across different eras, with completely different casts of characters showing up in each one. However, I very quickly learned that this was an inaccurate analogy, as Live A Live handles its various story scenarios very differently from Octopath Traveler. My gut reaction was that this felt very similar to Octopath Traveler, another recently-released Square Enix RPG that used the HD-2D art style and features a story split across eight separate characters, with all of the stories ending up loosely tied together. Rather than following a single narrative throughout the game, the experience is broken up into seven main story scenarios, along with a couple of unlockable story-heavy chapters, one providing a different scenario, main character and setting, while the other ties all of the game’s narratives together. Live A Live is frankly a very unique experience, even in the realm of older JRPGs.
That being said, how well does the game truly hold up today? And were the improvements made to this remake enough to bring it up to a more modern standard? But with the game now receiving an unexpected remake, it’s gotten a new lease on life and a long overdue international release, letting everyone experience this presumed classic. Live A Live was originally released in 1994 and had even been initially planned as a worldwide release before underwhelming sales prospects in Japan caused those localization plans to be scrapped.
It’s no surprise then that some of Square’s less well-known JRPGs ended up falling through the cracks, one of these being Live A Live. Even new installments of big flagship franchises like Square Enix’s (then Squaresoft) Final Fantasy series didn’t always make it overseas. This was relatively common in the case of JRPGs, an arguably oversaturated genre at the time that remained relatively niche in the west. Back in the days of the SNES, it wasn’t uncommon for games to never see a western release, remaining land-locked to their native Japan.
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