Intro

Live A Live is a 1994 role-playing RPG acting for most of the game as an anthology, though all the chapters are connected through the power of the antagonist of the game, Odio. It's personally one of my all-time favorite games, and one I can deeply appriciate despite it's flaws. It's a fun experience that I reccomend you play (specifically the 2022 remake due to the quality of life updates it got there) yourself. It's a really interesting experience, and the distinct chapter mechanics makes everything unique.

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Chapters

The game is split into 9 distinct chapters, all with their own mechanics and storylines. Chapters are based around different time periods, with the senarios being (in order besides secret chapters); Prehistory, Imperial China, Twilight of Edo, Wild West, Present Day, Near Future, Distant Future, and Lord of Dark. The final chapter, Dominion of Hatred, is unique among the chapters. There, you take control of one of the 7 protaganists (with a unique boss rush where you play as the bosses when you play as Oersted, also known as the 8th protaganist) and go across the wasteland that was once the setting for Lord of Dark, gathering the other 6 heroes to go and face Odio and slay him once and for all. It's a cool ending, and one that I'll go over when the time comes in this shrine.

Prehistory

It's certainly a chapter. Not my favorite, but it still has it's strong suits. It's entire plot is some simple damsel in distress story, but that doesn't mean it isn't bad. The storytelling method is quite interesting, as it takes place in a time before language. The characters speak through grunts, and symbols are displayed to represent what they're talking about. That's a genuinely interesting method of storytelling, and a fun one at that. Basically, a young man named Pogo and his gorrila friend Gori find and shelter a woman named Beru, Pogo falls in love, Beru is taken and nearly used in a human sacrifice to appease a t-rex (the last of it's kind), they fight it, happily ever after.

My issue with the story is the humor. Personally, fart jokes and loud noises are not my preference of humor. It's not that their always unfunny, some can be well-placed. It's just that it's used quite a bit, and by used quite a bit, I mean it's overused to hell and back (hell there's an entire attack based around shit). It's not that it takes away from the story, but it just feels used too much to me.

Back to the goods of this chapter: Beru's attack symbolism. Seriously, when I discovered this, it felt like an amazing metaphor and I wondered why I didn't figure it our earlier. To explain: Beru starts out extremely weak in-game. She often sits in the sidelines of battles, waiting until the end to get her share of EXP. Once she reaches level 7 though, she gets one of the strongest attacks in the chapter: Sing Hurt. It's extremel effective against the final boss of the chapter, Odo, an incarnation of Odio and his hatred. It can be interpreted as Beru's love strengthening for Beru, being able to overpower hatred itself. I think the main message of Bad Bunny's Grammy's speech is a really good way to sum this up (bear with me): Love is far stronger than hate.

Imperial China

Quite the interesting part of the game, but I must say, it all pays off in the end. The story is about an old master of a fighting style defaultly named the "Earthen Heart Kung Fu", who is known as simply as Shifu. Coming to the realization that he is soon to die, so he finds 3 different students to carry on his art: Lei Kugo--a woman who attempts to steal from him as he walks through an old bamboo forest. Hong Hakka--A surprisingly agile glutton who never pays for his food. And, finally, Yun Jou--A young man (likely a teenager) forced to steal under the command of a man named Sun Tzu Wang in order to support him and his grandma's very survival. Shifu takes them in, teaches them the ways of how he fights, but when he is baited away by a different martial arts school, two of his students are killed, the only survivor being the one you trained the most.

I personally choose Lei on my first playthrough, because she's a badass. She's pretty, I like her. I like all of the students but she's gotta be my favorite od the bunch, though Yun comes in at a close 2nd.

I digress though. The shifu and surviving disciple go attack the other martial arts school, known as the Indomitable Fist. After facing waves of enemies, the Shifu decides that the disciple will be the one to face Ou Di Wan Lee, this chapters Odio incaranation, but not after teaching the disiple his ultimate move. After that battle is complete, the shifu fucking DIES, and cue screaming and crying.

I feel like this chapter is a little short, and depending on which order you take in the disciples, I feel like there's not much time to get attached enough to actually be sad at their death. I like the designs of everyone, and what the shifu teaches each of them is pretty on point. Overall, pretty good chapter. I like it.

Twiglight of Edo Japan

This is what inspired fucking Undertale. I know that's a weird way to start off this section, but I'm being for real when I say that. Story's pretty simple, but there's two routes (see where I'm going here). The basic story is that you're playing as a shinobi named Oboromaru (but we'll call him Oboro for short), and he's sent on a mission to save a polition that was captured by a war lord named Ode Iou (this chapter's Odio incarnation). You do the mission, free the politition (who is actually Sakomoto Ryoma, who was a real dude and was quite influental), and fight Ode Iou but as a frog-snake demon. The part that inspired Undertale and is reflected in it is the routes. You can either sneak around like a sneaky boy and not kill anyone, or commit literal GENOCIDE. Yeah this is clearly reflected in Undertale.