Live A Live

Platform	SNES / Windows
Genre	Role Playing Game
Release Year	1994 / 2023
Rating	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Added	2025-May-31

Formerly one of the unlocalized SNES gems. Live A Live is a pastiche story RPG with a number of distinct selectable chapters, each focusing on a different character in a different time period.

Each chapter also has different authors and artists, and sometimes delves into entirely new genres and storytelling methods. Prehistory plays out like an old caveman movie, Modern Day eschews most of what makes an RPG an RPG. Kung Fu and Sci-fi feel like their namesake movie genres.

Combat is a small-scale quasi-tactical system, but it's not "tactical" enough to put off people who don't enjoy SRPGs. Battles take a minute at most in many cases, despite being tactical turn-based. It's fast, smooth, and fun to play. The music is great, the story is great, it's just great.

The SNES version has an amazing translation patch; but in 2023, SquareEnix remade the game on the Switch and PC, and it's a beautiful near-perfect elevation of everything Live A Live. To date it's the definitive way to play the game.