Live-A-Live Thread

Live-A-Live is probably my favorite SNES JRPG (not counting action JRPGs like Terranigma), despite its myriad of flaws. It's so wonderfully unique and charming that I can look past its many shortcomings.

The kung fu chapter. I really liked the old guy beating the shit out of everyone, and the music when he uses the "move" and does his little philosophy is god tier. Was a bit pissed off with the resolution of it, though.

Also, we all know the last kid was the canon inheritor of the kung fu legacy, no matter how much we want the red haired girl to be the one.

Sundown/Cube/Lei/Oboro master race team reporting in.

File: Matsu LAL.jpg (111KB, 763x702px) Image search: [Google]

111KB, 763x702px

>>2802579
It was cool but way too cinematic for my taste and after a while all those movie or pop culture homages got old real fast. the gameplay was nothing to write home about either, especially considering how scarce it was in certain chapters.

Favorite chapter is either Akira's or Masaru's, final team was usually Sundown, Akira/Cube, Masaru and Oboro.

If only it was less story focused and had a better budget it could have been great, there are a lot of great ideas in it but ultimately the execution is lackluster, no wonder it bombed even in Japan.

Matsu is best LaL

>>2802704
Well, the kid is by far the most useful as a character in the last chapter, he's the only one with strong elemental attack capabilities, everyone else either has physical attacks or wide range/low damage type attacks.

>>2802742
Live-a-Live is mainly about games as a storytelling medium, rather than something you play with. When you consider it that way all the gimmicks and changes between scenarios make sense. It's interesting, even if it's all rather somber and not that stimulating.

This game is probably a bigger influence on Undertale than Earthbound or Yume Nikki is too, but nobody ever talks about that.

>>2802746
But his HP sucks ass, and the fat guy is way too slow. Girl is clearly the best choice.

>>2802789
he's perfectly strong enough if you just give him all the training

>Live-A-Live was made by the guy that made the best numbered FF game
No wonder it was so good.

>tfw there are no good remixes of Megalomania

>>2804086
>tfw there are no YTPMVs of Megalomania

>>2804086
it's not really receptive to being remixed

at least you have megalovania?

>>2802789
AFAIR, his stats including HP shoot up like crazy when you train him up in last chapter.Only Sammo Hung has high HP among the 3. Girl is only good for speed,and that 1 diagonal attack she learns by herself.

>>2802713
I was Cube, Shonen, Oboro, and that Caveman guy for first playthrough.

>>2802750
>Undertale
Hmm, I don't really see it.

Outside of the boss theme music named "Megalovania"

>>2804960
not him but in both Undertale and LaL the message at the end is "anyone can be an asshole, so don't be one"
Though to be honest I don't see many similarities past that so it's a load of shit to say it influenced undertale more than earthbound considering undertale started as an Earthbound romhack

tried to get into this, started playing in the future chapter with that guy that can read minds
got stuck and couldn't tell what to do once I got to his house
porbably being a total scrub

>>2805621
I got stuck on that part as well, had problems with activating that robot thingy that was underground

my mermory's a little hazy

File: 37-capture_27092011_025733.png (126KB, 512x446px) Image search: [Google]

126KB, 512x446px

>>2805291
aside from the obvious visual motifs common between Pure Odio and Omega Flowey, Oersted himself is a once pure-hearted individual who becomes corrupted with hate and anger after being betrayed by his best friend and losing his home, and ends up turning into a time traveling demonic monster.

While that alone would be a pretty good parallel, Oersted specifically criticizes the player characters for their selfishness and hypocrisy, and questions their, and indirectly the player's, morality before fighting them. In addition to that, if you choose to play as Oersted, you have the option, during the reversed boss fights against the other heroes, to lose your shit and be a sore loser and a complete asshole by just nuking everything and genociding all the timelines.

Chara and Flowey are both influenced by Oersted in their character and motivations.

In terms of design, there are similar segments where you have to run away and avoid a powerful enemy to progress, Oboro's chapter offers the choice of killing or sparing everyone involved and the game acknowledges the choice you make, Akira's chapter even has a body horror plot device involving people being liquefied and still living afterward.

Even going just by themes, Oersted's chapter is thick with corruption, betrayal, desperation, loneliness, guilt, and the way a man is changed by his sins.

frankly I'm not sure how you could not see it having played both games

>>2805689
You have a point, but I still think it's pretty obvious that Undertale takes a lot from the Mother series.
Mother parallels go right down to the art style, battle system, and even some themes. LaL parallels take a little digging into to really say "wow, this is too similar to be a co-incidence"

>>2805709
I'd say Mother has more physical similarities while Live-A-Live has more ego similarities.

>>2805717
Great way to describe it

File: doodle__odio__by_moa810.jpg (159KB, 478x709px) Image search: [Google]

159KB, 478x709px

Quite honestly my favorite JRPG and probably favorite game of all time too. Pretty much the only complaint I have is that it doesn't have much replayability, but I still come back to it bi-annually. Nothing short of a masterpiece.

>>2804086
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjI8n5uzdI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCjSpHCS2ic

>>2805689
I noticed all of it too. LAL inspirations in Undertale are fairly obvious. Now only if someone made some crossover art...

>>2805689
>criticizes the player characters for their selfishness and hypocrisy, and questions their, and indirectly the player's, morality

No, stop that shit. This is the exact same shit that comes up every time a "deep, thoughtful" game gets discussed like the actual player should be criticized for just playing the game.

This kind of mentality can't apply to the actual player because the game only progresses one way and that's not up to player.

This is the same kind of horseshit where Spec Ops: The Line was a direct slam against the player for killing all these people in their made-up killing simulator but failed to provide any non-violent options.

Live a Live's main story is on rails, all you get to decide is which order the chapters go in, and that's basically meaningless because they all go the same way, don't influence each other, and you have to do them all anyways. The player is not a factor in terms of whether the villain gets to address them for hypocrisy and selfishness, that charge should honestly be levied solely at the characters. If you absolutely have to break the fourth wall and criticize someone outside the game, how about the devs for making Oerstad's life so shit in the first place?

>>2805689
This guy's perfectly right you know>>2805783
That's one of the points where the writing and design invalidates the main point and justification of Oersted, you can't criticize a player's choice when there's no choice to begin with, and it's a very overused and shallow cornerstone of many JRPG villains' character, to call out for hypocrisy in the player's choice when the game's on a rail, the usual cliche of "your hands are bloodstained too".

At least SaGa played it right by having the opposite, the player criticize the Creator as a sadistic asshole because you've been put through and witnessed countless horrors just for the Creator's amusement, who is basically the game designer's alter ego. In that moment you have all the reasons in the world say you're absolutely on the right side of the moral spectrum.

Tactics Ogre gives you the actual choices to make this work too, you can decide to obey the order to slaughter a village of innocent people or not, there the villains have the right to say that you're a hypocrite in the case you do kill the villagers, LaL completely misses the point and sounds frankly hypocritical itself in praising some sort of moral highground were you weren't even able to decide for yourself what to do, you were a mere spectator as a player.
This was a colossal error in design, worst of all is that it's something extremely basic and stupid which was overlooked in favor of cinematic narrative instead of actual roleplay, admittedly a very common error, but that's not really a good reason to justify it.

>>2802746
>the kid is by far the most useful as a character in the last chapter
Sundown can easily do 999 to Odio.

>>2805291
Not to mention the concept of someone's perspective crossing time and space. Or in Frisk and Flowey's case; alternate realities.

>>2805783
>>2805849
nobody is forcing you, the person to play a murder simulator

>>2805875
-randomly-

that's also pretty much the only thing he can do

>playing Far future
>guess Kirk's passowrd as "Warp"
>"I sleep below your feet"
what in the fuck does that mean?

>>2805907
A poetic way of saying "I'm dead"

>>2805910
Oh
Okay that makes sense
I thought it had to do with the behemoth because it's on the bottom floor of the ship

>>2805783
>>2805849
no but really is it actually flying over your head the not having a choice might actually be intentional? Oersted is actually just a victim of a deterministic universe, and lashes out against it specifically because he feels the same exact frustration that you are voicing, and you don't think that's actually kind of clever? What he really criticizes you for is for being a tool in the perpetuation of that universe which is both deterministic and doesn't give a shit about justice, and that's completely fair, because you have the option of letting him destroy it, or not participating in that violence if you felt like it, since unlike the characters you're not part of that deterministic universe and can decide who ultimately wins.

Linearity does not actually remove player agency from the narrative, especially when the existence of any narrative is in the first place dependent on the player's participation, and you have the full capability of walking away in disgust if you don't like it, but if you do stick around to live vicariously the violent fantasies of escapism and "heroism", can you really deny that it's because you might be a little bit perverse?

>>2805907
>>2805910
>>2805918
check the foot of his bed, nerds

>>2805942
Well I'm a fuckin moron, thanks

>>2805783
>>2805849
>>2805939
Jesus fuck, not everything has to break the 4th wall because Undertale did it. Oersted doesn't judge YOU THE PLAYER in that small dialogue before Pure Odio, he judges the characters. And he's not right either, his judgement is clouded by his twisted deterministic worldview and the characters swiftly prove him wrong by laying their lives on the line to save every timeline.

Next you'll be saying that Cecil's moral quandaries in FFIV are supposed to shame the player or something. No, that's not how JRPGs work. LAL is entirely on the rails and never once does it pretend otherwise.

Now kindly go back to /v/ or /vg/ if you want to discuss Undertale.

>>2805963
nobody said Oersted judges you the player.

I said he judges you indirectly, as in vicariously through the player characters.

>>2805969
So what you're trying to say is that in games with linear storylines characters' actions should have no repercussions at all because the player makes no choices and thus is indirectly shamed for no fault of their own? Better make Undertale the last game you ever played then.

>>2805976
dude I don't know where the fuck you got that shit not everybody you meet is gonna have the same kind of autism as you that requires them to think in absolutes without ever indulging an internal conflict or paradox.

if people didn't have paradoxical opinions on things and sustain those subjective imbalances they would literally be incapable of free will, they would just do the same thing all the time and never change their minds and that would be idiotic.

File: odio first form.jpg (100KB, 1136x640px) Image search: [Google]

100KB, 1136x640px

Not sure if it's the best RPG out there, some other big contenders might not match it in story but their gameplay is still really good. I personally believe if it had Chrono Trigger's budget it would be unanimously considered the best of all time.

I find the gameplay quite frustrating at very awkward times and this, along with the pacing of each storyline, is what I think hinders it from achieving true greatness. Had it been given the proper polishing it would certainly be more famous for the gem it is.

Nevertheless, it does have one of the best soundtracks, and the best ending theme in a game period:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1K87G3E1As

How the fuck do you get past Neptune in Captain Square

What did the "O." in "O. Dio" stand for?

>>2806135
"Odium" means hatred in latin

>>2806135
Overlord

>>2806135
Name I guess. Oliver or something. He was the last survivor of 7th Cavalry.

File: Take it Easy.png (123KB, 400x960px) Image search: [Google]

123KB, 400x960px

Take It Easy on the meta judgement whatever, guys