You Can Play Six or Seven Games, or Just One! Let's Play Live-A-Live!

[LoakaMossi]

The King of Demons

Well, well, well. This chapter has a lot to talk about, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, I don’t really want to say a whole lot.

It’s not for lack of material. Every character with a name is worth discussing, the plot itself is ambiguous, and the themes are pervasive. But instead, I want to discuss why I could have so much discussion over this chapter. Let’s talk about ambiguity.

In this story, ambiguity is not omnipresent. This isn’t Silent Hill (at first); most of the plot elements are clear as day. Some of the characters, mostly unnamed ones like the king, are obvious pastiches of JRPG NPCs. However, there are two lines of dialogue that change the entire story depending on their interpretation.

The first is Hash’s “That was NOT the Demon!” and the second is Straybow’s “All of my emotions exploded!” One of these lines has to be false. If they were both true, then neither the Demon King nor Straybow could have kidnapped Alicia. So, is Hash mistaken about not killing the Demon King or is Straybow covering up how he planned this from the beginning?

I don’t want to try and tear this plot apart to find out what “really” happened. Whichever conclusion you reach is probably more interesting to you, and that’s more important.

I do want to point out a few things I know about, but didn’t mention for the sake of tone or pacing. The font-changing during Brando’s speech at the end of the chapter is not present in the Japanese version. I really like this change because it compensates for a common problem in SNES RPGs. Since they lack any kind of “acting,” it’s can make dialogue hard to parse. It’s not always obvious how a certain line would be said. By using different fonts, Aeon Genesis adds inflection. It’s what puts the scene over for me.

I really like Brando’s speeches during both of his chapters. He’s able to stay sympathetic in my mind while murdering every human to ever exist. He gets really close to full-tilt edgelord, but he never crosses over. The fact that his anger is born of trauma helps, but his dialogue alone is more interesting than edgy to me. I also like some of the words of encouragement he gives to the bosses. In particular, “That’s right, you’re the strongest!” stood out to me as weirdly innocent sounding. He can’t show love to another human, but he can show kindness to his weird anti-humanity brigade. Brando is such a weirdly compelling character.

What do you all think? How did you interpret the plot and its characters? Is Brando sympathetic to you, or am I being to soft on him? And, if I can be self-indulgent, if you weren’t familiar with this story, did I get ya? Did something I do give away the twist too early, or you were as taken aback as I was when I first played this?

I’m getting anxious about finishing up this LP, but I don’t want to close the poll just yet. This is kind of an important poll, so I don’t want to close it before everyone has a chance to catch up and vote. I’ll leave it open until tomorrow afternoon, probably around 5 p.m. EST. I want to keep it open for at least the rest of the day, but I won’t be able to start working on the update until tomorrow afternoon anyways.

[LoakaMossi]

Getting the Team Together

Here we go. Li gets to lead our final assault!

The Bird Flies in the Sky, The Fish Swims in the River

The game plays this whole scene, but after this point…

(Music Stop, Rumbling Starts)

Odio decides to retcon the game that he’s currently a part of.

Everybody has one unique line of dialog at the start. Bonk’s the only one with a new scene; he wanders out of his room in the middle of the night before Odio contacts him.

Welcome to the void.

Once you wander far enough, this effect starts up. This is probably some sort of transitional world; you have to go here before you can travel through time.

Up north, we find a staircase out of here.

City of Hopelessness

Whenever you start this chapter, your protagonist has a designated spawn point. The Puncha Master moves from mountaintop graveyard to a singular mountaintop gravestone. This is also where we would find the Puncha Master if we hadn’t played as her. Li fights us before joining up, Yuan joins immediately, and Sammo requires food. Naorigusa is the easiest food to find, but it takes 19 of them to convince him to join.

Also, Wings That Don’t Reach is no longer playing. Instead, the music from the Demon King’s lair plays throughout Lucretia. It’s all the Demon King’s lair now.

The good news is that this spawn point puts us right next to one of the few required items in this chapter. Odio’s lair is sealed again, so we’ll need Brion to re-open it.

One screen down, we find another required item.

The Iron Box has many different names. While the Puncha Master, Bort, and the Nineties Kid all call it an Iron Box, Bonk just calls it ???, Dwayne calls it an Odd Part, and Shinji identifies it as a Battery. You can probably guess what it will be used for.

LIVE-A-LIVE

We still have random battles, but they’re all over the place. Most of them are recolors, but they also have bizarre movesets. For example, Kerbero has really powerful moves like Melt Breath, but it’s poor stats keep them from being a threat. Nouvelle Remiel has Maser Cannon, which is a really bizarre image to me.

Finally, the battle music is now the title screen music. It’s a pretty cool song, but it also adds to the weird nature of this whole chapter.

This mountain is full of interesting finds, isn’t it? The Nineties Kid spawns outside of Hash’s cabin, which makes sense since they were both heroes that turned away from society. Anyways, let’s see what he has to say.

WANDERER

…Oh. Okay. Guess we’ll just traverse this mountain on our own then.

City of Hopelessness

He just wanders down a screen, but he’s a bit of a pain to get to. You have to go to the very bottom and walk through some hidden paths to get back to him.

WANDERER

And then he just ditches you again. You have to talk to him a total of nine times before he’ll join you.

City of Hopelessness

Once we get to the bottom of the mountain, we can check out the signs. It’s probably illegible because of the blood, but it might just be in a language none of the protagonists can read.

We run into Ninety again. He’ll keep walking away as the opening bar of WANDERER plays.

For the most part, you can usually just head in the direction he left in to find him again.

This location is a little hidden because you have to turn left to find him, but you’ll probably want to check this room anyways. If you left it alone during Brando’s chapter, you can raid it now. The items inside are actually better now.

Here’s Li’s loadout. We’ll want her to have the best equipment since she’s the leader, but you don’t need to worry about it too much.

Ultimate Strength -VICTORY ROAD-

Dwayne is not going to let this whole “time travelling” nonsense stop him from getting his reps in. I guess there’s no training grounds for him to spawn in, so he has one of the more obtuse spawn locations.

The artists went through the trouble of making that sprite; you’d better believe they’re going to use it more than once.

: Riddle me this, pal…

While I think it would be completely in character for Li to say yes, let’s try and avoid a fight here.

Wait, what?

…Dwayne has got to be the most single-minded protagonist in this game.

KNOCK YOU DOWN

This gives me a chance to show Li’s new personal tech. Xin Shan Quan can hit from a distance, lowers Con, and is described as “A flurry of blows.” It also, for some bizarre reason, has the same name as the default Kung Fu style.

: I’m Dwayne Takahara. I’m stuck in this crazy place too.

Of course. Us Martial Artists should stick together, after all. I don’t think you can “lose” a protagonist during this chapter. Any of the “no” options will just result in them hanging around their spawn point until you want to join up with them.

Dwayne has a lot of unique dialogue. He won’t fight Ninety because he can’t outpunch a pistol, and he’s too impressed with Egg’s existence to fight him. He says Shinji is strange, Bonk is a child of the natives, and if he runs into Bort, he’ll say he never expected to find a ninja in a medieval castle. Most of the other characters have generic dialogue, so I guess they wanted to beef up Dwayne’s dialogue since there’s so little of it elsewhere.

For the first time, Dwayne has different stats. He’s a little weak by this chapter’s standards, but he’s really strong for being level 2. Once he starts leveling up, he’ll get really strong really quickly. He won’t lean any new moves; we already learned all of them back in his chapter.

City of Hopelessness

Ninety is just giving himself the grand tour of this castle, isn’t he?

Egg moves from a spaceship to the top of a castle. Both locations are man-made creations that are the highest man-made points in their respective chapters, although the spaceship is obviously leagues higher.

Egg managed to lose his battery near the top of Hero’s Mountain. Maybe he did just fall from orbit, and his battery came out as he was over the mountain.

Good morning, little buddy!

If you say no, he’ll follow you around this balcony like a sad, lost puppy.

Since we’re not monsters in this update, we take him.

Egg doesn’t have a whole lot to equip. He can equip helms, but we don’t have any for him at the moment.

Some of the enemies drop Power Parts, so we can boost his HP. The rest of his stats, however, are not going to change.

On the way back, I discover the Time Police! They’re looking into the matter, but they’re pursuing the wrong suspects. They use a lot of Brando and Hash’s moves.

: … … Can you tell me where this place is? I’m Ninety… the Ninety Kid. So, you’re lost too…

…Ninety spoke more in that scene than he did in the entirety of his chapter. He’s not so anti-social anymore!

Ninety is death incarnate in this chapter, once he learns more of his moves. Guns are incredibly powerful in Live-A-Live.

This party owns. I guess every party you can make in this chapter is really cool!

Our next goal is the naorigusa patch. Bonk is hanging out where there’s food and nature, as to be expected.

In a throwback to Bel’s Shell Game, Bonk hides in the trees.

Normally, Bonk will fight you before he joins up. However, if you’re playing as Li…

This happens.

Oh, Bonk. Bel will not be happy with you if she finds out about this.

We’ll leave Bonk be for a while. He’ll follow Li around, just like Egg, but I don’t think it’s as cute.

We want to look at the sign outside of Devil’s Peak.

Like any good ninja, Bort lays in wait near a point of interest, and strikes when his enemy reveals themselves.

Kiling Field!

All of the fights between protagonists in this chapter are 1v1. I think that’s odd, but it’s also a little neat.

There’s no new moves to show, so Bort gets taken out with a good old Squirrel Kick.

City of Hopelessness

As cool as Bort is, we’re not ready to bring him with us yet.

There he goes. He’ll hang out around this sign, so we can always pick him up later.

Last, and almost certainly least, we find Shinji hanging around civilization. Specifically, he’s outside of the house Uranus, who slowly grew apart from his close friend before losing him in a tragic incident, used to live in.

Wow, rude.

He normally just says the protagonist’s name, but since the Puncha Master is just called “Puncha” in the menus, he needs to mention that as well.

You just read our mind, so we have every reason not to. We’re going to say we do trust him, however. It keeps us out of a fight this time.

I also wanted to show off that he reads your mind to make sure you aren’t lying. I think that’s really cool.

: The name’s Shinji. You don’t look like such a bad sort, you know.

I actually want to bring Shinji along right now. He replaces Egg, since they fill similar roles.

I gave him all of the Unicorn Horns. They boost IQ. Egg can benefit from them too, but we’re going to load him up with the robot accessories we just took off of Shinji.

LIVE-A-LIVE

Here are a few more encounters. I ran into a whole lot of enemies after picking up Shinji because I wanted to use his teleport command over and over again.

City of Hopelessness

Which brings us to the real meat and potatoes of this chapter.

Every protagonist has a dungeon in this chapter. At the end of each dungeon lies their ultimate weapon. We’re going to be looking at all of them. To find Shinji’s, you have to use teleport. Every time you do, you have a chance of ending up here.

But that will have to wait! Next time, we explore the Dungeon of the Mind, Shinji’s secret dungeon!

[LoakaMossi]

Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons

Welcome back! I really underestimated the size of this chapter!

Like the Ninja chapter, there’s no real story beats. As a result, I remembered this chapter being a lot shorter than it actually was. I intended to do everything aside from the final boss fight, but that didn’t really pan out.

Instead, there will be two more updates after this one. This update goes through everyone’s personal dungeon. The next update will focus on the secret bosses of this chapter. And the third update will close everything out.

Silent Labyrinth
Since this update is all about dungeons, this track will be playing throughout.

LIVE-A-LIVE
And this is our battle theme. Unless I post a different song, this plays over every fight.

Dungeon of the Mind

The Dungeon of the Mind is where we left off last time. There are four starting places. This starting place lets us get right into the gimmick. While every dungeon has a gimmick, this one is is plot-related.

All the souls of Brando’s victims have ended up here. You have to read their minds; they remain silent if you try to talk to them. Most of them are these knights, who all think the same thing.

Accompanying him is the Royal Adviser. He’s still the worst.

Just past them and to the south, we find this IQ boosting accessory item.

We also start bumping into some of the random encounters. This is a setup we’ve seen lots of times; kill the Mustard Dragon, and the rest will break down. The Dragon has a lot of Defense, but Ninety can kill it in two shots.

The Barbarians have a lot of Bonk’s moves. I think this chapter is the chapter that mixes up your starting positions in fights the most. I like how this one isolates your leader.

These guys share their name with an Earl of Hell. The Demon is a winged dog, and these guys aren’t dog-like and lack wings, so that’s probably just a coincidence.

This guy is never easy to fight. Ishtar has 1600 HP, which is more than any other enemy we’ve seen aside from the Inko Statue. He has four attacks. One hits everyone for a lot of damage, lowers stats, and inflicts drunkenness. One of them hits a single target for a lot of damage, paralyzes them, and puts them to sleep. The other two attacks barely do any damage. On the plus side, defeating him is a guaranteed level up until you hit level 40.

This fight really had me on the ropes, so I started looking through my attack items. This is what the Parasite Sword, which boosts attack and power at the expense of everything else, can do as an item. Unfortunately, it’s one use only.

We’ve also picked up some new techs. Ninety learned Triple Shot. It shoots three bullets at a single target.

He also learned Quad Shot. It shoots four bullets at a single target. Ninety is a very practical gunman.

Li’s new technique is pretty good. It has a charge time, but it hits the entire screen for some pretty decent damage.

This tech is also pretty useful. Instant healing plus a stat boost.

And then there’s Shinji. This is his ultimate technique. It has a lengthy charge time and hits the entire screen. It’s supposed to paralyze and debuff enemies, but Li makes this move obsolete.

Anyways, back to dungeon crawling.

We want to check out those stairs. They lead to our next NPC.

…

On the other side of his door, we find a nightmare helmet.

If we go past the kid’s stairway, we find the path forward.

That little flame is another knight, nothing new.

This flame on the other hand…

Weird. He doesn’t mention Brando, even implicitly. I think every other NPC mentions him in some capacity.

Let’s go back to that intersection, but head left this time.

After a fairly lengthy trek, we find another unique NPC.

It’s everyone’s favorite treasonous wizard! What do you have to talk about, Straybow?

…Really? You’re not even going to ask for forgiveness? You’re just going to pretend this has nothing to do with you?

Let’s just move on.

Down the stairs, we come to the last room of this dungeon.

Hash seems confused, but he’s also not particularly judgmental.

Uranus, on the other hand, is not so patient.

Here’s what we’ve been looking for.

Fittingly enough, Shinji’s ultimate weapon is the worst one. It’s stat boost are unimpressive, and it’s almost better as an offhand item. It’s boosts are smaller, but it protects against foot/arm locks, poison, stun, sleep and being drunk.

Once we take the glove, Alicia shows up to greet us.

And with that, the dungeon of the mind draws to a close. It’s the only dungeon we can’t re-enter; Shinji’s teleport will never take us there again.

Dungeon of Technique

In our search for the Puncha dungeon, we come across this somewhat familiar rock…

Welcome to the Dungeon of Technique.

This dungeon has two gimmicks, and I’m not a fan of either of them. The first is these rocks. Whenever you approach one of them, the Puncha Master’s movelist pops up. You select one, and the rock breaks.

If you select the right one. The rocks can only be broken by the standard Puncha techniques, but that’s still too many techniques to choose from since there’s no indication which technique is the right one.

The other gimmick is this guy.

WARM-A-LIVE

This is Voice Heart, and I don’t know why he exists.

Both of his techniques are damaging and debilitating. He is just frustrating to fight.

And to make things worse, he’s a recurring boss. This dungeon has a few large rooms that he doesn’t spawn in. In every other room, he’ll show up. On top of that, he will respawn if you backtrack to a room you’ve already been to. This dungeon is just obnoxious.

Anyways, let’s try and navigate this dungeon.

We’ll head through that lower left door first.

This room is a dead end, but it doesn’t have to be. If I had smashed this rock from the outside, I would have been able to pass through it.

Instead, let’s head through this blocked door.

We find one of the equipment items we left didn’t make in the Prehistoric chapter. But more importantly…

We’re further along in this dungeon.

There’s a lot of this dungeon that I could show, but I’ll just stick with the critical path from here. Heading south, we find a stairway that leads to higher ground. If we then head right, we’ll find a boulder we can break.

This guy gives us his spiel one more time, but then…

YES. YES, WE’RE ANGRY.

MEGALOMANIA

Despite the end boss theme kicking in, this fight is just like all of his others.

Li learned her last unique move. TianMaHouiSuiJiao makes Li face away from her target, but it also moves her backwards one square after she uses it. She has one more technique to learn, but it’s Puncha’s Ultimate Technique. We’ve already seen it; the only difference is that it can now be used without restriction.

Ninety learned Shot Storm. It can target an area, but it’s also useful against single targets.

And finally, there was silence…

Now that’s an ultimate weapon! +20 across the board! And this is still one of the weaker ones!

Dungeon of Strength

Some of these dungeons are a little hard to find. The one marked by an evil birdman riding a giant red fish, however, is a little easier to spot.

MEGALOMANIA

…Have I mentioned this chapter is weird yet?

This guy doesn’t even have any interesting techs to show.

I hope that using a gun for a test of strength isn’t cheating.

And he unceremoniously vanishes.

Here’s the Dungeon of Strength proper.

It’s full of chests, but none of them open.

This dungeon is essentially a straight shot to Dwayne’s ultimate weapon.

It has a massive boost to Dwayne’s Atk, Pw, and Vt. Dwayne’s stats are good enough as it is, so this is insane.

But now, we have consequences to deal with. Taking that bandage has opened all of the chests, but it’s also turned on the random encounters. And the random encounter rate in this dungeon is absurdly high!

This fight is simple, but it can wreck you if your not careful. Again, you want to target the mustard dragon. If The Pistachios have more HP and absurdly high defense, but they also have an absurd counter attack. It hits the entire screen and inflicts almost every status effect in the game. Do not attack the Pistachios!

Aside from the bizarre name, this guy isn’t really notable.

This encounter is just really silly to me. Why are we fighting a dogwalker?

These mammoths have a health draining tech that can prolong their fights, but they aren’t too difficult.

Out of all of the chests, this is the most important one. We’ll need a Golden Topknot for later in this chapter.

Despite the dungeon just being a line, it takes a long time to get out of. It’s definitely not the worst gimmick, but it can really get on you nerves after a while.

As soon as we step outside, Ninety learns Neo Shot Storm. It’s exactly the same as Shot Storm, but stronger.

And this, by the way, is why most people consider Ninety to be top-tier in this chapter. Hurricane Shot has a lengthy charge time, but it obliterates enemies in a large area.

Dungeon of Intelligence

Next up, it’s time to check out Egg’s dungeon.

The Village of Familia has been replaced with the Dungeon of Intelligence.

If we head right, we’ll be taken out through the other house in the village. Going up takes us further in.

…Egg is probably having the worst flashbacks right now.

That reminds me, is anyone else looking forward to Intelligence of Egg’s new album? It should be coming out soon.

: Strength is unnecessary here. Lateral thinking and a calm composure will guide your mind to a new level. This chair will connect us from here on out. Speak to teh chair, and I will come…

Now that he’s gone, it’s time to dive in.

: Rearrange the red floor… First width, then height… Both at last.

That advice was a little misleading. We aren’t re-arranging the tiles, the tiles are re-arranging us.

The first set will swap your left and right controls while the second will swap up and down.

The last one rotates all of your control 90 degrees clockwise.

: Follow your image in the mirrors, and a white sphere will show you the way… Speak to me if you wish to restart the test…

This puzzle is simple. Just do what the Egg in the mirror does.

Listen to the mirror on the left.

We have three deceitful mirrors and four directions on our d-pad. We want to go whichever direction is not present in the mirrors.

This is the easiest puzzle in concept, but I can see why people might get hung up on it. You want to go through whichever door this arrow is pointing at, even if it’s the door you just came through. Eventually, you’ll get out.

: At its terminus you shall ascend. This is the final test. Here too shall the spheres guide. In Time, you shall find understanding.

Egg’s Intelligence doesn’t mean we’ll eventually understand it. He means we should use time as a guide. We want to touch the spheres in a clockwise manner. This will take us to the end of the puzzle.

Behold, Egg’s first and ultimate weapon.

That +50 IQ is a godsend to Egg. His healing and his attacks just got a huge boost.

And with that, we’re dumped outside of Hash’s cabin.

Dungeon of Instinct

Bonk’s dungeon is hard to find. It’s marked by a scent, but it can be hard to even find the scent.

And with Bonk acting as our battering ram, we make our way inside.

Welcome to the Dungeon of Instinct.

Navigation is simple enough: Just follow Bonk’s nose!

…Until we get to this point. The scent led us to this room, but we can’t actually access the next doorways from here. We’ll want to go south from the last room instead.

That takes us to the right part of the room. All three of these door smell of meat, but they all lead to the same room.

The left and right doors lead us to these parts of the room, but they’re dead ends.

These guys look familiar and creepy, but since I brought Shinji with me…

This is a reference to one of this chapters many, many bonus bosses. We won’t see it in this update, but keep this in mind.

This room forks. While the right path has a scent, we’ll want to take the left path.

Behold!

The exact moment the sprite artists ran out of time!

The Bone Axe has a pretty good stat boost. It doesn’t lower Spd, by the way. Our Wild Armor is still lowering Bonk’s Spd, and he no longer has the Smoulder Spear to boost his speed.

Well, that was relatively painless. One more weapon down!

Dungeon of Keys

Bort’s dungeon is hidden in plain sight. All of these doors will lead to it, but we want the Northwestern door, which is just offscreen.

This door, to be exact.

Welcome to the Dungeon of Keys.

Well, so much for that. Door’s locked, everybody go home.

Naah, this dungeon is just a little odd. Shadow is a random encounter in this dungeon, and it drops keys. It uses a lot of Bort’s techniques. I think it usually spawns more often in rooms with locked doors, but that might be observational bias.

We only get one use out of the rusted keys before they crumble.

We don’t want to head down the stairs yet.

From here, we head right.

Here’s the first of four non-rusted keys. We’ll need all four of them to find Bort’s ultimate weapon.

We want the door, not the stairs. It’s locked, so we have to find Shadow again first.

Go north here.

And get the second key.

Now it’s time to go up these stairs.

Sometimes, the best way to go through a dungeon is to not go through the dungeon. We want to go back in through the rightmost door on the leftmost house.

…I’m really glad this game doesn’t have too many dungeons. I feel like I have nothing to say.

But at least we’re 3/4 of the way through it.

We want to go north here.

And here.

We want the top right passageway.

The middle door leads to another Parasite Sword to replace the one I burned on an Ishtar, and then we want the door on the right.

And now we want south.

There’s the last key, and we’re right outside the weapons resting place.

First up, this door wants the Genbu Key.

Next is the Byakko Key.

Followed by the Seiryu Key.

And finally, the Suzaku Key.

Check out that Hanzo Steel, everyone.

Sorry Ryoma, but you’ve just been replaced! The Murasame, as befitting a ninja, boosts power and speed.

I really hope Bort keeps a hold on the Yoshiyuki. If he ditched it, I don’t think Ryoma would understand.

Dungeon of Time

Ninety’s dungeon is marked by a vision of his horse.

We need to chase it around these woods for a while.

Eventually, it takes us to the dungeon’s entrance.

Welcome to the Dungeon of Time.

There are a few things to grab, but nothing is a “must-get.”

This area is down-right of the chest. We’ll want to head up and right from here.

And at this moment, I may have panicked a bit.

This dungeon is a mirror of Ninety’s chapter. After eight bells, Bad Things start happening.

This chest was the left path, and the right path has nothing.

Instead, we need to head straight left, then down.

We head down from here.

Good, I got here while there was still enough light to see it.

The most powerful handgun in the world!

Any Speed boost is welcome for Ninety. The sooner we get Hurricane Shot out, the better.

Now, you may have noticed that this room had six ways out of it. You might think that going back the way I came would be the safest way out.

You would be right, but my eyes were bigger than my stomach.

I ran out of time. I bet Bort would have gotten us out of there safely…

There’s a second laugh before…

This screenshot makes me laugh because there’s no animation for this thing. It’s just suddenly there.

Meet the Jaggy Egg, one of this chapter’s plethora of bonus bosses. Unfortunately, we won’t be fighting them in this update. The bonus bosses will be the focus of the next update, so see you then!

Having gone back through these dungeons, I can see why I forgot how long this chapter was. There’s no story present, and while I like the game’s combat, I need context to remember a given fight. And while I like how bizarre and surreal everything is, I wish that the characters were more involved with their dungeons. I wish Shinji reacted to learning about Lucretia’s past, or that Dwayne commented on the gauntlet he had to run through. I don’t need a whole lot, just a few lines of dialogue would be nice. Things don’t need to be explained, but I would like for the characters to acknowledge that things are weird.

Anyways, we’ll be clearing out the bonus bosses next time. In the meantime, I see no reason why we shouldn’t be preparing for the final fight with Odio.

While it won’t be the next update, the final battle against Odio is rapidly approaching. That means we need to be thinking about what team we want to send in.

• Bonk!
• Bort!
• Ninety!
• Dwayne!
• Shinji!
• Egg!

Thread, it’s time to select who will be accompanying Li. Vote for your three favorite characters. When the poll closes, I’ll take the three most popular characters with me. Don’t worry about tactical decisions if you don’t want to. Every party configuration is viable, so just pick the characters you want to see!

[LoakaMossi]

Bonus Boss Bonanza!

Something that I think is neat about this chapter is the sheer amount of bonus bosses it has. It’s one final drop of weirdness to add to this surreal trip. Each of this bosses drop a piece of an armor set called the Ariel Armor set. It has a lot of useful effects, but something that all pieces share is that they make a character immune to petrification. I don’t actually think the armor is worth it on a normal playthrough, but the bosses are worth showing.

MEGALOMANIA
Just put MEGALOMANIA on loop. You know you want to.

Ariel Glove

First up, let’s look at the Jaggy Eggs. We’ve already covered how to find these guys; just let time run out in Ninety’s dungeon.

The Jaggy Eggs use a mixture of Egg and Captain Square’s moves. Space Phage can oneshot Ninety, but Spin Drive is mostly underwhelming. What makes this guys a threat is their numbers and their defense.

Thankfully, we brought the big guns. Hurricane Shot, as you can probably tell, does variable damage. The amount of total damage it will do varies, and the way it spreads damage out is random as well. It has a large range, but it works better on single targets, oddly enough.

The glove is pretty basic. +15 defense and petrify immunity. Nothing flashy.

After that, we can exit the dungeon as normal.

Ariel Ring

The next item is back in Bonk’s dungeon. In one of the rooms at the tail end of this dungeon, we come across this scent.

Good, Bonk’s nose didn’t lie to us.

Well, our anachronistically accented aquatic acquaintance, we happed to pick one up while we were here.

: It’ll cost you a lot… Let’s see…

What?

What?

What?

Amlucretia is a stronger version of Lord Iwama, who was already tough to handle.

This is his basic attack.

Poseidon’s Whip still inflicts poison and paralysis, neither of which are fun to deal with.

My general plan was to have Bonk and Dwayne eat most of the attacks, but I decided that Bonk was the only wall I needed. The rest used their ranged attack, with Ninety being the Coup de Grace.

Thanks?

The Ariel Ring is the most interesting Ariel Armor piece in addition to boosting vitality, it also grants Petrify Immunity, Rear Evade Up, Firearm Evade Up, Strangle Skill Evade Up, Charge Skill Evade Up, Mind Evade Up, Earth Skill Evade Up, Wind Skill Evade Up, Water Skill Evade Up, and Fire Skill Evade Up. Basically, you’ll never turn to stone and it will be impossible to touch you.

Sure, OK.

This is one of the few ways to get “lore” on Lucretia. It’s not necessary, but it’s nice to know.

Who are you?

: I am Almucretia, and I am older than the history of Lucretia itself. I’ve lived so long I’ve become nearly a god myself. I’m not sure why, but all the humans disappeared from around here some time back. It’s kinda weird, but at least it’s quiet, y’know?

I guess this is a clue that Odio is still hanging around Demon’s Peak, but you probably already knew that. Even if we didn’t play Brando’s chapter, it was the last place we saw him.

Where am I?

: This is the Dungeon of Instinct. Only those with a strong, wild nature may pass into it. There are also Dungeons of Power, Intelligence, Technique, Mind, Time, and Keys.

: C’mon, I’m sure you can do it. You found your way here, after all. Besides, your drive to achieve is what makes you human! Lose that, and you have nothing.

Who am I?

…Fair enough. That’s all the fish god has for us, so let’s leave him be.

Ariel Helm

From ancient history to the distant future, we want to head to Egg’s dungeon next.

On the last row of red tiles we find…this.

I was mid-movement when I started this, but I liked how it looks like Egg is trying to run behind Li.

Uh oh. Looks like that Diode belonged to someone else before we came along.

Erauqs is a little boring, to be honest.

His main strategy is “have high defense.” At least the Jaggy Eggs overwhelmed us with numbers. Erauqs tries to wear us down through attrition.

A strategy that doesn’t even begin to work. Remember how Egg countered attacks by using High-Speed Op? That still happens. Most of the damage that Missile does is undone immediately, and the animation is boring.

Let’s just add him to the list of bosses owned by Ninety.

It’s +15 DEF and petrify immunity. That’s it.

Ariel Boots

The next set of equipment requires us to start the fight against Odio, then run away.

I don’t want to show the build up just yet, so I’ll just show the “running away” part.

Odio responds to our retreat by throwing us back into the void. We can get back out by just going north, but if we take too long.

Now this is a bonus boss. Cool name, cool intro, and a cool sprite.

He also has a generally obvious strategy. Wesan Blade occasionally lowers his stats after he uses it, and Dwayne is a mountain of HP at this point.

Combine that with Tsuda, and we have a solid approach.

This approach did not quite work, however. In the end, we had to rely on Hurricane Shot.

Ariel Boots are the worst piece of Ariel Equipment. +10 DEF and no bonuses besides Petrify Immunity.

The void doesn’t change it’s spawn point, so we’re back at Hero Mountain.

Ariel Mail

To find our last bonus boss, we need to ignore the advice of the Watanabe’s and start running.

Eventually, this happens.

This is the Death Prophet. The GameFAQs guide that serves as the primary source of information for the English speaking playerbase of this game recommends that you stock up on Ariel Armor before fighting him.

For obvious reasons. However, they somehow left out an incredibly important detail about this fight.

You don’t have to do it.

If you hit him from that diagonal away from his tail, he’ll self-destruct in this manner.

Aside from possibly the Ring, the Ariel Mail is the best piece of Ariel Armor. There’s no interesting reason, it just has the highest DEF boost.

And with that, we are done with all optional content in this chapter! Next time is the fight against ODIO, the Demon King!

I’m going to leave the poll open for the rest of this weekend, and start work on the final update on Monday. With any luck, I’ll actually be able to get it out next week. Until then, vote away!

[LoakaMossi]

The Final Battle of Good vs. Evil!

Welcome back! Our heroes are about as baffled by this room as you’d expect.

Egg just burbles at 0D-1O.

Here’s our final loadouts and stats.

The Demon King Odio

: … All anyone’s ever done is ask for your help. They distance themselves from harm, and rely on others to save them… Are such people even deserving of help in the first place? That is my first question.

I don’t know if the length of this pause is determined by the protagonist, but I love how long Odio waits before replying.

: You have all been victorious in your self-important battles… Self-important and indeed, selfish!

---

ILLUSION…

Brando got quite the makeover, didn’t he?

Here’s a screenshot without the info bar on top, so you can see the whole background.

The mouth is the most dangerous thing here. Deathber Space does random damage. I lucked out here, but Ninety could have very easily been taken out.

The eyes, while less damaging, are capable of prolonging the fight if they keep using this attack. We can easily outdamage it, but they can buy a few turns.

The Mole has no attacks, but we want to leave it for last. It has a counter attack that heals the whole face.

Now, for our plan of attack!

Bort and Ninety can hit all three of our targets at once, so they work on beating down the group as a whole.

Egg is primarily a healer, but the damage output is low enough that I have him through in an attack or two.

…I was actually concerned about whether or not Bort would be pulling his weight in this fight. Looks like he’s doing just fine!

Li has been damaging one piece at a time, and she manages to land the final blow on the eye.

In case you forgot, this is still a Squaresoft game. There’s no way we’re getting away with only one form.

Pure Odio has 2032 HP. We’ve fought people with more, but he’s still one of the most threatening things in this game.

He still has Life Erase, but his stats make it more powerful. This thing can easily kill Ninety if it hits him.

His second attack can be debilitating if it hits your entire party with status effects, but I think the most interesting thing about it is the name.

And finally, the attack that will drive you nuts. Cancel Ray disrupts charge times. Three of our four party members need lengthy charge times for their best moves, so this attack is what makes this fight as long as it is.

Our plan of attack hasn’t changed much.

Li, Bort, and Ninety are all hitting him with everything they’ve got.

Egg has switched over to full-time healing, but that’s only part of his role.

Pure Odio needs to be able to hit with a non-Cancel Ray attack if you want to make any headway here, so someone needs to take the bullet. Egg takes the least amount of damage, which means Odio can’t heal as much, and has a counter attack. That makes him the perfect decoy.

Eventually, the overwhelming power of Hurricane Shot does him in.

---

CRY-A-LIVE

…If that’s what you want.

: He’s… like I was, long ago… Gramps… Was this the right…

…

---

On second thought, let’s let him go. I think we de-powered him, so he probably can’t hurt anyone else.

WARM-A-LIVE

When we get back to the statue room, everyone shows up to greet us. I guess they were getting anxious.

The Demon King Odio

LIVE-A-LIVE

---

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: You’ve come… Now! The Great Inko Buddha statue shall bring unto us salvation!

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: I am not impressed, though. The competition was not exactly stellar.

: First was that amateur, Namcat… and the Lucha wimp… I twisted Tula’s joints in ways nature never intended! Then Max, and that fatass, Iaukea… And the geezer, whatever his name was. They were weak… so they died! Now, you fight me…!

---

: Doesn’t matter how many rats you rustle up…!

---

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UNSEEN SYNDROME

It’s time for a brief fight against all the chapter bosses. Each fight uses music from it’s chapter, rather than Odio’s fight theme. Unfortunately, this means that Egg is associated with this ominous tune.

The fights aren’t hard, but they don’t end with the “dissolve” effect this time.

GO! GO! BURIKI DAIOH!

This fight had a nice surprise for me!

I didn’t realize that Shinji’s stats effected Buriki Daioh, so this fight was easier too!

Killing Field!

The bosses all have the same stats. I guess Brando reached his limits.

But our protagonists have been growing even stronger! And if they were able to win last time, it’s only easier to win now!

Kiss of Jealousy

Even characters like Bonk, who are no longer fighting alongside a party…

…are capable of defeating Odio handily!

KNOCK YOU DOWN

This one’s my favorite!

Whachya gonna do, Odie? Whachya gonna do when Dwayne Takahara runs wild on you!?

THE WILDS

This one’s also pretty cathartic.

Gatling guns are useless against a hero like the Nineties Kid!

Battle In China

And finally…

One more XuanYaLianShanQuan!

(No Music. Loud Rumbling)

After that, we see all the bosses dissolve.

: I used to envy people the way you do! But… But that’s wrong! Just because you want something doesn’t mean you’ll get it!

Li can fight, but she is not a therapist. She’s more than a little out of her depth here.

Luckily, I think she struck a cord.

Rest in Piece, Brando. You made a lot of mistakes, but I don’t think I would have done any better.

…

One by one, our heroes return home.

---

Live Over Again

Brando’s hold on Lucretia has ended, and the land is at peace.

Bonk’s a daddy now, which is adorable and horrifying!

Kato continues to be the best dad a robot could ask for.

Dwayne is ready to move on, and possibly fight in a different tournament.

These two are still at their little routine.

Shinji is stuck helping these hooligans.

In real life, Ryoma was killed by an assassin. Bort just permanently altered the Live-A-Live timeline. The implications of this are disconcerting.

And Li has become a full fledged Puncha instructor! I’m sure Yuan, Sammo, and the Master are all proud of her.

So, here’s how the ending of this game works. If you have a protagonist in your party at any point of the final chapter, you unlock their scene in that montage. If you have all seven, you unlock an additional credits sequence. I honestly cannot express it properly with GIFs.

Here is a link to the first part of the ending, if you’d like to see it properly synced to the music.

https://youtu.be/HHtMKuVVxVk

And here is the credits sequence that is only available in video form.

https://youtu.be/LiUnOgYdLKI

But with the credits over, it’s time to say goodbye to Live-A-Live…

…And hello to my new profile pic!

Now that this is done, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who read this thread. I love this game a lot, and I hope that I was able to show it properly to a few more people. I think I’ll write one more “Final Thoughts” post, but it probably won’t be too intensive. Before I ask to have the thread closed, I want to know: What did you all think? This game dips into melodrama, which can be hit or miss for a lot of people. I hope that everyone who read this far did so because the enjoyed it, but go ahead and say what you think!

[LoakaMossi]

LIVE-A-LIVE

Good news! It’s still Live-A-Live!

Going in, I didn’t expect my attitude towards this game to change a lot. I was mostly right. There were parts I knew I wasn’t going to like, like the occasional sexism, but there were also parts that surprised me. For example, I completely forgot how perfect the ending to the Mecha chapter was. But as a whole, I still like this game that I like.

I didn’t talk about the music a whole lot, but I really love all of it. Yoko Shimomura really captured the feeling of each chapter without being obnoxiously cliché. For example, the Kung Fu chapter does have a familiar riff that a lot of people are sick of hearing, but I think it works well. And the music that doesn’t correspond to a single chapter manages to fit in without being utterly generic.

While it’s always simpler than I remember, I really like the combat system in this game. It brings just enough thought to each fight that you don’t get bored, but you also don’t get bogged down in fights. The last two chapters get a little unfun with the introduction of random encounters, but that’s two chapters out of nine. Incidentally, the combat system is probably the best way to get someone to check out this game. If you try and push on the story element, you won’t get too far. The best parts of the story take too long to kick in, but the combat is interesting from the beginning.

And now that we have his final bit of characterization, I can talk one more time about Brando. As you’ve probably gathered, Brando is one of my favorite sympathetic villains. The writers manage to show why he’s sympathetic while also showing why he’s a villain. When it comes to this archetype, that balance is easy to screw up. Too sympathetic, and the heroes look like monsters. Too villainous, and the writers look like monsters. Brando is clearly going too far, but it’s easy to see why he did what he did. Misanthropic is the most cliché edgelord thing a person can be, but Brando does it well. I think his likability boils down to one basic thing: sometimes, you need someone to stand up and yell “FUCK THIS! FUCK EVERYTHING!” The fact that he gets his own version of the final chapter is also neat. The writers know that people will sympathize with him, so they don’t get in the way. Do you think Brando should win? Well, here you go! Go nuts!

Something I haven’t really touched on is a possible remake of this game. That article is over six years old, so I don’t expect anything. But Takashi Tokita has remade more games than some directors have made, so I would think he could do a good job. EDIT FOUR YEARS LATER: It’s actually happening! Holy shit!

The game as a whole is great. I don’t think it’s for everyone, but I would like for more people to know about it.

If you want to check out a more recent game made by this director, Takashi Tokita, you can check out Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light. There’s an ongoing LP by @ConfusedMoogle here if you can’t track the game down yourself.

Huge thanks to everyone who voted, everyone who suggested a name, and everyone who’s read this far. I think everyone who suggested a name was able to get one in, but I might be wrong. If you suggested names and none of them were used, sorry!

I’m going to ask for the thread to be closed on Sunday night. If you’ve got something to say, make sure you say it by then! But other than that, I’m done. I hope that I made this game look as good as I think it is! Goodbye, and I hope you enjoyed reading!

[Mozz]

Thanks for putting in all this work! It was a blast reading through this very unique game

[rysticx]

thank you for let’s playing this game
since this is the end, I want to share my favorite remix of the music in this game, I hope you enjoy it

[LoakaMossi]

@moderators, this thread is ready to be closed and moved to the Completed Let’s Plays section.