Live A Live

Live A Live is an unusually structured JRPG from Square that, instead of one linear story, offers seven separate chapters set in different time periods — from prehistory through medieval Japan, the Wild West, the present day and the Second World War, all the way to the distant future and a space station. Each chapter has its own protagonist, a different narrative style, and different game mechanics — one comes close to a wordless combat adventure, another to stealth action, and another to a classic world-traveling story — before all the storylines connect at the end of the game in a shared final act, where the player assembles a party from all the previous protagonists.

The combat system is built on tactical movement across a grid, where position, attack range, and timing all matter, which sets the game apart from the random JRPG battles common at the time and places emphasis on tactics rather than grinding. Yoko Shimomura was responsible for the music, whose melodies give each chapter its own identity, from melancholy to tension, and it ranks among her most acclaimed early work. Visually the game benefits from a simple yet expressive style, inventive camera work, and bold story twists that rarely appeared in the JRPGs of the time.

Live A Live was released only in Japan and remained largely unknown in the West for a long time, yet it built a reputation among importing fans as one of the most original JRPGs of the generation. Its segmented structure and experimental approach to storytelling influenced later works in the genre, and many today consider the game one of the peaks of the SNES era, partly thanks to the later official remake, which finally brought it wider international recognition and allowed players outside Japan to appreciate it retroactively. The boldness with which the game links seven completely different genre excursions into a single whole makes it a title still cited today as an example of how unconventionally the JRPG form can be handled.

Why play: Fans of experimental storytelling will be delighted by Live A Live for its boldness in linking seven completely different genre excursions into a single whole, now also more easily accessible thanks to the official remake.