Monday, December 19, 2022

Live a Live Finale - The Eighth Statue

On the final episode of Live-a-Live, the seven heroes battle to save time and space itself from the Demon King. Well, more accurately, four of them battle while three of them do whatever it is that benched party members do in RPGs. Get crunk and look for shorties, probably.


I talk to the eighth statue and it plunges me into some sort of other dimension. Final battle time?

The World of Death is dark and murky.

Some sort of death knight attacks right away in here. It has sky-high defenses, and most attacks do only a fraction of their usual damage to it.

I win and get... a fifth Ariel item? I thought I had all of them. Cool.

Demon King Odio now appears before our heroes. I guess this is Orsted.

He proceeds to rant about humanity some more. This has to be the most emo final boss in RPG history.

HOLY HELL IT'S CREEPY

His worst attack is Petrify, like most of the late-game bosses. He also gets three attacks per turn. Luckily, each of his individual parts has fairly low HP.

Second part of the battle is against Odio in his regular form. Sunset dishes out tons of punishment to this form, often doing close to a thousand damage per attack with his final special. It drops Odio's HP in a hurry.

After that disappointingly fast and easy final battle (perhaps I overprepared), we get the token final brawl between Oboro and Orsted, who has reverted to his human form.

This is an even easier fight, and Oboro mops the floor with him. He actually knocked Orsted out and petrified him at the same time. Orsted never had a remote chance against the Ariel-decked uber-Oboro.

His last word.

Or what would have been his last word. Given the choice of whether to execute or spare him, I spared him. The heroes then walk away and leave Orsted there. In retrospect, killing him might have actually been the merciful choice, since he's suffering enough to turn into a demon.

BUT WAIT! Orsted can't let it go, and follows them out.

Orsted revives the seven statues of the final bosses, and now all of the heroes have to fight them one-on-one. Wow, I was not expecting this to happen. Some of my characters are definitely weaker than others equipment-wise, and might have trouble with this. On the other hand, I made sure to get every character to level 16 just for the hell of it, so they should be fine.

Cube versus the Terminator-Head...which looks very different. It's almost organic this time. With maxed-out characters, these fights are essentially even one-on-one.

Most of the bosses look the same as before. Wonder why the inconsistency with Cube's boss.

Sunset's fight is an absolute joke with his ultimate attack, and I think he won in two shots. All in all, the only character who would have issues here is probably Akira since he's underpowered compared to everyone else, but he gets to fight in Buriki Daioh.

After defeating all of the bosses again, Oboro and Orsted debate philosophy.

Oboro gets through to Orsted. Might there be a happy ending to this saga?

Orsted's last words. He's right. Might as well say "as long as creatures with free will" exist though.

Which isn't an invitation for our Betters to take said free will

With Orsted gone, color returns to the land of the Knight chapter.

And it looks pretty rad. Wish the whole last chapter had looked like this. It was by far the longest part of the game and it transpired in a colorless wasteland.

In any case, everyone leaps back to their own time now that Odio is gone.

Kino's woman Beru gives birth to a child. Then his ape buddy and his five ape girlfriends come in and all have children in tow.

...My God.

Yun starts his own martial arts school...

Sunset gets into yet another duel with Mad Dog, and I bet this one will finally be to the death. Mad Dog just CAN'T GET A HOBBY, CAN HE?

Masaru goes back to the gym to kick back and watch reruns of WWF DRAGON WARRIOR IV IS WAR.

Akira returns to doing weird-ass experiments in his weird-ass anime world.

Oboro goes back to being an assassin, strangely. I thought he kinda renounced all that when he was lecturing Orsted during the ending. Guess not. GUESS THAT WAS ALL TALK

A new dawn arrives! Everyone lives happily ever after. Especially that ape with the five girlfriends.

CREDITS ROLL! IT'S FINALLY OVER!

WELL LET ME TELL YA SOMETHIN' BROTHER!

Looks like Sunset was the winner of his last duel.

Masaru hangs out on rooftops in an indeterminate city!

Oboro stands in trees!

We see yet another sunrise scene. The ending is full of sunrises.

The very last screen has Oboro on it, and presumably there's a different unique portrait depending on who you chose as the hero for the last chapter.

This is a hell of a game. It's weird and unique, and it's full of mid-90's SNES charm. I can't really say anything negative about it, either. If you like RPGs from the era and you're interested in some of the games that we missed out on in the States, check it out. I definitely enjoy covering these Super Famicom RPGs and I'll keep doing it.

(Editor's Note: This now has a remake that I'm going to take a look at, and the remake is the definitive way to play it unless you want to be era-faithful)



2 comments:

  1. This is the first time I've ever heard you say "shorties" and it pleases me very much.
    Early dawn again. This game, unlike most others, uses ALL THE PARTS OF THE DAY!
    They really gave you a final boss that looks like a Square final boss. I'm not disappointed.
    I really like coming back and giving you one-on-ones with everyone. This would've been a great punishment to any player who ignored any of the characters, but you got through it well because you'd split time fairly among everyone.
    Anyone can become the Demon Lord, indeed. Hitler wasn't shit as a kid.
    You're right; this castle looks magnificent now.
    There were no other people in the world for this last segment. So they all died? And now this world is pristine and empty? ...Damn.
    KINO'S SEGMENT IS THE BEST NO EXCEPTIONS!
    All the characters in this game were dudes, I just realized.
    Anyway, as you can see from all my long comments I loved this game.

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  2. I suppose if the final fight is one-on-one that's a good reason to give one character all of the Ariel equipment.

    Your team is a real sausage-fest.

    I wonder what this game would look like with a professional localization. Would probably round it out a lot.

    Weird, wild game.

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