This is my First Forray into Reviewing Games, so I hope you guys will like it. As some of you know, I'm an avid fan of Retro titles such as SNES games, in particular, RPGs. This Review I have submitted is for the SNES Game LIVE A-LIVE! from Square Enix or Squaresoft, before the big merger. It was a game released only in Japan & unfortunately never landed on western shores, why I could never understand, perhaps it was Nintendo of America's intervention. Also you should note that this review is somewhat different from most other reviews posted before it, as I'm actually going to review a Fan Translated version of the game, then later I will give you a link to where you can obtain the Translation patch, as well as a link to the Translators' site, & I will review the patch itself. So OK, here goes: (Box art courtesy of GameFAQs) Title: LIVE A-LIVE! Release Date: 09/02/94 Developer: Squaresoft Japan Publisher: Nintendo Genre: Strategy RPG Console: Nintendo Super FAMICOM Credits: Scenario Nobuyuki Inoue Event Design Hideki Okuma Mapping Art Naoya Kawahira Mapping Art Yuko Abiru Battle Design Nobuyuki Inoue Battle Data Design Yasushi Shimizu Main Character Art Kiyofumi Kato Main Background Art Yuko Abiru Main Background Art Yuka Miyamoto Battle Character Art Kiyofumi Kato Battle Character Art Yuka Miyamoto Battle Background Art Takaharu Tanaka Battle S.F.X. Art Tomoyoshi Sakaguchi Main Program Fumiyaki Fukaya Battle Program Kazuhisa Murakami Menu Program Shinichi Tanaka Sound Program Minoru Akao Sound Design Teruaki Sugarwara Sound Effect Tamio Otomo Voices Takashi Tokita Voices Yasushi Matsumura Battle Director Nobuyuki Inoue Music Composer Yoko Shimomura Director Takashi Tokita (Credits info courtesy of GameFAQS) ROM Translation Patch by: Aeon Genesis Translations Web address: http://agtp.romhack.net/ Translation Team Leader: Gideon Zhi Patch version: 2.00 Deluxe Patch can be acquired at: http://www.romhacking.net/trans/381/ On with the review: Plot: LIVE A-LIFE! Could best be described as a bunch of mini RPGs all bunched together to make one helluva great game! That it is, you start things of by choosing a hero, from out of seven: A Western Cowboy, A Chinese Kung Fu Mater, A futuristic Robot, A Wrestler, A Young Caveman who doesn't speak, A Shinobi Ninja, & A Young Man with the gift of Psychic abilities destined to Pilot a Super Robot! You go through each Character's story, one at a time, in no particular order & Finish each one's Quest, which range from a few minutes, if you chose the Wrestler, to several hours. Once all seven Characters' stories are completed, an eight Character is unlocked, I won't give any spoilers as this one's special. After finishing that Character's story, a Final plot is opened to you, enabling you to link up any of the heroes & form an ultimate team to beat the game's final Boss, or there's another ending too. ;D Presentation: This is a traditional Squaresoft game, all the usual bells & whistles Square had offered in the past are all here, great story, great gameplay, nice visuals, but the Atmosphere is different. Yes this is a typical RPG where you venture forth in various worlds & Dungeons but the battle system is different. Instead of the Traditional Final Fantasy-ish style of Battle where you fight using a menu driven battle system, you fight on a Small battle field, where you can move around, your opponets can too & select attack commands that are limited or are confined to a fixed range. This battle system is the same one used by the game "Arc the Lad" for the PSone. But Staying true to Squaresoft's Tradition, some battles are triggered by Random Encounters & some are predetermined. Also each of the 8 Characters have skill attacks that they learn usually from leveling up with enough experience, with the exception of the Wrestler who learns his skills from copying his opponents' abilities & the Robot who needs his skills "programmed" into him, he doesn't even level up EVER! But outside battles the graphics are small sprites with little detail, like on FF4 or FF5 Another great thing about this being a jumble of mini RPGs rolled into one is that you're kinda playing a movie or TV show. In all There's: A Sci-Fi Movie, Robot's story is kinda like Aliens meets 2001: A Space Odyssey, complete with a murderous Computer. A Chinese classic Kung Fu movie A Western Shoot out A Classic Kurosawa Ninja Story A Super Robot Anime A Flintstones style movie A "faked out" Wrestling Show, Actually it's more like A Fight Club Interpretation & A secret Special Story Rating: 9/10 Graphics: Well based on the Screenshots so far, I give this game a 7/10, for being such a typical Squaresoft game at the time. Audio: 10/10 This was one of the first RPGs that had characters with voices, limited they maybe, you only hear them shout their trademark yells, Caveman guy sounds like a monkey, kung fu master sounds like what you'd expect etcetera. Also that "Squaresoft" Mickey Mouse sounding voice at the Squaresoft logo is really funny ;D Gameplay: 7/10 This game has no definite Difficulty setting, some hero's quest may be at times hard, whilst others are just plain easy. The one thing I did notice was if you neglect to stay awhile in an area & level up, things can get tricky, but luckily you can save just about anywhere, as long as you're on the field map. One sidequest that was absolutely hard was Wrestler's quest: Instead of going through dungeons & leveling, you go through six oponents a la Street Fighter, & a seventh bad guy appears challenging you, if you survive this quest, & you must, it will take you under 30 minutes to Finish (even less if you use Savestates). Control: You move in this game in only 4 directions, no verticals even in battle. Lasting Appeal: 8/10 If you're like me who value a game's plot more than graphics & Audio, you'll love this game, especially because of how the game was presented & structured. But, if you can't stand a game whose difficulty is variable, you'll probably want to steer clear. Summary: Presentation: 9/10 Graphics: 7/10 Audio: 10/10 Gameplay: 7/10 Lasting Appeal: 9/10 Grand verdict: 42/50 Patch Review & Rating: Now to review the patch, for this I will use these values: 1. Technical aspect - how good the Hacking job was 2. Aesthetics - how beautiful the Text's fonts are & if they were appropriate Since I could only think up two aspects to scrutinize about the Translation patch, I'll probably just assign a rating from 1 - 5, 1 being great & 5 being Failed Technical Aspect: Ok so for those of you who aren't familiar with ROM hacking, technical aspect reffers to what level of hacking was done to the game, I won't delve deeper on this as it's too technical, let's just say, if the guys who made this patch were good, there wouldn't be anything that would ruin the game, like missing text, corrupted graphics etcetera. In this aspect, this game gets a 1, because it cleared up all the crap that the first LIVE A-LIVE! Translation patch had, text that run off the borders of thought ballons & windows, as you can see here: Aesthetics: Ok this patch gets a 1, because of the sheer level of Font hacking that went into it: As you can see, each Chapter has it's own unique font! This is a first, no other ROM Hack Translators ever did something like this! All in all, according to the patch's readme file, there were 10 font types used in this game, Awesome!! *UPDATE* Persuant to loony's Suggestion, I should also Scrutinize the Patch's use of Grammar, that is was proper English used, or was it botched in order to make room for limited Space, well as far as I can tell, the AGTP Team did a good job in this aspect, as that group has spent literally years of ROM Hacking experience to create such a fine Translation patch, you should have seen how poor the old Translation patch was, this latest one is just so Professional looking, as if Square actually released this in English. Another Aspect loony suggested was, Accuracy, was this an accurate Translation? I have a problem with this one as I can't read good enough Japanese, but According to the patch's readme file, this is as close at it can be, In the case of the Western Chapter for example, the AGTP Team, used linguistic characteristics that were prevailant at that specified Era. Also according to the readme file, in the case of the Kung Fu Chapter, the Hero's name & his skills were given the proper Chinese names, unlike in the earlier LIVE A-LIVE! patch where this particular character's skills were in Japanese. Also, all instances of kanji were removed. Originally, in the Kung Fu & Ninja chapters the heroes' names were written in kanji & you couldn't do anything about it, now you can give them any 6 letter name you want. Well that's it my first ever review hope you guys like it
theres a few other areas you could review for the patch, such as the accuracy of the translations, how good the grammar of the English is (e.g zero wing gets a top score for accuracy, but bottom score for correct English.) Also, in the main review, before you give the final score, give a summary: gameplay: x/10 sound: x/10 graphics x/10 or whatever for each of the five categories you must review on. Additionally, your final score should be written in the form: '47/50' or '47 out of 50' other than that, pretty good first review. Maybe not review of the month standard, but you'll get there.
I'm not after a reward for this , I just want more people to find out about these great games & thanks for the advice loony, I'll make sure to apply those on my next reviews
Not a bad first review, I remember you posted a fan translation for Live a Live before somewhere. It doesn't look too bad, you can kinda tell it's a Squaresoft game, as it has the Equip, Item, Skill and Save options. Also, love the font you're using for your main computer font.
I just love Comic Sans MS, the Font is not so complicated, is a bit bold or thick & is easy to read for someone like me who has poor vision. Also I have to admit I set my system's font to 14 to make it bigger & I set my icons to large
