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StarTopic Live A Live |ST| Livin' La Vida Vida

Dragoncaine said:
Found this out last night and proceeded to play for another 2 hours, love it. Thank you friend! Volume of random encounters aside, I'm finding the final chapter spectacular so far, and I think I'm near the end. Hope you've enjoyed it as well
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you know this is one of those games that the more I think about it after the end the more I love it.
Yeah the final chapter has an insane amount of random encounters but that's for one of the secret super bosses

But yeah I love this game and I'm so happy that more people are playing it.
 
Finished the game completely yesterday. Near the end I was kind of getting tired of the battle system in terms of random encounters especially after I was doing a lot that ended up me being way overleveled and enemies just vaporizing lol...
But overall the story side of things I really enjoyed. I could see what Octopath was going and enjoyed that as well but Live A Live to me was definitely the better implementation of the concept imo. Especially the way the ending worked out.
 
Ancient China chapter down! Boss took a few tries but Iā€™m pleased with how it turned out. Absolutely loved the credit roll at the end like this was a full size RPG šŸ˜„

Going to start either Present Day or Wild West tomorrow.
 
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shoichi said:
Finished the game completely yesterday. Near the end I was kind of getting tired of the battle system in terms of random encounters especially after I was doing a lot that ended up me being way overleveled and enemies just vaporizing lol...
But overall the story side of things I really enjoyed. I could see what Octopath was going and enjoyed that as well but Live A Live to me was definitely the better implementation of the concept imo. Especially the way the ending worked out.
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I revisited the post-game before playing Live A Live (I didn't realize how many side quests there were) and the other point that stood out between the two is the improvement in visuals. The changing camera angle shots in Live A Live along with the voice acting show how HD-2D has advanced. Don't get me wrong, Octopath is a gorgeous game but I was left stunned multiple times in LaL.
 
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I would absolutely buy a game based on the Present Day chapter taken to the logical conclusion. That was incredibly satisfying and easily couldā€™ve gone for much longer than it did.

Wild West is up next!
 
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Still have this game in the backlogā€¦ started xenoblade 3 first (absolutely no idea how long that game will take me, probably over 100 hours). Really hoping to get through this one eventually, just ao many games to little free time.


giphy.gif
 
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Just beat the game tonight. The ending itself is very abrupt, but the final chapter is pretty spectacular. Really glad I experienced it!

Now to play Xenoblade 3 for the next 2 years I guess, considering how little free time I have thanks to work lol
 
Dragoncaine said:
Just beat the game tonight. The ending itself is very abrupt, but the final chapter is pretty spectacular. Really glad I experienced it!

Now to play Xenoblade 3 for the next 2 years I guess, considering how little free time I have thanks to work lol
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Hmm, what happened in the ending you got? Just curious because while the other endings were rather short and abrupt, the true ending did not strike me that way. The true ending requires recruiting all of the characters in the last chapter as well as making a particular choice right after facing the boss at the end of Archonā€™s Roost, in case you missed it.
 
UnassumingLocalGuy said:
Hmm, what happened in the ending you got? Just curious because while the other endings were rather short and abrupt, the true ending did not strike me that way. The true ending requires recruiting all of the characters in the last chapter as well as making a particular choice right after facing the boss at the end of Archonā€™s Roost, in case you missed it.
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Ah! I said "Yep" to that final decision. Didn't even clock it as something that would branch out into other endings. I'll have to beat the boss again and change my answer.

I did recruit every character, so I know exactly what you mean. In fact, I'm shocked that I didn't pick up on what the game was trying to say considering the entire emotional/thematic throughline of each story, as well as the boss' final monologue before battle. I must've just been too exhausted from work lol
 
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Dragoncaine said:
Ah! I said "Yep" to that final decision. Didn't even clock it as something that would branch out into other endings. I'll have to beat the boss again and change my answer.

I did recruit every character, so I know exactly what you mean. In fact, I'm shocked that I didn't pick up on what the game was trying to say considering the entire emotional/thematic throughline of each story, as well as the boss' final monologue before battle. I must've just been too exhausted from work lol
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Haha, yeah. I knew about the choice beforehand and I still hit the first option without really thinking about it after I beat the boss the first time. But I certainly found the true ending to be much more satisfying, so it is definitely worth going back to check it out.
 
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Just got the real ending. Spectacular. And this OST is out of control. God-tier stuff. So glad I took the "risk" on this game. Had a great time overall, and now I can move to Xeno 3 for more RPG goodness!
 
I picked this one up last week, been playing it here and there. I'm not actually sure how I feel about it so far? There's a lot I love conceptually, the gimmicks are really neat, the visuals and audio are really good, but so far they're losing me at the writing :( I'm still going to finish it but I wasn't expecting for it to be such a hard sell for me in practice. Also I was expecting it to be a little sexist off the playable characters being all men (and a robot) but even with the localization changes it's pretty bad on that front.

Thoughts on the chapters I've finished so far:
  • Prehistory was bottom of the barrel for me. The RPG aspects are fine, crafting is neat (though the interface for it is painfully slow). The pantomime is a really interesting idea in theory, but in practice it made all the cutscenes drag on really slow. I basically hated all the "writing" though, and the gender essentialism of the designs killed what was left of my patience for it (pink gorillas with huge boobs, really?) along with the weird pedo scene at the end.
  • Imperial China I liked, it's fairly classic but solid in its structure and gameplay. Feels less adventurous than some of the others, but I think it's good to have that variety. I made Lei my successor and I liked the arc that gave her even if it wasn't super in-depth. The training stuff was neat.
  • Western I liked overall, and I like the self-contained feeling of the chapter, but it felt a little too short. The vibes were fantastic though.
  • Present I honestly have no real feelings either way. I'm not a fighting game fan so it's not really aimed at me and that's fine. The gimmick with learning moves is pretty neat in theory but in practice it didn't feel like I had to vary my playstyle all that much from the other chapters. Story-wise it's kind of a nothingburger but that's fine, it's upfront about that.
  • Distant Future I'm not quite sure how I feel about, I have a hard time judging it on its own merits because I spent most of the time feeling like I was playing a retread of Alien. I think some of the concepts were neat and I like space horror, but the pacing felt a bit rushed (the actual scenes and plot go by too fast, and between them you're only walking around) and I didn't have time to care about any of the characters.
I'm doing Near Future next, we'll see how I feel about that one and the others! I'm hoping I've accidentally kept my faves for last haha.
 
paranoodle said:
Prehistory was bottom of the barrel for me. The RPG aspects are fine, crafting is neat (though the interface for it is painfully slow). The pantomime is a really interesting idea in theory, but in practice it made all the cutscenes drag on really slow. I basically hated all the "writing" though, and the gender essentialism of the designs killed what was left of my patience for it
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I started the game with Prehistory (still playing through the chapter) and have similar thoughts. Makes it really hard for me to push through.

Another thing that was kinda surprising is the difficulty. The game doesn't tell you to grind, it also doesn't tell you that you're suddenly going to be fighting a boss alone without your party. I don't think that's fair... I also didn't save much so I had to redo a good chunk of the entire section, so annoying
 
Finished the Edo chapter last night. So I'm now about halfway through.

Wild West chapter I was hoping would have a bit more meat on the bones but as an optimization puzzle at the core it was kinda fun. I definitely goofed up on some of the tasks and I was checking a FAQ for the SNES version and it looks like I missed a secret room somewhere. Ended up having to deal with the boss and about 4 goons which made for a bit of a tense fight and several restarts.

Edo chapter is definitely the crown jewel of the game so far. It took me a good while to wrap my head around the layout of the castle but once I did it got a lot easier. Accidentally killed 1 person and then had to kill two guards because they got trapped on a stairwell and were blocking progress, and I didn't feel like reloading the save at that point. So mostly a stealth run.

What I mostly liked about Edo is that so many games absolutely flub stealth mechanics if they're trying to graft it onto something that doesn't really support it or have incredibly restrictive rules around getting caught cough ZELDA cough. I don't know if it was true with the SNES version but they did a really good job here. If you get caught you can almost always run away from the fight, there's no penalty from using your invisibility cloak, it's pretty easy to get around guards, etc. So it's one of the more forgiving stealth bits I've seen and it's just really run to play.

The only real complaint I have with it is that I feel like the final boss would be an absolute slog with 0 kills under your belt unless you picked up nearly every item and know where the safe spots to park Oboro are.

Next chapter for me is Far Future since that's the last chapter I played on the SNES version but never completed. Then Near Future and Prehistoric which I played in the SNES version to completion. I've intentionally saved these three chapters for last because I wanted to play the ones that were "new to me" first before replaying stuff I'd technically already seen. And I'm greatly excited to see Near Future in 2D-HD.

zim_ek said:
Another thing that was kinda surprising is the difficulty. The game doesn't tell you to grind, it also doesn't tell you that you're suddenly going to be fighting a boss alone without your party. I don't think that's fair... I also didn't save much so I had to redo a good chunk of the entire section, so annoying
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Welcome to 90's Squaresoft RPG design.
 
Finished Near Future last week, it was pretty fun overall. I have similar criticisms with pacing as with several of the other chapters, where it rushes through faster than you have time to get settled and/or invested before it already starts trying for emotional beats, but I enjoyed actually playing through it for the most part (except one really egregious boss that basically came down to RNG).

I've started on Edo, and I think I'm only around halfway through it, but I'm finding it really interesting so far. Mechanically it's a little messy, but I like a lot of what they're going for and I appreciate how much smaller the scope of the plot is (so far at least). That said I'm using a guide because I want to go for the no-kill route and I've heard there's a lot of tricky pitfalls if you try to improvise, and wow yeah this would be a mess without any help. I assume the idea was to aim for it on replays, but I don't plan on playing through the game twice in a row.

zim_ek said:
I started the game with Prehistory (still playing through the chapter) and have similar thoughts. Makes it really hard for me to push through.

Another thing that was kinda surprising is the difficulty. The game doesn't tell you to grind, it also doesn't tell you that you're suddenly going to be fighting a boss alone without your party. I don't think that's fair... I also didn't save much so I had to redo a good chunk of the entire section, so annoying
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If our tastes align at all, at least that means the rest of the game is all up from here?

The difficulty wasn't really an issue for me since I'm used to that old kind of game design but it's definitely unfair compared to more modern standards. You'll want to save pretty often just in case. The auto-save is a nice safety net but it's often not enough.
 
paranoodle said:
You'll want to save pretty often just in case. The auto-save is a nice safety net but it's often not enough.
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Yeah, in my case, the game autosaves in a cave where you can only go fight the boss and you can't leave the cave to grind at this point, so I had to reload. Now I'm focusing on grinding more and saving more so all good. Hope other chapters are better though ^^
 
I bought this game last week and have been really enjoying it. So far I've done Prehistory, Imperial China, Distant Future, Present Day, and Near Future. It's been nice just coming home after work and just doing a scenario.
 
Niraj said:
I bought this game last week and have been really enjoying it. So far I've done Prehistory, Imperial China, Distant Future, Present Day, and Near Future. It's been nice just coming home after work and just doing a scenario.
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I played this through last month in a similar way, tackling a scenario per session, and I really enjoyed it. What an interesting game, flaws and all, that the creativity and variety ultimately compensated for as a bunch of ideas from before some aspects of the genre were set in stone. I think just having some scenarios that werenā€™t swords and monsters was really cool, and the way the final theme wraps it all up is cool too.
 
Tbh i prefer this to octopath as it does not become so derivative following a predictable path that does not get old 1/4 the way through. The combat is not as good but i play JRPGs for the atmosphere, Music and story more so than the combat.
 
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I finished this last night. Really enjoyed it overall. I appreciated the shorter length, especially after how long I spent playing Xenoblade 3.
 
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Still have to come back to this to do the final chapter recruiting all party members, as I foolishly completed it with only four of them last time around.
 
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For anyone interested a couple articles/videos randomly surfaced about this game recently:

Nintendo of America finally localized a pre-release video Tokita did, not sure exactly when but it was nice to see him excited to re-release this game:



Over at TimeExtension, John Szczepaniak pulled together a nice retrospective on the title using interview excerpts from his Untold History of Japanese Video Game Developers books as additional flavoring.

www.timeextension.com

The Making Of: Live A Live, A Groundbreaking JRPG Masterpiece

"It's thanks to Final Fantasy that I was able to do all of this"
www.timeextension.com www.timeextension.com

Well worth the read, and I particularly liked the revelation that the game was originally supposed to release before Final Fantasy VI rather than being sandwiched between VI and Chrono Trigger and probably getting overshadowed by them given the lower sales of the title. Apparently the game had to be delayed for some reason which more than explains why the art style in the SNES version is using the older "house style" used by contemporaries like Final Fantasy V and Romancing SaGa 2 rather than the later style that was ushered in with Final Fantasy VI!

Tokita name dropped Chrono Trigger as a title he'd like to remake!
 
FINALLY finished this recently, and I think it's cemented itself as one of my all-time favourite JRPGs. I found the battle system a lot of fun, really dug most of the characters and their stories, and that Shimomura OST... from beginning to end, the whole experience was one I'll remember. Not sure how I'd rank every character's story overall, but I think the Wild West, Edo Japan, and the Near Future were my top three.

Hearts aflame with purpose true, call him to the fight
The king of kings, Steel Titan--we'll give him our all!
 
Today I learned that Shimomura had to recreate the entire OST by ear since the original masters were lost šŸ¤Æ

www.destructoid.com

Destructoid's award for Best Remaster/Remake of 2022 goes to...

Live A Live won Destructoid's award for Best Remaster/Remake of 2022. It only took almost 30 years but Square's classic is in the spotlight.
www.destructoid.com www.destructoid.com

Edit: More end of year praise!

www.eurogamer.net

Games of 2022: Live A Live was the best short story collection of the year

Our games of the year series looks at Live A Live.
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net
 
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Shmuplations finally put up a pair of interviews Iā€™ve been requesting in their Patreon for a few months now:

shmuplations.com

Live a Live ā€“ 1994 Developer Interviews - shmuplations.com

These two lengthy Live a Live interviews discuss some of the big-picture themes and how the original omnibus concept was conceived.
shmuplations.com shmuplations.com

I havenā€™t dug into it yet to see if thereā€™s anything particularly juicy but Iā€™m hoping to read through them this week.
 
Randomly came back to this after only playing the first 3 chronological stories and losing interest last year. Man, what a video game. Never has something been so much more than the sum of its parts. The last two chapters were such a ride, I understand you can do an evil route which Iā€™m very interested in seeing next. I was honestly pretty meh about video games last year but this is retroactively my favorite game of ā€˜22.

And a truly banginā€™ OST.
 
Hi, I'm bumping this thread because I am finally about to begin playing Live A Live! I'm set on starting with the Prehistory chapter because it looks the least interesting and I want to get it out of the way. After that though, I'm not sure!
 
meatbag said:
Hi, I'm bumping this thread because I am finally about to begin playing Live A Live! I'm set on starting with the Prehistory chapter because it looks the least interesting and I want to get it out of the way. After that though, I'm not sure!
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If you like low-brow humor itā€™s amusing. But mechanically itā€™s not a bad intro to the battle system, and it has a neat idea around random encounters / visible enemy encounters.
 
shoptroll said:
If you like low-brow humor itā€™s amusing. But mechanically itā€™s not a bad intro to the battle system, and it has a neat idea around random encounters / visible enemy encounters.
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Yeah I just finished Prehistory. It was aight. Iā€™m more surprised by how short it is, think it only took me around 2-3 hours? And I was playing at a really slow pace, interacting with everything and backtracking and so on.

Think Iā€™ll do Present Day next. Iā€™m definitely leaving either Distant Future or Imperial China for last, but otherwise Iā€™m playing it by ear.
 
meatbag said:
Yeah I just finished Prehistory. It was aight. Iā€™m more surprised by how short it is, think it only took me around 2-3 hours? And I was playing at a really slow pace, interacting with everything and backtracking and so on.
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By and large, most chapters are not particularly long. The game is basically an anthology of short mini-RPG experiences which is what makes it so unique.
 
meatbag said:
Yeah I just finished Prehistory. It was aight. Iā€™m more surprised by how short it is, think it only took me around 2-3 hours? And I was playing at a really slow pace, interacting with everything and backtracking and so on.

Think Iā€™ll do Present Day next. Iā€™m definitely leaving either Distant Future or Imperial China for last, but otherwise Iā€™m playing it by ear.
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some chapters are stronger than others and it freely explores different themes, so you're not just getting the same game with a different coat of paint. I like the distant future A LOT.
 
I finshed the game few days ago. I had a hard time forcing myself to finish this. Terrible game. TERRIBLE. Why did anyone think changing only graphics was enough? I just can't believe they thought this combat system is good enough for modern audience.
 
shoptroll said:
Distant Future is the closest thing the game has to a standard Squaresoft RPG of that era I think. But itā€™s also quite fun and a bit off the wall at times.
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Really? I feel like Near Future fits that description better, given that Distant Future
has basically no mandatory combat until the end.
 
shoptroll said:
Argh, youā€™re right and I got those two chapter titles confused!
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thanks for clarifying, i was a bit confused by your post. I love the vibe in the distant future, it really explores what an RPG could in terms of a narrative medium be and this was in 1995.
The near future, as you say was the closest to what a 1995 Square RPG was like, and I agree. I liked it too.

Weakest for me was Prehistory and the present day
 
FeiFongWong said:
I finshed the game few days ago. I had a hard time forcing myself to finish this. Terrible game. TERRIBLE. Why did anyone think changing only graphics was enough? I just can't believe they thought this combat system is good enough for modern audience.
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I wouldnā€™t go so far as saying itā€™s terrible, but I definitely agree that it didnā€™t live up to the hype. Combat was not fun for me in the slightest, and the writing was so rushed and basic at certain points that I couldnā€™t get invested at all.

My favorite chapters were the ones that deliberately werenā€™t RPGs, wish that had been the direction for the entire game tbh.
 
FeiFongWong said:
I finshed the game few days ago. I had a hard time forcing myself to finish this. Terrible game. TERRIBLE. Why did anyone think changing only graphics was enough? I just can't believe they thought this combat system is good enough for modern audience.
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Hailinel said:
What's wrong with it that you hate so much?
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I can't speak for Fei, but [full game spoilers approaching]

The final unlockable story definitely overstayed its welcome. The first 7 stories took about 15 hours for me total, and then I spent a full 10 clearing middle ages and the follow up chapter. That area just didn't have enough content in it, and walking through the same dungeon 4 times (I retreated from the final boss to see what would happen when he tells you to talk to him) was pretty egregious.

The combat system is "good enough" for short 2-3 hour stories, several of which have minimal battles, but when you're faced with what is effectively a traditional but short ~10 hour JRPG, the pretty complete lack of variation between battles becomes apparent, even with the party switch halfway through.

Still a very excellent game, but it's hard to say I'd play it a second time. I'm glad I played it once though.
 
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Hailinel said:
What's wrong with it that you hate so much?
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Combat is very simplistic and doesn't demand any thought put into it. There are a few of types of attacks, but at the end of the day everything is meaningless and you spam the same thing over and over. I was so bored, especially while playing combat heavy chapters like China (the last boss gauntlet was a slog). I also hate that there are items that increase atk and sp, but they don't tell player which skills are influenced by those stats. In the last chapter I put sp items on oboromaru, but he was doing almost no dmg. I guess elemental ninpo are modified by physical atk stat šŸ¤·ā€ā™‚ļø

The writing is also bad. On paper it sounds cool that you have so many separate stories, but they are really short and nothing interesting happens anyway. Before players get invested into characters the chapter ends and you start from the beginning again. It's a mess. Forgettable experience. I hope someone buys it from me. I should have bought octopath 2.
 
Finished Present Day, which surprised me in that 1) it was even shorter than Prehistory and 2) it's basically a homage to Street Fighter 2. I liked that a lot, and I'm looking forward to how the other chapters change things up.

And since Present Day was nothing but combat... yeah, I have to agree that the battle system is subpar. Positioning hardly matters, I don't think the skills have meaningful differences and there's usually only one or two effective techniques anyway.

Anyway, I'm not sure which chapter to pick next...
 
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Played through Wild West, and it might be my favorite chapter so far despite me not being particularly into westerns. Sundown Kid has just enough intrigue to him as a character, and the whole part where you have to gather materials and rally the townsfolk was pretty cool. Had a laugh out of building defenses out of a frying pan and a sexy poster! Like one of those RPGmaker things trying to shake up the gameplay within the confines of the engine.

I think I have my route plotted out: Near Future -> Twilight of Edo -> Distant Future -> Imperial China. Hoping to get this game and Great Ace Attorney 2 done before I go on my overseas trip.
 
Just started this game and decided to go with prehistory since it might be weakest one? So far...it's kinda boring, sure there's some funny/chuckle moments here and there but I don't feel very motivated.

Also, not really vibing much with the combat system. Is it recommend to grind?
 
Ozzie said:
Also, not really vibing much with the combat system. Is it recommend to grind?
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Really depends on your playstyle. Iā€™m a fairly thorough player and doing it without any sort of guide I havenā€™t had any issues levels wise. For prehistory I say you just need to do the bare minimum for the story and a few emergency healing items. Levels mostly matter for gaining new skills and it doesnā€™t take that long before you get your last skill.

The combat is very basic for most of the stories (probably because you can start with any of them), and I think the remake made it slightly easier or less opaque with the weaknesses system. If you look at this game coming from the SaGa side of the company (and Chrono Trigger being from the Final Fantasy side) it sorta makes sense as to why it is the way it is.

If thereā€™s any complaint Iā€™d have with the combat itā€™s that it takes too long to resolve trash mob encounters when the game is definitely tuned on the easier side and thatā€™s saying something for a Squaresoft game of this vintage (cakewalk 30 hours with a major difficulty spike at the very end).
 
Just completed the Prehistoric chapter. That was really short lol. Just started Imperial China and I was taken back by the voice acting. I forgot this game has VA since Prehistoric chapter was just nothing but grunts lol.

Also, the soundtrack is freaking amazing.
 
Just finished Imperial China and that was decent. Kinda appreciating how bite sized they are.

Also, that orchestra and soundtrack is really something else.

FeiFongWong said:
The only surviving upload of this version of megalomania :ROFLMAO:
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This one is stuck in my head, it's so hype lol
 
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