Video Game / Live A Hero

Infinite Possibilities...

"If I did this that one time..." "If the dream I once had came true..." Out there, there is a universe in which all of these "IF"s are a reality that may very well exist.

— Description on the game's site

Developed by LifeWonders, who made Tokyo Afterschool Summoners, Live A Hero is a hero-based mobile gacha game. Taking place in the far future of an alternate universe Earth, space fairing humans and aliens have been living in peace and roam the cosmos, until from space a threat known as "Kaibutsu" appears. Now humans and aliens from all walks of life take up arms as heroes to defeat this threat.

Compare Helios: Rising Heroes for a similar concept.

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This Mobile Game provides examples of:

• Anti-Frustration Feature:
  • Leaked Experience automatically applies to heroes and sidekicks at max level by spilling any exp they would have gained but can't into post-battle reward, allowing you to always use your best teams while still be able to train your new recruits.
  • If you have maxed out a hero's Fan level or a sidekick's max level after getting enough duplicates of them, any further duplicates can be traded for record cubes for you to raise the Fan level or max level of other heroes or sidekicks you have.
  • You only lose stamina once you clear a stage, so if you find your team too weak for a given battle, you can exit without any ill repercussions.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: A party can have up to 4 members total plus one support. However, only four members can be out in the field at any time; the last one will only join in if any of the four falls.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Kaibutsus come in many sizes and shapes, and some of them can grow to enormous sizes such as one that wiped out Mount Fuji in the past.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: There are several characters such as Toshu, Isaribi and Barrel whose skills, whether as hero or sidekick, are purely combative.
• Beast Man: A lot of the alien characters appear to be anthropomorphic animals.
• Big Beautiful Man: As is the norm for Lifewonders, many of the male characters are on the chubbier side, but are still seen and treated as attractive.
• Cap: Some of the harder battles (such as S-Rank and SS-Rank Simulation battles) impose a cap on how much damage you can do to the enemy.
• Clothing Damage: A hero whose health goes to half or less will have their suit torn up.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Can be defied with the sidekick system: Some heroes specialize too much on one playstyle (Toshu and Isaribi just Attack! Attack! Attack!, Loren and Kirsch can only heal outside their basic attack, Kouki & Sirius's nonbasic skills ramp up View Power and nothing else etc), so if you want you can give them a sidekick that does something different, allowing those heroes to perform other functions.
• Critical Status Buff: Some sidekicks such as Akashi and Marfik have passives that only work once the hero equipping said passives are at 50% health or less. There are also some heroes like Summer Akashi and Sadayoshi who have skills that become stronger the lower their health is.
• Draw Aggro:
  • There are some heroes such as Goro and Andrew who can give themselves Taunt, forcing enemies to attack them for a while. Shoen is a variant: He can give other heroes Taunt instead.
  • Inverted with Hide, which prevents the affected character from being targeted.
  • Damage Aggregation is a variant; while it doesn't prevent an enemy from attacking any target they want, it causes a hero to soak up all AoE damage that otherwise will be spread to the entire team.
• Eldritch Abomination: The kaibutsu. Information about their true nature is sparse, but it is at least known that they eat non-stop, erase people (and sometimes landscapes) they eat from existence, and can fuse into larger forms if enough of them are present.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Taking cues from Housamo, heroes belong to five elements: Fire is effective against wood, which is effective against water, which is effective against fire, while light and dark are effective against each other.
• Going Commando: Many characters don't wear undergarments beneath their hero suits, as seen on their damaged portraits. Furlong and Secret Agent Kyoichi are some of the clearer examples.

• Life Drain: A few heroes have the ability to recover some health using their attacks. Loren's sidekick passive ability bestows this ability to any hero he supports.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to Tokyo Afterschool Summoners, this game is much tamer: there is less fanservice, the tone is much more upbeat and adrenaline-fueled (fitting, as this game deals with superheroes and such) and the plot doesn't take itself as seriously as Housamo. But make no mistake: this is still LifeWonders and it's still a darker than normal take on superheroes.
• Limit Break: Every time someone acts, they will increase View Power score. This VP is shared by both sides, and once there's enough VP, anyone on either side can consume some to use their stronger skills.
• Magikarp Power: Heroes you obtain from the gacha come in varying rank, from 3 (most common, but lowest level cap) to 5 (rarest, but highest level cap), but all of them can be upgraded up to rank 6. When characters are upgraded to a high-enough rank (3- and 4-star heroes to 5-star, and 5-star heroes to 6-star), one of their skills receives a notable buff, which means all the characters will be at their best once the player ranks them up. Furthermore, when a character is upgraded to 6-star rank, they can equip two sidekick passives instead of just one. Then after they reach level 60, they can further be upgraded to gain a third passive slot. And then after that, some heroes can undergo skill evolution to strengthen their skills even further.
• Mutually Exclusive Power Ups: It is noted in-story that no character is able to possess both observer powers and ability to transform into a hero. This is shown by the MC, Huckle and Melide, all of whom are observers who are only available as sidekicks and not heroes, with Huckle being an ex-hero who lost his ability to transform after gaining observer power. So when Alternate Crowne removes said observer power in Chapter 4, Huckle can return to hero business in Chapter 5.
• Optional Boss:
  • Similar to Housamo, occasionally there are event-bound limited-time battles which are free to attempt and grant valuable first-clear rewards, but are considerably more difficult than anything else in the game.
  • There also exists Simulation Battles, a bi-weekly score attack mode where players must defeat preset enemies as fast as possible, or rarely, survive for several turns with as many heroes as possible, and the heronium rewards can be exchanged for rare items although they cannot be hoarded. There are four sets of enemies every fortnight: B and A rank challenges should pose little trouble as long as you level up your heroes, S rank challenge will require a solid strategy and strong heroes, and SS rank is Superboss that is practically impossible to all but specific setups.
• Our Monsters Are Different: The extraterrestrial characters shown so far in the game's promotional materials are essentially Transients from Housamo, with many of them being beastmen based on various species of animals native to Earth, as well as some more unique cases like robot men.
• Policeman Dog: Barrel is an anthropomorphic dog that works as a police officer. He can also transform into a superhero themed after a Wild West sheriff.
• Power Equals Rarity: Heavily downplayed. Higher rarity heroes merely start with higher level cap and thus require fewer limit breaks to max out, but ultimately all heroes can be raised into level 60, 6-star heroes. That said, higher-rarity event units do grant better bonus for event currency acquisition, so power does equal rarity for limited time.
• Rare Candy: Parallel Quartz can be used to increase a hero's Parallel Weapon level up to 100, and this Parallel Weapon level adds additional HP, Attack and damage reduction stats to the hero. Furthermore, the hero can equip specific modules that shift their stat gains to focus more on HP, Attack or damage reduction.
• Ret-Gone: Anything eaten by kaibutsu, even if just partially, will vanish from existence, every mental and physical record of them gone. Only observers and heroes (including potential heroes) can remember them.

• Shows Damage: A hero with torn suit is at least half-dead, though recovering their HP will also restore their suit.
• Single-Use Shield: Invincibility, a status buff indicated by an icon of a shield with a star in it, completely stops all damage (though not debuffs and statuses) but expires immediately after one hit.
• Status Effects: There are a few "debuffs" in this game that can do things such as weaken attack or defense, but more notable status effects are Poison and Burn, both inflicting Damage Over Time for their duration. Unlike in Housamo, poison and burn can be stacked multiple times on the same character, are Percent Damage Attack instead of Fixed Damage Attack, and can be fatal.
• Stellar Name: Many characters take their name from real life stars or star formations, such as Procy (from the lesser dog star, Procyon), Polaris Mask (Polaris is the current north star) and Subaru (the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster).
• Stout Strength: Isaribi and Goro are heavy-built characters with clear muscle definition who work as a fisherman and carpenter in their civilian lives, jobs with a great deal of physical demand.