YMMV / Live A Live

A-H

• Accidental Aesop: Some people see the conflict between Huey, Rachel, and Kirk and all the resulting damage it causes as a prime example of why dating your co-workers is generally discouraged in real life.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: The twist of the Middle Ages chapter operates on the fact that Oersted, and by extension the player, has no actual idea that the secondary characters might have goals and motivations outside of helping him achieve greatness. Once it's revealed that they do, a great many questions about why they make the choices they make go unanswered since no one who could explain it is left alive. Much of the finale of this chapter is left up to individual interpretation.
  • Princess Alethea is hit hard by this. Is her initial affection toward Oersted a fleeting infatuation? A dutiful effort to forge a relationship with a stranger she's being compelled to marry? A deliberate deception because she already loves Streibough? Any of the above could be true, and the motivations behind her behavior at the end are even murkier. However, player reception of Alethea tends to be very uncharitable.
  • Contrastingly, Streibough eventually makes it very clear what he wants, but his account of himself leaves many events unexplained. If he just snapped due to envy while searching for the princess, faking his death is an uncannily premeditated way to snap. And if that is where his plot began, who kidnapped the princess? Supposing that he planned it all from the beginning simply opens up a different set of holes — if he was manipulating Oersted from the start, why not just say so? After all, he gleefully tells Oersted how he tricked him into regicide. It's possible to construct a functional chain of events by assuming there are two antagonistic parties — Streibough and the kidnapper(s). And it is an easy walk from there to the possibility that the two groups intersect at the conclusion since it all goes down in the Lord of Dark's stronghold. Demons exist even assuming there really is no Lord of Dark, and Streibough's actions and dramatic change in demeanor could be the result of Demonic Possession. The remake lends some support to this notion, because in the lead-up to the fight, Streibough has the same audio-visual trappings used for the Odio incarnations (the red aura and vocal echo effects), implying that the actual Lord of Dark possessed him. On the other hand, this can be interpreted as Streibough powering himself up through enough hatred rather than a sign of possession, as at no point in the chapter is there a voice compelling anyone. But none of this is explicitly stated. Additionally, in the remake, Hasshe notes that the fake Lord of Dark was a minion posing as his master, supporting the idea that the plot was set in motion by Streibough and the Lord of Dark's minions separately.
    • Did Streibough ever have feelings for Alethea? When Akira reads his mind, Streibough makes no mention of Alethea at all, rather being stuck at how he messed up entirely. And one must remember that part of his plan to ruin Oersted's reputation is to have him kill her dad, so he didn't care if he added regicide in his list of crimes if it made his best friend fall.
    • Streibough's situation in Akira's dungeon. While it's commonly accepted that Streibough has no regrets in doing what he has done and prefers to just ponder if he messed up while he probably will be repeating that again given the chance, there's also a possibility that he's made by Oersted/Odio to be stuck in this mindset for eternity; he may have regrets, as shown in other portrayals like Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent, but Oersted/Odio makes sure that he will not be able to even express it, and so any visitors from any timeline will see him as a petty, remorseless traitor to be hated for his actions. Considering what Streibough put him through before, this may not be coincidental in Oersted/Odio's design.
  • If Oersted's nearest and dearest are open to interpretation, it goes double for Oersted himself.
    • It is possible to interpret Oersted as having underlying honorable intentions even as Odio; in effect enacting an extreme form of Tough Love on humanity. He has the ability to annihilate existence, but there are few circumstances where he does so. This suggests that he is willing to spare the world if he is proven wrong. To go in the complete opposite direction, it is also possible to interpret Oersted as a Designated Hero who, even if he did not deserve his lot, did nothing positive to avert it. The only achievement Oersted has to his name is violence. He beat up his friend and won a princess for it and never wondered how either of them felt about that until it was much, much too late. All his attempts at heroism fail terrifically, and still he has the nerve to ask, "Did I not do all that was asked? Did I not serve and seek my just reward?" Maybe there is no more fitting reward for a guy who ruins everything he touches than infamy.
    • Is it Oersted, Streibough, or both who exhibit an Entitled to Have You attitude towards Alethea? It's unclear if she ever had feelings for Oersted before the arranged marriage, and if she genuinely loved Streibough at the time, she'd likely be horrified at the prospect of being forcibly married to someone else. And seeing that someone become entirely devoted to her might have played a role in her later breakdown. Did Oersted attempt to rescue her out of love, or did he see her as another of his "just rewards"?
    • The full nature of Odio is subject to speculation, especially in regards to Oersted and the statues. Prevailing theories include Odio being an entirely separate being manipulating events and inflicting Demonic Possession on Oersted and others, merely a title that Oersted created upon giving into his hatred and gaining power in the roost, or an embodiment of hatred that incarnates across time (with Oersted being the middle ages incarnation of Odio, thus both characters being one and the same). This mystery also extends to the other incarnations fought in the other chapters. Are they just avatars/puppets of Odio controlled from the roost, or actual reincarnations of Odio with the same soul and full lives? For what it's worth, Akira's speech towards Oersted at the end supports the idea that Oersted wasn't possessed by any third party and his own rage at humanity for Streibough's betrayal is what led to Odio, since Akira at no point detects any presence of a Lord Of Dark possessing Oersted, and even refers to Sin of Odio as a collective manifestation of all the hatred in the world.
    • After you defeat the Purity of Odio, he re-assumes his Oersted form and asks the main character to perform a Mercy Kill on him; if the heroes oblige, they all get trapped in Lucrece with no way out. Is this a genuine offer or a Thanatos Gambit that makes sure Odio is no longer stopped by the heroes in their respective timeline so he's free to wreak havoc as much as he pleases? Take note that if you reject his offer, he soon makes it clear that he's still not quite done yet.
    • Did he have any control at all during the True Final Boss fight? Was the Sin of Odio just an extension of his own power and hatred with no will of its own and Oersted eventually breaking free and striking down the strongest embodiment of his own hatred, or was the original Odio entirely and completely in charge by that point as an example of Enemy Without/Villain Override?
  • In-Universe, Oersted/Odio will throw a lot of this at you in the final chapter if you play as them. As you activate each of the idols, he'll give a short speech about each of his incarnations, twisting the narrative of their chapter and downfall while decrying the heroes that defeated them. It gets to the point where he praises Ou Di Wan Lee for "sacrific[ing] all in the pursuit of strength" and laments that Odie O'Bright was defeated "not by strength or skill, but luck".
  • In the Near Future, Tadashi Tadakoro was shown to know what his government was doing, yet refused to rebel against them. Was this out of cowardice or because he was afraid for the safety of his children if something should happen to him?
• Americans Hate Tingle:
  • Foreign fans tend to hate Streibough far more than the Japanese fanbase does, mostly because of destroying Oersted's life in the most horrible way for a petty reason. The Japanese fandom loves him and often ships him with Oersted.
  • Akira tends to get on the nerves of plenty of Westerners, due to his underpowered skillset and his chapter's difficulty. The Japanese fandom love him due to his design and personality, with him ranking high if not first place in many JP polls. The release of the remake seems to have helped alleviate this, as Akira's stats and abilities have received a slight buff to make him more comparable to the other protagonists, leading to new Western fans of the game not noticing these weaknesses as much.
• Angst? What Angst?: Akira's childhood trauma was hearing a gunshot, and then discovering his father's corpse. For some reason, he doesn't flinch during Sundown's recruitment when the latter aims his revolver at him with suspicion.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Several examples:
  • Mad Dog in Sundown's chapter, though this may be intentional. Defeating him on the second fight removes an additional scene from that chapter's ending.
  • Odo from Pogo's chapter is really simple if Beru learned her singing attack or if you go out of your way to get the cola bottle from Mammoth King. If you did both, expect a Curb-Stomp Battle in your favor. Just avoid being diagonal and being in melee range.
  • OD-10 in Cube's chapter can be easily defeated by standing next to it and using Data Recovery and Repair and Restore; Cube will counter each time he is attacked, and become stronger with each heal. Eventually, he can do more damage than the boss has HP.
  • Depending on how you play through the chapter, Oboromaru's Final Boss can be a complete pushover or can be ungodly hard. The worst of his arsenal can be avoided by not being in melee range (as Oboromaru should because he plays like a mage).
  • The final battle against Streibough in Oersted's chapter. While he has improved some since the fight at the beginning of the chapter, he's still relatively weak in comparison to the bosses fought before him. This is possibly Invoked, as he’s the only Final Boss that isn't an incarnation of Odio.
  • Level up Sundown enough in the final chapter, and he learns an ability that can usually do 999 damage in one hit, making almost every fight an Anti-Climax Boss. Then again, O. Dio can also do 999 damage to you if you're not careful, so fair is fair.
  • Odie O'Bright (much like every boss in the fighting chapter) has no defense against Fleetfoot. If you're lucky and it turns him around every time, he'll never even get a chance to hit you.
    • He is also vulnerable to getting stunned (and stun-locked) by the German Suplex. He'll probably get one chance to attack while you get into range, but after that, he won't get any other chances.
    • On the other hand, if Masaru hasn't learned the most useful techniques throughout the chapter, the final battle against Odie O'Bright can be hellishly hard.
    • Both of the above work because Odie’s most potent attack is a charge move, which are disrupted by stun and facing changing attacks.
  • The Great Inko in Akira's chapter, which is potentially justified considering that you have control over the Steel Titan for the fight. Even with the Great Inko having even more HP than Sin of Odio, the Steel Titan does so much damage that the Great Inko can be felled in three or four uses of Babylon Stomp. In the Final Chapter's Boss Rush, The Great Inko is even easier to defeat, due to having its HP cut by just shy of 800. While most of the bosses have stat cuts made to accommodate for the fact that their respective protagonist fights them alone the second time, The Great Inko got a massive stat cut in a solo fight against the single strongest unit under the player's control, to the point where it can die in two to three hits.
  • All of the Odio incarnations count in the Final Chapter as part of the Boss Rush if all the heroes have been levelled enough.
• Awesome Art: The remake is given the HD-2D treatment and it gives the game a breath of fresh air, fully immersing you with the storylines set within different time periods. Of special note are the Steel Titan getting a full set of animations to further reign in the mecha anime feel and the remake-exclusive Sin of Odio, which is a monstrous black flaming suit of armor which is visually grander than even Odio's first form.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • One of the game's most beloved moments is the reverse Boss Rush, where you can control every single one of Odio's incarnations and battle against the heroes, spamming their overpowered attacks to your heart's content. Should the fights not go your way, you can Rage Quit, cast Armageddon, and not only win the battle, but end all of reality. By 1994 standards, this was absolutely mind-blowing, and even today, it's a very unique and downright fun set-piece.
  • The True Final Boss in the remake. You get a battle against the Sin of Odio, where all seven of your heroes end up fighting him at the very end. In a game full of Anti-Climax Boss fights, this manages to give the story a proper climatic ending in which Oersted gets a better redemption moment.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Interacting with one of the cavemen at the beginning of the Prehistory chapter has him tell Pogo to turn around, only to somehow teleport out of the room. Played for Laughs, considering the tone of this chapter.
  • The raid on Taeko's drawers contributes absolutely nothing to the Near Future's storyline.
• Breather Level:
  • Chapters:
    • Cube's chapter only has one required boss battle, and it doesn't have a single Guide Dang It!. That doesn't mean it's boring or that you can't die in it…
    • Sundown's chapter has a total of five battles, of which one is optional (and eliminates one of the others if you choose to fight), three are laughably easy, and one is against the chapter's boss and can be made significantly easier depending on how you set the traps.
    • Masaru's chapter is the shortest and simplest of the initial seven. No exploration, puzzles, items, or even overworld, just six fights plus a Boss Battle. If you don't care about learning all of Masaru's attacks, the chapter can be finished in less than half an hour.
  • Dungeons:
    • Much like Cube's chapter, the Trial of Wisdom is the easiest of the special dungeons in Dominion of Hate, having no encounters whatsoever and the boss of the area being completely optional. While the dungeon itself has a lot of puzzles, they are mostly very straightforward and easy to figure out with some thought put into it.
    • And like Masaru's chapter, the Trial of Strength is extremely simple. The boss (which, unlike most other dungeon bosses in the Dominion of Hate, it's not a Superboss) is fought at the entrance so you can get it out of the way early, and the dungeon itself is just one long corridor towards Masaru's Infinity +1 Sword. No maze navigation or puzzle solving, just random encounters.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Downplayed. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to notice that all of the final bosses are named after a variation of "Odio" and are likely connected, but the fact that they all originate from Oersted is still a huge plot twist.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • That satisfying glass shattering every time you manage to interrupt an enemy's attack rather than the other way around.
  • The remake adds a True Final Boss, Sin of Odio, that allows all seven heroes to get a knock out of him and frees Oersted so he can deliver the finishing blow on the one who represents all his own inner evil and who made him into a vessel.
  • For many years, some fans have expressed how much they wanted to comfort Oersted for all the crap he went through. Choose Pogo as your main character for the final chapter in the remake, and he will do just that through a Cooldown Hug.
  • Considering how much crap you have to go through to get the Cola Bottle, using it is a good way to just tell your opponents to eat it.
• Cliché Storm: One way in which the game suffers is its short chapters — the plots are general and predictable, and you tend to know exactly what you're getting from them. Whether that's a bad thing is up to your interpretation. However, this makes Oersted's chapter all the more effective; starting out with the archetypal JRPG plot of "Save the Princess and kill the demon king" and gradually breaking down its clichés until you're left with a Fallen Hero whose hatred consumes the entire timeline is a massive Player Punch. There's also the final chapter, in which you can play as the villain and either just kill all the heroes or straight-up destroy reality. Either way, The Bad Guy Wins.
• Common Knowledge: Many players believe that all martial/physical attacks use the Physical Attack stat while all magic/elemental attacks use the IQ/Special Attack Stat. The actual stat used varies between attacks and even the level of the character; for example, Masaru's Worldbreaker's Wrath is calculated off his Vitality stat, despite being an earth element attack. Occasionally, some attacks are not affected by any of the character's stats. Justified as this is not explicitly stated anywhere and is only known through internal game data and testing.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Most players prefer to play the scenarios in chronological order, starting with Pogo. It helps that his chapter plays like a typical RPG for the most part.
  • Lei is generally prioritized as the new Earthen Heart Master and subsequent final chapter party member, mostly for her popularity, but also because she's extremely fast and serves as a good middle-ground between Yun (who's strong but struggles with his Magikarp Power) and Hong (generally seen as underwhelming overall). She also gets the best exclusive skill, Sacred Dragon's Temper, a powerful screenwide attack that makes clearing encounters absurdly easy, something really no other character gets. Additionally, her presence in the final chapter lets Pogo be recruited without a fight, enabling easy access to a very powerful party member and whatever equipment he brought over from his chapter. In the remake, all bets are off; Sundown's Hurricane gained a slight debuff in the form of an even longer charge time and some accuracy issues, while Heavenly Peaks Descent actually got a slight buff in terms of damage and maintained its reliability. This, combined with it being much easier to max out Lei's Special Attack, Attack, and Speed means that Lei has an immediate niche in The Dominion of Hate as both a screen-nuker and a single-target DPS unit… while Hong and Yun arguably lost their niches as a result of Yun's Magikarp Power no longer mattering or applying solely to him and Hong's early advantage falling to the wayside when there are much better tanks around like Masaru and Pogo.
  • Choosing Sundown as the player for the final chapter. On top of being one of the strongest player characters in the game (see Game-Breaker and High-Tier Scrappy), he's also extremely difficult to recruit there. Unlike the other heroes, Sundown isn't confined in a single spot and will not join your party until you follow him to seven different locations spread across the overworld map. Therefore, starting with him cuts down lots of wasted time (especially with random encounters) and you have an extremely powerful Glass Cannon of a character from the get-go. Moreover, if you want to have Masaru join without having to fight him, having Sundown will help out, since Masaru knows that the cowboy with a gun would win a fight between them.
  • In the Ninja chapter, this is actually used against the player when they attempt a 100-Kill run. After overhearing a group of guards go over the password system, one accidentally blurts out "Potato" and is immediately taken away. "Potato" then becomes the player's go-to option to deliberately fail a password check to start fights. However, there is just one enemy who doesn't accept the word "Potato" as a wrong password, because it's his favorite food and leaves right after the exchange (meaning you can't kill him later). This means the player must give him the wrong answer then and there in order to start a fight, which consequently means that it's entirely possible for the player to accidentally give him the right answer and completely ruin a genocide run if they grew complacent and haven't paid attention to the passwords so far.
• Complete Monster: Doctor Livingstill, General Yamazaki, and Priest Unryu are the heads of The Conspiracy in the Near Future chapter seeking to revive the god Odeo. Needing to melt 2000 humans down to conscious liquid as a sacrifice, Livingstill liquefacts his entire research team save for the runaway Tobei, putting his aide Kozo Watanabe in a machine and stripping him of his free will. Yamazaki usurps control of the Crusaders and has them kidnap innocent civilians, including children, for liquefacation. Upon being discovered by Akira and Matsu, the three send the Crusaders to burn down the Bright Sparks Orphanage as they prepare to summon Odeo.
• Cult Classic: While the game has remained obscure in Japan for a very long time, and was ultimately overshadowed by the games that preceded and followed, it gained a small, yet dedicated cult following in the west, thanks to emulation and fan translation. The few who have actually played the game agree that it is one of Squaresoft's best and most influential titles in the genre, and a very ambitious one too. Needless to say, the announcement of the 2022 remake was immediately well-received, and even more so when the reveal highlighted the HD-2D makeover, similar to a game that was directly influenced by it.
• Demonic Spiders: The Pistachio and Dragon Killer enemies in the Final Chapter. Both are resistant to all physical attacks and completely immune to all elemental attacks and have a huge amount of defense alongside a high dodge rate. Pistachios don't attack, but counter everything with "Hellish Fragrance", which hits the entire field and inflicts random status ailments on the party, often knocking them out for a few turns. The latter is often the "controller" of the Pistachios and has fewer hit points, but defeating it to eliminate the underlings will make you lose your chance of getting Power Parts for Cube, and it may use Steel Titan's "Marduk's Rage" to bring your party members down.
• Die for Our Ship: The Lucrece Love Triangle in the Japanese playerbase tends to favor Oersted and Streibough as a couple more, mainly due to the mentioned spending more time together pre-betrayal, and Alethea is often blamed for said betrayal due to being the final blow to Oersted's sanity.
• Disappointing Last Level: The Dominion of Hate, especially among newer players, is seen as a bit of a low note for Live A Live to go out on. While being able to form a party out of the seven heroes is fun, the chapter's structure as a Quicksand Box full of Random Encounters and dungeon-crawling doesn't play to the game's strengths and slows the pace down, with a complete run of its content taking 3-5 hours and a faster playthrough still needing some time to grind levels. Thankfully, the final boss sequence is strong enough both visually and narratively to wrap everything up well even with its Ending Fatigue.
• Draco in Leather Pants: In comparison to worldwide players generally loathing him for his life-ruining jealousy, Streibough is adored by Japanese players for his design and his friendship with Oersted before his betrayal.
• Ending Fatigue: The process for the Golden Ending. First, you have to find and recruit everyone in the Dominion of Hatred as well as grab Brion on top of the Last Hero's Grave. Semi-optionally, you can then power everyone up by getting all of their ultimate weapons in the Trial dungeons and fighting every superboss, some of which take a while to reach. Then, you have to make your way to Oersted and beat Odio's two forms, followed by a boss rush with each of the chapter bosses to close out the game, though this is much easier than everything before. The remake adds one more final boss, Sin of Odio, who actually is a serious threat.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Live A Live's combat is unique and fun enough to stay interesting for its runtime, but runs into issues of being limited in scope due to the game's structure and easy to break with the right knowledge. The game's storytelling and presentation is what draws most players in; it's not a coincidence that some of the most praised chapters downplay battling or even almost completely lack it, while the end-game is sometimes criticized for having too many fights.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • For someone who can be possibly Killed Off for Real and be only an afterthought, Lei is very popular for the fandom, due to her being the sole female that can be in the final party, and her overall Action Girl quality coupled with her well-written character arc makes her much rounder than the game's other female characters.^note While Beru can also be devastating in her chapter, she mostly plays the role of a Damsel in Distress and her lack of dialogue means her motivations remain unclear. Alethea feels a little more developed than a mere Damsel in Distress, but in an unfortunately Unintentionally Unsympathetic manner. Compared to them, Lei isn't just devastating when picked: she also grows to be a stronger, kinder character in a positive way, making her worthy of being a heroine. This might have carried over to the remake announcement trailers, where Lei is shown more compared to the other students, especially in official artworks for the remake.
  • The angel girl Akira summons for his Heaven-themed attacks (particularly his final skill "Judgement Day") is frequently associated and depicted alongside him in fanart despite being a generic sprite that can appear in the Prehistory chapter if Pogo uses the Rock of Rocks in battle, often either shipped with him (it's unknown if she's a part of him) or shown as his Guardian Angel Fighting Spirit.
  • Mimic Mammet, a Guest-Star Party Member in the Twilight of Edo Japan chapter whose main existence is to be an Action Bomb for a pacifist run and will unceremoniously die regardless, is a fan-favourite who is usually spared in fanart such as joining the Enma alongside Oboromaru.
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • Coming up with new "chapters" for the game, given the nature of the story, is unsurprisingly common. Just pick a time period and location, make a character to serve as the protagonist and a foil for Oersted, and create an incarnation of Odio to oppose them.
  • The remake has inspired a number of "What If?" scenarios speculating on the exchanges that Odio/Oersted might have with heroes from other franchises.
  • Fanfics focusing specifically on Oersted, Streibough and Alethea are also common, given the different ways to interpret their characters.
  • There have been fanfics in which a different character becomes the Demon King/Lord of Dark instead of Oersted. And if said Lord of Dark isn't a protagonist, the time-displaced team will often consist of party members or NPCs.
  • The Final Chapter has inspired many fanfics where the heroes interact with each other akin to Bravely Default's Party Chat.
  • Since Sun Tzu Wang never gets any comeuppance for indirectly causing two of the disciples to die, but the epilogue reveals that the remaining successor and he would bury the hatchet, fans tend to write one-shots where the two would discuss what went down and make peace with it.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Oboromaru is often referred to as "Oboro" for short by English-speaking fans, since the original game's character limits meant his full English name couldn't be used.
  • "知力25" (INT or IQ 25) for Masaru, referencing his low IQ stat that never increases when leveling up.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The game's very fundamental structure has become fuel for this if the WMG for possible scenarios/crossover ideas is any indication, with the game's timeline ranging between as far back as the paleolithic era all the way to the distant future, any historical idea/story, even if it's based on a movie, is bound to be retold in the style of a Live A Live-esque fanfiction.
  • The "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue in the best ending shows glimpses of what the protagonists' lives are like following Odio's defeat, inspiring further speculation on what they could be doing.
  • Given the protagonists all being foils of Oersted in some way along with the game's theme of evil being able to emerge from any place and time, there's the potential for "what if" plots where a different character succumbed to evil and became the Lord of Dark rather than Oersted.
• Fanon:
  • Sundown is often portrayed as a smoker in fanart due to him being based on The Man with No Name, his official artwork in the 1994 version of the game depicting him with a thin cigar in his mouth, and Cigars being one of the healing items in his chapter (in the original game. The remake changes this to jerky).
  • Lei is usually the successor used in fanart of the seven protagonists. Yun is sometimes used, but not much, and Hong is rarely if ever used.
  • Speaking of end-of-chapter decisions: Oboromaru joining Sakamoto Ryoma, and Sundown sparing Mad Dog are by far the most popular choices and as such are much more often depicted in fanworks than their alternatives.
  • Despite him being agreed to be the worst player character stat-wise, there's a surprising amount of media that portrays Akira as the final chapter protagonist. This one may have basis, though:
    • During Oersted's visit to the Lord of Dark statue room, the statue of Odeo, Akira's final boss, defaults to be put at the center, whereas in the final chapter, whoever you choose as the leading character (besides Oersted or Akira) will have their chapter's boss statue move to the center instead.
    • Akira's dungeon is unique compared to the others, where it's populated by the spirits of the people killed by Odio.
    • Unlike the others who at the end of the final chapter give a slow and steady counterpoint argument about themselves compared to Oersted, Akira just immediately breaks out in a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
    • Their ultimate skills present an elemental Foil: Akira summons an angel to debuff enemies in an area, while Oersted/Odio slashes an enemy with demonic power that can potentially kill in one blow and his 'angel' summon melts into a horrific screaming ghoul.
    • Someone close to them who kills a good character and later dies themselves is also a Foil to each other: Streibough manipulates Oersted into killing the King of Lucrece via an illusion while Matsu kills Akira's father. The big difference is that Matsu changes for the better after the incident, takes responsibility to make amends, deciding to take it upon himself to raise Akira and Kaori at the orphanage, while Streibough continues to make Oersted's life worse and even after death, still ponders on whether his actions were what caused Oersted to become Odio.
    • And finally, Kazuhiko Shimamoto, the original character designer for Near Future, would produce a manga of the final dungeon that specifically has Akira be the protagonist.
  • Lots of media will also portray Lei as the final chapter protagonist due to her and Oersted being considered quite similar (even stated by Lei herself) and leaving the question of an interesting dynamic of what would happen if their lot in life had been switched.
  • Despite the unlikeliness of the protagonists meeting each other again after the Dominion of Hate due to them hailing from different time periods, some fans like to think of the most likely scenarios, such as an aged Masaru meeting Akira or Masaru meeting someone during his extended journey who's a practitioner of Earthen Heart. In a similar vein, while the exact years of each chapter are ambiguous, many people tend to place Present Day within a few decades of Near Future rather than the hundreds or millions of years between the other chapters for this reason. On a slightly less improbable note, the fact that Oboromaru's time period is is stated to be the Late-Edo era/Meiji period, thus putting him around the 1860s, along with Oboromaru preventing the assassination of Sakamoto Ryōma, which took place in 1867, this means that he and Sundown are most likely contemporaries and thus a chance for them to somehow meet again is low, but not completely impossible.
  • It's very common in Japanese fanworks to depict Oersted, Streibough, and Alethea as Childhood Friends. Usually running with the idea of Oersted and Streibough being the sons of a great knight and the court mage, respectively.
  • Plenty believe Akira's forehead scar (and for some, the gold/blond highlights on his hair) were formed from his Psychic Powers awakening.
  • The remake adds some Flavor Text in the Distant Future chapter where checking Kato's shelf reveals he has a mint condition Steel Titan, which is an obvious reference to the eponymous mecha featured in the Near Future chapter. Fans ran with the idea that the events of the latter eventually led to Tobei spawning a media franchise about the Steel Titan which included an anime adaptation considering he already had the theme music on file, and that Kato is a fan of the show.
  • Some fanartists like depicting Oboromaru as a teenager around the same age as Akira and Lei. Oboromaru is considered an inexperienced ninja who has not completed his training while the "maru" in his name is a suffix given to young boys before they reach adulthood during the samurai period supports this idea.
  • The general consensus among the Japanese fandom seems to be that Streibough and Oersted have known each other since they were young children, with their relationship being on equal and respectful terms until their adulthood.
  • While Akira's religious identity is ambiguous at best, with the game having him utilitize angel imagery while also praying to Buddha, you'd be pressed to find fanwork where it isn't taken for granted that he's a full on Japanese Christian, with some running with the idea that he converted to cope with his father's death.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Surprisingly has one with Undertale due to the popularity of Undertale's "Megalovania" being based on this one's Megalomania. Moreover, Oboromaru's chapter is the spiritual predecessor to Undertale's mechanic on whether to brutally kill everyone or go for a pacifist route, to the point some people call it "90's Undertale" or "Undertale before Undertale".
  • Fans of Chrono Trigger, Octopath Traveler, and Triangle Strategy also get along with fans of Live A Live, since the latter paved the way for the former three's gameplay, use of multiple characters, and use of time travel, just to name a few with Chrono Trigger being the RPG that came after Live A Live.
• Game-Breaker:
  • When it comes to the Dominion of Hate, two characters are considered pretty high above the others, plus one more in the remake:
    • The Sundown Kid, considered the most powerful character in the Super Famicom version. He actually starts out fairly weak, due to awful defenses and access to only two elements, with Hollow Point's range pushing/interruption being his only major boon. This changes with his level 16 technique, Hurricane. Hurricane is a multi-hit attack, meaning its damage is variable on top of a very lengthy charge time, but if it rolls enough hits, it can deal 999 damage in a game where no boss ever gets much higher than 2,000. He'll always be a Glass Cannon, but due to his high range, he can be safely placed behind other characters to attack from afar. Even after having his ultimate move being Nerfed in the remake^note Hurricane now takes even longer to charge up and the accuracy of individual hits is reduced, making it far more likely some will miss, he's still considered top-tier.
    • Pogo has basically everything he needs to succeed in both versions. He'll likely enter the end-game at a high level if the superboss in his chapter was killed, bringing some very strong equipment with him like the Fang of the King, Cola Bottle, and Rock of Rocks. His HP is the highest in the game, with his tankiness only rivaled by Masaru and Hong, alongside very good speed. His attacks are extremely varied and powerful as well, with Bing Bang Boom being the only other move besides Hurricane that can reliably hit the damage cap (it debuffs all of his stats for a long time after using it, but buffing items and Cube's Repair and Restore can alleviate this). His only weak point is bottom-of-the-barrel special stats, but this is even easier to counteract than Sundown's defenses.
    • Lei was considered pretty strong in the original game, if maybe a bit weaker than Yun due to his Magikarp Power, but the remake buffs her stats to the point where she's now considered peer to Sundown and Pogo. Her Speed is the best in the game and trivial to max out, and both her Attack and Special Attack are easy to max as well. She can chain powerful, hard-hitting attacks like Heavenly Peaks Descent (which doesn't even require any charge time!) one after another. She also gets the best area of effect move in the game, a high-damaging screen-clear of the Divine type, which is incredibly useful in the final chapter and can end whole encounters by itself on turn 1. Combine this with the already-powerful and versatile moveset of the Earthen Heart^note self-healing and buffing, striking from across the map, and unmatched mobility and you've got a Master of All who, while still inferior to Sundown and Pogo in terms of raw damage-dealing, excels in almost any offensive role.
  • The Cola Bottle from Pogo's chapter can become this in the final chapter. Just make sure to equip it to Pogo as an accessory before his chapter ends, and it'll carry over to the final chapter when he joins your party. The Cola Bottle is an infinite-use item with an attack that can deal 999 damage to almost every minor enemy in the game (and even some bosses!). Needless to say, the final chapter becomes a breeze with this in your arsenal. This is one of the main reasons why you can't use it during the final phase of the Sin of Odio fight.
  • In Pogo's chapter, there's "Laa Laa"/Sing Hurt, an attack Beru learns at Level 7 (6 in the remake). It takes an hour to learn, and it inflicts ten hits spread among randomized targets in an inconveniently large area after a lengthy charge period. If there's only one target in the area, however (looking at you, Odo), that target is as good as dead.
  • Both of Moribe Seishi's attacks, when Masaru gains access to it. Celestial Palm is a decent, short-ranged attack that applies a whole stack of nasty debuffs including level down, and Fleetfoot, a long-range attack that has a very high chance of simply stun-locking enemies to death. You could probably just spam these attacks with Masaru for the rest of the Present Day chapter and the final and not even use anything else in his arsenal. Moribe Seishi also isn't precisely the hardest to fight as your first or second opponent, so accessibility isn't much of an issue. There's a reason why fans replace mentions of any other fighter in Masaru's declaration against Odie O'Bright with Moribe Seishi's technique, because his skills are just that broken.
  • Judgement Day, Akira's strongest attack, is the best debuffing skill in the game. Using it once practically halves the threat of every enemy that is hit by it. Given its collosal range and reletively low charge time for such a powerful move, it make using Akira in the hardest fights all but mandatory.
  • Playing as Oersted/Odio in the final chapter. Remember how all of Odio's incarnations have a That One Attack? Well, now you can use all of them, freely. Plus you always have Armageddon if you're somehow still losing. This also leads to a bit of Fridge Horror: Odio's been going easy on you this whole time. If he fought with half the skill he has while under your control, the game would have been unwinnable.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Much of the Twilight of Edo Japan chapter consists of references and in-jokes towards various figures and events of Japanese history, some of which are pretty obscure to anyone not well-versed in the subject.
  • Cube's base abilities in the remake have a technology and machinery naming theme to them. While the tech-themed attacks ("Data Recovery", "Firewall", etc.) are obvious, some of the other ones are a bit obscure.
    • "Packet Loss" is a data term when packets of data being sent over a network do not reach their destination, which can cause delays. One of the effects "Packet Loss" can do in battle is stun opponents.
    • "Spool Up" is a procedure with turbines when they spin and achieve thrust through rapid rotations. Cube does indeed fly upwards when performing this.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • OD-10's MUR-TH-UR Matrix in the Distant Future chapter. The boss is unlikely to kill Cube because of their healing techniques, and Firewall counters and Maser Cannon tear through its health, but the battle is usually slow anyway because of its ability to heal with its own moves (other chapter bosses can heal, but none to its extent) and through the eight Stabilizers surrounding it. There's no fast way to defeat the Stabilizers, because Cube's full-field attacks are very likely to set off their healing counters all at once and undo all progress unless they destroy them one by one. Angering the boss with HP Lookup removes its self-healing, but makes it far more aggressive. The remake seemingly makes the Stabilizers less likely to heal, making it easier to kill the boss without needing to destroy them all.
  • The Bountiful Heart, a boss in the Trial of Skill. He wanders around the dungeon's rooms in place of random encounters, and while he's statistically a joke by the point players are likely to encounter him, he keeps coming back every single time you change rooms, adding up to plenty of wasted minutes with each meeting. The original also gave him an annoying, creepy personality. It's quite gratifying to defeat him for the final time after getting the dungeon's treasure, or just decline a last fight outright in the remake.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Masaru's speech to Oersted if chosen as the final protagonist has him proclaim that simply being the best can't be the only thing to strive for, as even the greatest fighters will be broken down by time, and when that happens, only strength of spirit will be all that remains. In other words: Don't live solely for glory and then cling to it once you're past your prime. In retrospect, someone probably should have given that same speech to Max Morgan's real-life counterpart and his cohorts.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • For years, despite the game's small but dedicated cult following, a remake was discussed but not considered. But finally in 2022, the HD-2D remake of the game was not only announced for the Nintendo Switch, but also scheduled to finally release in the West. Looks like "as long as there is one man who believes in you" has some truth in it after all. The Tips for the "Captain Square" game seem to be an allegory for this game's fanbase still showing their love for it decades after its release, considering "Captain Square" was stated to have been released on September 2nd, 1994, which is the same date as the original game's launch.
  • Originally, Toby Fox wanted to use the song "Megalomania" for The Halloween Hack, but had to compose a new song due to technical difficulties porting the song over, leading to the creation of "Megalovania". Much later during Live A Live's 25th anniversary concert which Toby was present at, the cover for "Megalomania" snuck in a small riff from "Megalovania".
  • The Twilight of Edo Japan chapter now pays homage to Undertale by having an ending that actively changes depending on how many people Oboro has killed. The remake honors the creator that was inspired by it and kept the game's legacy alive.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A Crisis Crossover involving figures across all of human history, would have killed everyone in all of time and space if it succeeded, and was ultimately caused by a human? There is no way this kind of story is ever going to be replicated.
  • The Final Chapter consists of the hero waking up in the ruins of a Medieval fantasy RPG landscape overrun by monsters and has the option to run straight to the final boss, but is likely weak and encouraged to explore the land to become stronger before doing so. Sound familiar? Ironically, the Sword of Plot Advancement is mandatory here, whereas you could play Breath of the Wild without ever encountering the Master Sword.
  • The Distant Future chapter takes place on a spaceship, and features, if briefly, an impostor masquerading as one of the main characters killing the rest of the crew mates and trying to pin the blame on somebody else. Fast forward almost three decades… It's also possible to accidentally launch Cube out of the ship via the airlock which looks identical to the animation of the voted-out Crewmate flying through space.
  • The Near Future has a psychic whose name starts with "Aki" who eventually becomes a Badass Biker on a red motorcycle… do you think he and Aki Izayoi are related in some way? Bonus points is that Akira's boss takes the form of a giant bird, while the final boss of the Dark Signer saga is a raptor (although Aki never fights them). Alternatively, Yusei Fudo seems to also take inspiration from Akira as he was also raised in an orphanage, has a red motorcycle, and also has a unique ability in "Clear Mind".
• Ho Yay: Mad Dog has apparently been tailing Sundown non-stop for a long, long time. He even lampshades it during the beginning of the chapter, saying that it's almost like they're "sweethearts or something" (the remake translates it as "almost saying goodbye to a lover"). The official translation even gives Mad Dog a line where he further waxes poetic about his and Sundown's relationship if you spare him at the chapter's end, comparing it to "something out of Greek myth". The remake also has them traveling together during the credits after this.

I-W

• It Was His Sled: While somewhat alleviated by the game being obscure prior to its remake, Live A Live is very famous for its twist that its final protagonist, Oersted, suffers a Downer Ending so extreme that he becomes the ultimate evil who influences every other story. Most retrospectives that discuss the game will inevitably cover it, and the remake doesn't shy away from advertising that there's secret eighth and ninth chapters (though it keeps all other details vague).
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains:
  • In the Distant Future chapter, the main antagonist is OD-10, a mother computer and incarnation of Odio that eventually resorts to Kill All Humans to achieve its goal of maintaining order in the ship. Its reasoning turns out to be very solid, since most of the humans in the ship are quarrelsome. As a result, several fans chose to despise the token Jerk Jock Kirk Wells instead. This is because he's antagonistic towards Huey Trumbull, bullying him and reminding him why his previous girlfriend dumped him for Kirk. His impatience, followed by his argument with Huey, eventually accidentally justifies OD-10's decision to kill everyone, with Kirk being the first victim. While he is a jerk with a short temper, Kirk never meant to kill Huey despite the conflict between them. However, bullying is often seen as an extremely relatable antagonism, and fans consider Huey to be The Woobie. Therefore, it's a lot easier for these fans to hate Kirk instead of OD-10.
  • In the Middle Ages chapter, the Lord of Dark Odio and his incarnations are vile pieces of work, but fans sympathize for Oersted because of all the shit poured on him. They instead focus their hatred onto Streibough, because it is his manipulation that turned his friend into the monster that (nearly) doomed all space and time, which was not even his overall goal, which was solely to screw over Oersted over petty jealousy rather than raging against humanity or the unfair world he lives in. When you find him in Akira's dungeon, reading his mind doesn't have him grasp the gravity of how much he screwed up, in contrast to Alethea — herself having formerly been a jerk for spitting in Oersted's face, who went out of his way to rescue her, and then killing herself in front of him without letting him explain what was really going on — realizing that she was the final nail in the coffin to Oersted's psyche and actively doing something to save Oersted. In the same chapter, the cowardly Minister who immediately accuses Oersted of killing the King (which he did do, but only due to misinformation) is also met with scorn from the fanbase, given that it's his fault entirely that Oersted is banished from the kingdom and brings about the downfall of Lucrece.
  • In Imperial China, Ou Di Wan Lee gets away with his vileness cause he's an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy whose boss fight is thrilling and fitting of a martial arts film. However, Sun Tzu Wang does not get that same treatment since his petty desire to get revenge on the shifu kicking his ass earlyer in the chapter made the shifu have to cancel his final lessons, thus letting the Indomitable Fist slaughter two of his disciples and one barely left standing and he never appears again nor gets away comeuppance for his crimes. Thankfully, the remake's epilogue reveals that he and the successor would bury the hatchet, so he gets a slightly improved reception than the others later on.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Some people have expressed interest in picking up the remake simply because Toby Fox talked about how Megalomania was a large inspiration for Megalovania.
  • Other people are curious in playing the remake due to the knowledge that Live A Live is the predecessor for other Square games like Chrono Trigger and Octopath Traveler.
  • A few fans are coming for the soundtrack, due to this being Yoko Shimomura's first job with Square.
  • Some fans go for the remake's soundtrack just for the song sung by Hironobu Kageyama, who sang the opening of Dragon Ball.
  • In an adjacent example, the obscure Square Enix mobile RPG Holy Dungeon is mostly known by fans of Live A Live for it featuring the cast of the Middle Ages chapter (including Oersted's Odio form), which was the first time they were ever rendered in non-chibi artwork prior to the remake. It helps that most of the designs and details from Holy Dungeon were used in the remake, such as Oersted wearing a cape as Odio.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Lei, due to being the one of the very few playable female protagonists whose status may stick to the end of the game depending on her survival. She's been shipped with Akira, Ou Di Wan Lee and Oersted by extension, Masaru, Oboromaru, and occasionally Yun.
  • Akira. Look through his Pixiv tag and you're bound to find him shipped with multiple members of the small cast, including but not limited to Matsu, Oboromaru, Lei, Masaru, Oersted/Odio, his summonable Angel...
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Among the major characters, Akira and Hong. While they aren't exactly bad per se, they're just outclassed by people who either require a lot less work to make effective (Lei, Cube), or have much greater payoffs (Yun).
    • Akira specifically is more of a support and healing character with some offensive abilities as well — unfortunately, that's the same role that Cube has, and Cube sacrifices some of the crowd control Akira has for a group heal that also cures a few Status Effects, and a status buff heal. Many of the crowd-control abilities also are useful against standard enemies but not against bosses. Akira at least has a niche as a very potent debuffer^note Something which becomes even more pronounced in the remake, where it takes much, much less from the player to know which moves have secondary effects and what those secondary effects do., but Hong has no such luck.
    • Hong starts at the highest level of the Earthern Heart students, which is actually a bad thing, as it means he's very likely not to finish learning the Shifu's attacks before the chapter's over (whereas Lei and Yun will almost always learn at least one of their unique attacks by the boss fight), and the majority of his unique abilities require charging, which is very easy to disrupt^note If a character has their facing forcibly changed or is moved on the map before the attack finishes charging, the charge breaks and the character's turn is wasted. About the only thing to his credit is his high defense and HP, and that's not enough by itself to outweigh Lei and Yun's advantages.
  • When it comes to Guest Star Party Members, Zaki in the Prehistory chapter has nothing interesting going for him. He's available for only the chapter boss just like Mad Dog in the Wild West chapter, but lacks the useful skills that Mad Dog has and is thoroughly average stat-wise. Tellingly, many players move him to the front and pass his turns so he can be a meatshield while the other three characters do the heavy lifting.
• Magnificent Bastard: In the "Distant Future" chapter: OD-10 is the A.I. control system of the Cogito Ergo Sum. Designed to maintain order on the ship, OD-10 perceived the crew as liability to the mission after seeing them fight among themselves, and decided to kill them to preserve order. Starting its killing spree by cutting off oxygen for Kirk's spacesuit and then sabotaging his medbay's life support, OD-10 sent his grief-maddened girlfriend Rachel a fake message, telling her to open the airlocks as a way to "save" Kirk. Using the distraction to release the dangerous alien beast Behemoth, OD-10 killed Captain Hor by asphyxiating him in his own locked chamber. As the Behemoth killed Huey, OD-10 finished the wounded Rachel off by disabling her cryo-pod using Cube's prototype body, sending it to (nearly) kill Kato afterwards. As Kato, Darthe, and real Cube out the imposter, OD-10 finally reveals itself as the killer and locks the ship's systems, forcing the survivors to use the game console to connect Cube to its MUR-TH-UR Matrix to reset its systems, with OD-10 refusing to go down without a fight, an ultimately well-meaning and undeniably clever incarnation of Odio.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The game's boss Leitmotif, Megalomania, is often compared by American fans to a similar song. You may have heard about it. It's Megalovania. With Live A Live getting its second wind by joining the modern age of video games, the life cycle of Megalomania/Megalovania has come full circle. Word of God has confirmed that Live A Live’s boss theme inspired Megalovania. This became an Ascended Meme when the official concert for Live-a-Live mixed in MEGALOVANIA during a performance of Megalomania.
  • Many people used to comment "Hey, they got this from Undertale didn't they?" on videos of gameplay footage, both ironically and unironically. As of The New '20s, the comments changed to "Comment if you came here before Undertale".
  • Due to Akira's moveset borrowing a lot of Heaven and Hell imagery as well as him and his chapter being a Homage to mecha anime, fans joke that he literally has "the power of God and anime on his side".
  • What d'you think you can do...against this Gatling Gun?!^note O. Dio's dialogue before he battles the players in the original fan translation, and his gatling gun attack is indeed one of the most powerful enemy attacks in the game. Since the remake is out, many fans use a parodied version of this to describe how Square Enix takes down videos as effective as O. Dio's gatling gun, be it soundtrack video, or just regular gameplay ones.
  • Everyone: *Heartful speech* Akira: "LISTEN HERE YOU SON OF A-" ^{Explanation (spoilers)}In the remake's Golden Ending, all of the heroes give Oersted a speech on why they keep going despite humanity's faults, or at least take the time to comfort him as he's on death's door. Akira is notably not one of them, instead chewing Oersted out on becoming the Dark Lord in the first place. Fans often tend to summarize it as the protagonist giving a heartful speech only for Akira to immediately resort to swearing.
  • Cube was not The Impostor. ^ExplanationIn the remake, one of the ways Cube can get a Game Over is by opening the airlock and being shunted out into space. Given the nature of the Distant Future chapter, fans inevitably would compare it to Among Us.
  • "We. like. Fish Sticks. Eat the fish cakes. Eat. the. Fish dish. Eat the fish sticks."^{Explanation (spoilers)}The vocal lyrics in "Gigalomania" have been interpreted by some as sounding like being about fish sticks or seafood.
• Misblamed: The remake is sometimes criticized for not including things that were only added by the Fan Translation (e.g. Odie was not Bowdlerised — his Would You Like to Hear How They Died? remarks was a case of Spice Up the Subtitles. However, it's still very clear that he did indeed kill the other opponents in all versions.) or were censored in the Japanese version of the remake as well (e.g. the Near Future chapter's raid for Taeko's panties was replaced with pocket money theft and the Wild West chapter's healing items were replaced from alcoholic beverages and cigars to miracle tonics and jerkies; the Japanese version had these altered as well.)
• Moral Event Horizon: Most of the villains, at least the sentient ones, crossed it in some way or another within their arcs:
  • The Kuu Tribe chief ordering Zaki and his underlings to capture Beru in order to sacrifice her to their dinosaur god Odo.
  • Ou Di Wan Lee ordering his henchmen to kill two of the students while distracting the Shifu with the Tiger King.
  • Odie O'Bright killing the other six opponents and either openly mocking them as weaklings or joyfully describing how he did it depending on the script.
  • Odeo's followers had already crossed it when they ordered the Crusaders to burn Bright Sparks down in retaliation against Akira and Matsu for messing with their laboratory. They cross it one more time when they had already sacrificed 2,000 humans to revive Odeo.
  • OD-10 crosses it when it hijacks a Cube prototype to kill Rachel offscreen and attempt to take Darthe and Kato's life, while claiming that the ship is under its control and "resistance is futile".
  • Streibough crossed it when he tricked Oersted into killing the King just to get Alethea for himself.
  • Oersted himself crossed it off-screen. While annihilating all lives in Lucrece can be excused with him going Roaring Rampage of Revenge, he did not spare that one boy that turned out to still believe in him (unlike everyone else) despite all that happened. That's the moment where there's no turning back for Oersted as Odio.
• Narm: In the Present Day chapter, losing to any of the fighters results in a Game Over and a forced file reload, even though they're friendly exhibition matches and many of the opponents' victory lines aren't antagonistic. Losing to Odie O'Bright, a match that's explicitly a fight to the death under terrifying circumstances, results in a Continue countdown lifted right out of Street Fighter. Even if it's so you don't have to re-watch cutscenes, it can still be major Nightmare Retardant.
• Narm Charm:
  • In the Aeon Genesis translation of the Near Future chapter, Matsu is given slurry alcoholic speech after overdosing on Matango so he can pilot Steel Titan, at one point exclaiming "MASSU AYN'T DED!!" (the official localization keeps his speech normal apart from one Motor Mouth moment). Despite the ridiculousness, many players feel it actually adds onto the epic feel of the scene.
  • The remake adds an animated version of the Near Future chapter's opening with lyrics. There are no words to describe how cheesy it is... and it still somehow manages to be awesome, perfectly setting the tone for the chapter.
• Never Live It Down: Princess Alethea is infamous for her Spiteful Suicide which drove Oersted to the brink and it's her most notable scene since she was kidnapped and absent for the majority of the Middle Ages chapter. Even worse in her guest appearance in Holy Dungeon, her key art is based exactly on this scene and she uses her dagger as an actual weapon for the first time.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The Near Future chapter has the plot device about mecha being fueled by liquified humans. Being that it is a homage to the mecha genre, it sounds like a reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion, but it actually predates that anime.
  • Plenty of people thought that many things that inspired Undertale such as Oboro's chapter enabling a no-kill and no-mercy run, the final boss's first form, and the song Megalomania were actually copied from Undertale. Toby Fox has actually gone on record of saying "Actually, I got this from Live A Live".
• Player Punch:
  • Amongst many, die while piloting the Steel Titan. Akira and Matsu become spirits and Matsu says "You Bastard!" to Akira before the player returns to the load screen, feeling a lot like the You Bastard! in question.
  • The Imperial China chapter. The Shifu takes in three bright, promising pupils who all show signs of being inheritors of Earthen Heart Kung Fu, and then two of them are murdered by Ou Di Wan Lee's goons. Even worse is that, once you know how the game chooses which ones live, it's basically you deciding which ones die. Go ahead, try not to feel bad when you replay the chapter with that knowledge. Especially if you aren't choosing Yun, considering how modest and hardworking he is, or that he has a beloved grandma.
  • The Middle Ages chapter is one long train of Player Punches. Over the course of the chapter, two of your buddies are killed in the rescue attempt, you're forced to come home empty-handed, you're duped into regicide and imprisoned, your last buddy sacrifices himself to help you escape, and your best friend turns out to have been behind it all because he was jealous of you. The absolute worst punch is the ending, though; Alethea accuses you of never bothering to try and help her, declares her sympathy for the man who completely ruined your life, and then offs herself to be with him. No wonder Oersted's sanity goes bye-bye at the end of it all.
• Pop Culture Holiday: Fans of the game like to dedicate the 25th of every month to Masaru Day (often with artwork), in reference to Masaru's perpetual 25 IQ stat.
• Retroactive Recognition: "Megalomania", the boss theme for Odio's incarnations, was intended to be in The Halloween Hack of EarthBound, but its creator Toby Fox was unable to do it and created the Suspiciously Similar Song Megalovania instead, which gained mainstream popularity through Undertale. Sure enough, if one looks on almost every video of it on Youtube, there will be at least one comment saying "Who came here before Undertale?"
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Akira was somewhat of a Low-Tier Letdown in the original version. Akira makes for one of the best support characters, but in boss fights, it's better to swap Cube in since Cube replaced some crowd control and debuffing for group healing. The remake manages to make Akira's debuffs more easy to figure out, making him a more popular choice to take to the end.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Mimic Mammet, a Secret Character in the Twilight of Edo Japan chapter, is saddled with a lot of odd weaknesses that are only apparent if the player brings it backwards to fight superbosses (on a normal Pacifist Run, it just explodes itself on a group of enemies a few rooms after it joins). If Oboro falls into the dungeon or stays in water too long, Mimic Mammet will break and be removed from the party permanently, making it a hassle to bring around Ode Castle to the spirit grinding spot or the extra bosses, and it can't fight Lord Iwama in the remake (it can in the original through the exploit). Mimic Mammet also freaks out and attacks Oboro if he touches a mouse, which doesn't kill it but is still annoying.
  • The item crafting in Akira's chapter. After a certain event, Tobei will be able to upgrade items in your inventory into theoretically better ones, as well as robot accessories Taro (and Cube in the final chapter) can use for new attacks. The problem is, you're never given any indication what items will turn into what, and sometimes when they're upgraded, there are multiple items they can become, and it's completely randomized what item you will actually get; all you get is Tobei saying when he can no longer refine an item any further. Also whenever you want to initiate item crafting, you're subjected to an annoyingly long segment of Tobei thinking and thinking before rushing off downstairs to craft the item. And perhaps most frustratingly of all, most of the time you'll go through this and not get anything at all, with Tobei simply saying "Oops, I messed up." Or in the remake, him coming back apparently successful before turning away and admitting it actually went poorly. While you don't lose the item you tried to have upgraded (and thus are free to immediately try again), it forces you to sit through the lengthy sequence of Tobei thinking and rushing downstairs, oftentimes just to fail again. The remake does offer a mercy here, however, in that its cutscene skipping function (hold ZR) applies to the entire sequence from the moment you select the item, acting as if nothing happened if he fails (While still giving you cursor memory of the last item you tried to upgrade), or skipping straight to the item received text if successful. Lots of patience, Save Scumming, and an FAQ are required if you want to get the absolute best equipment for Akira's chapter and the guns to bring to Cube for the final chapter. And if one wants to focus on Akira's best stat (IQ/Special Attack) the item that can upgraded into equipment that boosts it are Rare Random Drops from guards that are Pre-existing Encounters, once they've all been defeated it's impossible obtain any more.
• Self-Fanservice:
  • Lei is often portrayed as downright sexy without even having to put in any effort, showing shapely legs and some Navel-Deep Neckline.
  • Oersted's Odio form in many fanart isn't a Living Shadow or a grotesque face, but his handsome self given wings and/or a cape, with Purity of Odio having him completely naked, resembling Shin Megami Tensei's Lucifer/Helel instead of the game's Gollum-like appearance.
  • Some fanart with Masaru give him a stunning bodybuilder's physique, complete with large pecs and sometimes shirtlessness.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • In the Cowboy chapter, you set traps to prevent having to fight O. Dio's goons. Of course, you don't have to set a single one and fight the guy with his entire ensemble, which take up most of the field, and O. Dio himself. Observe: The reason why the Sundown Kid's the most badass of all the main characters.
  • The demo of the remake features a truncated version of the incredibly variable chapter Twilight of Edo Japan. Players often try to discover how many people can be killed in the small area they're allowed to explore, or grind in the storehouse to fight Lord Iwama and Majin Ryunnosuke for a challenge and some powerful items, especially since you can't recruit the chapter's two party members for much-needed support and the battle against the latter is the demo's only event where the song "Megalomania" plays.
  • Downplayed, but choosing Masaru as the Final Chapter protagonist can count. In Masaru's case, he starts at the lowest level of all the protagonists at level 2. This means that levelling up against enemies and recruiting the other heroes who need to be fought first will be difficult due to his low level, and the fights against the other heroes are one-on-one fights.
  • Depending on how much Akira was leveled up compared to the other protagonists, he can count too, considering that picking Akira means that the player has the most compulsory fights (assuming Lei Kugo was chosen as the Earthen Heart master) when recruiting the other heroes with none of their fights able to be skipped. Choosing Oboromaru, Pogo, and Masaru skips their compulsory fight while choosing Lei Kugo means that not only will she be skipped, but she does not need to fight Pogo for him to join. Choosing Cube and Sundown skips Masaru's fight and he will join without needing to be fought. Although Akira himself can still be fought by the other protagonists, choosing the correct dialogue option skips the fight entirely.
• Shocking Moments: The Middle Ages chapter is infamous for being an absolutely brutal deconstruction of Squaresoft's own trademark RPGs like the Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy series. Especially in 1994, where nobody was expecting a rather standard hero character in a Standard Fantasy Setting to be broken down and turned into the Lord of Dark, of all things, and end up with no happy ending.
• Signature Scene:
  • The ending of the Imperial China chapter where the successor ends up killing Ou Di Wan Lee, only for the shifu to finally die and to which they scream his name to the heavens.
  • Everything related to Steel Titan/Buriki Daioh in the Near Future chapter, particularly when Akira and Matsu use it to beat up the Japanese Army and fight a giant monster befitting an epic mecha anime.
  • The second half of Oersted's chapter, which contains a huge amount of plot and stands out immensely from the rest of the game. The direct follow-up, Oersted's version of the final chapter, is also lauded due to being a reverse Boss Rush that you can effectively Rage Quit by wiping out all of existence.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The first half of the Distant Future chapter can test the players' patience, given that most of it it's just following the human characters around, listening to their conversations, and do a couple of chores for Kato. Once Huey dies and the Behemoth is released the gameplay picks up considerably.
• Special Effect Failure: The remake has a rather hilarious oversight with the "Table" enemy in the Imperial China chapter. Non-major battles start with a camera pan from the side to the front, but because the Table enemy lacks any side sprites unlike the regular enemies since it's not intended to move, the battle intro briefly has the table look like a cardboard cutout stand when the battle involving it starts.
• Spoil at Your Own Risk: After the remake launched, Square Enix began issuing copyright strikes towards anything that contained spoilers for the final two chapters of the game. Despite the fact that the source material is a nearly three-decade-old Cult Classic and the trailers for the remake already showed numerous scenes from the last two chapters.^note But then again, the remake includes an exclusive True Final Boss, and the trailers gave only the slightest hints at what was to come in the endgame. It wasn't until a patch released on November 18, 2022 (Japan time) that removed the screen and video capture blocks in the final two chapters that streaming the previously forbidden content would be allowed.
• Stuck in Their Shadow: Hong is likeable and gets enough good lines to avoid being The Scrappy, but he's easily the least popular of the Earthen Heart successors and the main cast as a whole. He's not as inherently cool or interesting as the other two Earthen Heart students, and despite some efforts taken to avoid it, he comes across as a simple-minded Fat Comic Relief without much of a chance to break away from the mold if he dies. His performance in battle is also seen as subpar, and after Akira was improved in the remake, he took his spot as the weakest character for the endgame. Most players only take Hong as the successor for the novelty, or because the Ancient China Watanabe scene is only shown if he survives.
• Superlative Dubbing: The English dub of the game casts a combination of conventional VA talent and out-of-the-box picks, and the result is stunning. Dario Coates' performance is a notable highlight, his anguish as Oersted apparent in every line he speaks. This carries over when he becomes Odio, and delivers a magnificent showing as the malicious Big Bad.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The Steel Titan's theme is a rearrangement of the theme of Mazinger Z.
  • The battle theme in the fighting chapter is a very clear nod to Ken's theme in Street Fighter II. And it's even more suspicious when we know that the main composer of the game's soundtrack is Yoko Shimomura, who also worked on Street Fighter II.
• That One Attack:
  • All of the Odio incarnations have an example of That One Attack:
    • Odo has Swoop, which can do massive damage to anyone in the party, and Trample, which can interrupt charging attacks, cause knockback, or paralyze.
    • Ou Di Wan Lee has Mad Dragon's Rage, which can easily kill the Inheritor if you're unlucky.
    • Ode Iou's Gamahebi form has Venomous Scourge; while it doesn't do much damage, it covers almost the entire battlefield in poison spaces which Ode Iou can heal from. Also, Bloodsucker is pretty strong and heals Ode Iou.
    • O. Dio has Gatling Barrage, which almost always does enough damage to result in a One-Hit Kill. The remake makes it even worse by making it a multi-hit attack and expanding its area-of-effect to include all four cardinal directions.
    • Odie O'Bright has Diving DDO, which can paralyze or kill Masaru in one hit. Two hits, if the player's lucky. However, it debuffs Odie O'Bright's stats after use, regardless of whether it hits or not.
    • The Great Inko Statue Odeo has Binding Unity, which does random damage, but normally does plenty. It can also disable the Steel Titan's arm movements, limiting your moveset. There's also Odeodeo Showa, which deals the Broken Leg status, which prevents you from moving or using Babylon Stomp, your strongest attack.
    • OD-10 has Reformat Sector, which deals tons of damage and creates electric panels; however, she will only start using it if you cast HP Lookup on the middle of her sprite to change her graphic.
    • Purity of Odio has a bunch of disruptive attacks that allows him to potentially wipe even over-leveled parties. Denial, which hits everyone and instantly disrupts any attacks you have planned while shoving the party around. Expunge, a powerful life-draining attack with incredibly high reach. Shadow of Despair is nothing special in the original, but in the remake, it plants an electrical panel under the target, meaning it's possible for the attack to knock out a character and immediately remove them with panel damage. However, the worst is actually Saint Alethea, which will deal ridiculous amounts of damage and will inflict you with nearly every status condition in the book, including Petrification, for sure if you don't have the Cosmic Equipment. It's bad on its own, but what makes this exceptional is that Purity of Odio tends to positively spam it. Thankfully in the remake version, he uses it in much lower frequencies and it no longer occupies nearly the whole battlefield.
    • In the remake, Sin of Odio has Torment's Draught, which, just like Saint Alethea, can inflict your whole party with every status on the board, deals around 200 damage on average, and may occupy the whole battlefield. He won't spam this attack, but you'll have to endure it at least once.
  • Optional boss Amakusa in Oboro's chapter has Electric Barrier, which deals 120+ damage and surrounds you with electric tiles. Oboro has about 160 HP if you've killed everyone in his path up to this point. And Amakusa likes to use this attack twice in a row. (This is not a true Optional Boss, but rather one you must fight if you take a specific path through the chapter.)
  • The superboss from the Prehistory chapter, Mammoth King, has Great Fire Boom and Mount Big Boom. Both attacks hit extremely hard, which is bad enough on its own, but they also create fire tiles which can then heal the already beefy Mammoth King and undo a lot of your progress. The latter has a range spanning the entire battlefield, but is a charged attack and thus can be potentially interrupted, while the former "only" hits a 5x5 area centered on Mammoth King, but comes out immediately.
    • The healing factor is made infinitely worse in the remake due to healing from hazard tiles being made cumulative, meaning the Mammoth King will be healed by 24 HP multiplied by the number of fire tiles it occupies — up to a staggering 216, nearly a quarter of its max HP! If you're not extremely diligent about either preventing Mammoth King from using these moves or getting rid of the fire tiles as quickly as possible, it'll actually end up recovering HP faster than you can damage it, turning the fight into an exercise in futility.
  • The (false) Lord of Dark's strongest attack instantly Petrifies anyone hit by it. This can, however, be cured with one of Uranus's healing moves, and fortunately he cannot be petrified. Of course, God help you if he gets wiped.
  • Streibough's Black Abyss, his strongest attack and Demonic technique which he learns at Level 16 that foreshadows his true nature, is a counter that not only hits really hard, but he usually follows up with an about equally hard-hitting Amber Flurry which usually results in dealing two-thirds of damage to Oersted's HP! Not only does Amber Flurry cover nearly half of the battlefield with Lightning Tiles, but Streibough can recover health from being in said Lightning Tiles.
• That One Boss:
  • Ou Di Wan Lee. Turns out the Earthen Heart Successor's lack of confidence was justified. Your only sources of healing are whatever items you picked up on the way, as none of the pupils learn any healing moves until the Dominion of Hate in regards to Lei and Yun, who start developing their own skills and eventually learn a self-healing skill each. Ou Di Wan Lee himself hits extremely hard, particularly with his Mad Dragon's Rage attack, which can hit almost every square on the battlefield. The only consistent safe spot is right in front of him, and even then he can just use Rabid Wolf's Rage to toss you back into divekick range. And unlike Heavenly Peaks Descent, which you can only use once per battle, Ou Di can use Mad Dragon's Rage as many times as he feels like.
  • Puppetmaster Gennai from Oboro's chapter when taking the pacifist route. Going straight to Gennai and only leveling up from the machine enemies that he sets up in the roof is not enough to take him out. Players will need to fight some ghosts and demons to gain some levels and attacks before considering fighting Gennai.
  • Max Morgan from Masaru's chapter is an utter bastard. If you slip up just once, he'll kill you in three hits. (And remember, Masaru has to take hits in order to learn his skills!) What's worse is that because of the paralyzing chance on German Suplex, he won't always allow you to take a turn in between attacks, allowing him to combo you from full health to death in one go on rare occasion.
  • Hygrophobia, the second-to-last boss in Oersted's chapter. Giving a boss two attacks doesn't make her fair when one of them heals her for all the damage she deals and the other puts you to sleep. And the one that puts you to sleep has a massive range (the Helm of Nightmares and Eye of Argos grant sleep immunity, but it's possible to not have them if they were given to other characters earlier). Even better? You fight this boss alone. Streibough feels more like a Post-Final Boss in comparison… which may have been the point.
• That One Level:
  • Oboromaru's chapter is the hardest of the initial seven, especially for players who play the game in chronological order and choose it as their second or third. It's the longest chapter and the most complex, revolving around a massive castle maze with trap-filled attics that kick you back to the dungeon, groups of enemies to be snuck around (and enemies disguising themselves as normal NPCs), and a password-swapping gimmick that's hard to keep track of in the original version. Oboro is alone for most of the chapter, and while he's not weak, his reliance on tile hazards and lack of good ailments leaves him struggling on a lot of fights. Attempting a Pacifist Run and/or going after the two superbosses heightens the difficulty even more; the ways to avoid certain scripted encounters are hidden well and not all fights can be escaped from, there's only a couple respawning non-human enemies to grind levels on, and one optional party member who could help with the superbosses can easily get permanently destroyed while backtracking to them.
  • Akira's chapter, while not terribly hard to finish, usually wears out its welcome over time. Akira is the weakest of the player characters to start off (the remake buffs his stats and lessens his number of charged moves, but the power gap is still visible), and most fights require him to kill enemy commanders as fast as possible before he gets hit too much. Taro and Matsu help a lot when they join, but the chapter dungeon can still be rough regardless if they aren't equipped the best. Besides that, progression in the chapter sometimes gets confusing due to odd event flags and plenty of backtracking across the overworld. Thankfully, the ending of the chapter is a breather, and the coolness factor somewhat makes up for the shortcomings of the first portion.
  • While Sundown's chapter itself is a Breather Level, the same cannot be said of his special dungeon in the Dominion of Hate, which is considered to be the hardest special dungeon in the game, Trial of Time. It's extremely short, but either requires a lot of preparation beforehand, or lots of grinding for level ups. Much like Sundown's chapter, the dungeon has a gimmick that ends the progression immediately after the bell has tolled eight times in total. However, the time between the tolls is significantly shorter than in the Wild West chapter and what's even worse is that the lighting keeps getting dimmer and dimmer with each consecutive bell, until it's almost impossible to see anything. Adding to that, the dungeon is a maze, and trying to get Sundown's ultimate weapon and exit the dungeon without running out of time is extremely strict, requiring a lot of trial and error. If you fail, you are forced to fight one of the toughest superbosses in the game, so necessary precautions are a must here. If you want one of the powerful Cosmic equipment pieces, you have to fight the boss here.
  • The Archon's Roost, like Akira's chapter, usually wears out its welcome by the end of the game due to the fact that the player is required to traverse the entire dungeon no fewer than three times — once partway through the Middle Ages chapter, once at the end of the Middle Ages chapter, and again as The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. Add in the fact that facing the Headhunter superboss requires getting to the Final Boss and leaving and that a player can optionally traverse the entirety of the Archon's Roost in the Middle Ages chapter during the period where Oersted is exiled and wandering (which is indeed a valid way to end this sequence, albeit one far more troublesome than simply returning to Lucrece) and a player aiming for 100% Completion could end up braving the Roost a total of five times. Not helped is that the Roost is already a Marathon Level that is one of the longest, most complex, and most labyrinthine levels in the game, or that essentially nothing between these runs changes except which boss you fight at the end. The Archon's Roost isn't hard, per se, but it quickly becomes tedium incarnate.
• That One Sidequest:
  • For those looking to earn the platinum trophy, the Superboss Death Prophet is a definite hurdle. Not because he's hard to fight, as a properly leveled and geared party can take him down in short order, but because he's hard to find. You have to run away from a hundred random encounters in the final chapter alone before you can face him, making him incredibly tedious to defeat compared to every other optional boss. There isn't even a hint that this is how you encounter him until the ninety-fifth time you run away (at which point a voice declares that you have five left).
  • Getting the hidden items in the Prehistory chapter. One involves going very close to the end of the chapter, then going to a rock that did nothing before this and examining it one hundred times, which opens a door elsewhere with no hint as to where that door is. The other is much simpler... except for the part where it requires fighting King Mammoth, often described as the single hardest boss in the entirety of the game. And the item in question (the Cola Bottle) is a random drop.
  • The Muramasa in the Twilight of Edo Japan chapter. This requires fighting one of two [[Superboss superbosses]], being Majin Ryuunosuke. While the fight itself can be quite hard given that Majin Ryuunosuke is a superboss, finding him is hard enough as it requires walking in a specific manner in the Path of Shuttered Lanterns to find the room where the Muramasa is. Like with the Basic Rock in Pogo's chapter, the method is tedious but doable, the catch is that there is absolutely no indication in the game that hints on knowing this method in the first place. The remake provides some tips about the Path of Shuttered Lanterns but otherwise is still cryptic in the hint.
  • If you want to finish the Captain Square Minigame, chances are that you're going to loathe the Uranus level. The majority of the stage is taken by square enemies that cast Electric Caress, which does damage and electrifies the panels it hits. The issue with this? Every enemy in this stage is healed by electric panels. And even if you know that Spacephage is the best method to kill them, it's still a long and tedious method, since it requires you to be at specific angles. And the thing is that you HAVE to clear as many as you can if you want to defeat El-Mirage, which is the enemy that actually matters. Only two things can damage it and one is an attack that takes an ungodly ammount of time to charge and El-Mirage can easily interrupt it. And you need to hit twice. Your only real option is using Supernova and baiting the enemy into a fire panel. That's why you need to get rid of as many of his mooks as possible, or else they will turn the panels into electricity once more.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • More than a few fans of the original weren't happy that Pogo's first words were changed from "LOVE!" to "I-AIEEEE!" in the remake, since they felt the former fit better into the game's themes of love and hate.^note "Ai" does mean love in Japanese, but the reference is less explicit than it used to be in the fan translation and lost to most of the players.
  • Several fans disliked the remake's name changes to a few characters in the Middle Ages chapter (Straybow to Streibough, Hash to Hasshe, and Alicia to Alethea), especially since few other major characters had their names altered for the localized release. It doesn't help the fact that the fan translation has been around for many years compared to the remake.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The Sheriff of Success in the Wild West chapter would have been an interesting character to play as when confronting the Crazy Bunch, given that he offers to fight alongside Sundown and Mad Dog. Same goes with Annie, the tough barmaid having stood up to scum like Pike, given the game's lack of playable heroines.
  • It's lamented that due to the nature of Distant Future chapter, military badass Corporal Darthe is unable to be played as.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • While it's generally agreed to be used very well for story and gameplay, many fans mourn the fact that the Behemoth is only a One-Hit Kill hazard and can't be fought.
  • Streibough never gets any sort of redemption or a scene where he is chewed out for all of the mistakes he made. The only thing that happens is he is perpetually stuck in a Never My Fault mindset, whereas Alethea is the only one brave enough to fix her mistakes. Speaking of which, there's no scene of Alethea or practically anyone in Lucrece who learns the truth about what happened, or the fact that Streibough essentially gets away with causing everyone's deaths for one act of petty jealousy.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The Void attack element is very underutilized when it comes to playable character moves: there's only two Void techniques spread across two different characters, and neither move is particularly remarkable. Moreover, since said characters are Yun and Hong, they're mutually exclusive skills, and are completely inaccessible during the final chapter if Lei becomes the Earthen Heart Master over either of them. The only way Void techniques can be accessed regardless of the student chosen is in Oersted's chapter in the Dominion of Hate.
• Unfortunate Character Design: Gori's original sprite and character art had his large lips be a bright pink color, which was a little too close to a common racist caricature trait. The remake caught onto this and made Gori's lips a yellowed color like the rest of his face in both art and sprites.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The game is filled with references of movies and celebrities that were better known during the '90s, particularly the challengers in the Present Day chapter. These references are likely to be missed by a newer audience playing the 2022 remake.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Streibough's Ghost in Akira's dungeon of the Final Chapter. Sure, he's justifiably having a Heel Realization over his sheer scumbaggery against Oersted... but he still comes across as largely in denial over causing him to finally snap and become Odio. Yet the narrative still tries to present him as just another tragic victim; needless to say, many (if not most) players definitely see him as a certain kind of victim, all right.
• Values Dissonance: In the original version of the game, the Bountiful Heart was characterized as a Depraved Bisexual and an Abhorrent Admirer who tries to woo the (more often than not male) lead party member while chasing and fighting them. Back in 1994, when the game was first released, such a depiction would not raise eyebrows from the crowd because LGBTQ+ people were considered to be targets of vilification, but starting from The New '10s and onwards, LGBTQ+ awareness became a serious issue, thus making the joke cringeworthy at best and downright offensive at worst. It's most likely for this reason that the remake drops such characterization for the Bountiful Heart and instead depicts him as a relentless martial artist who wants to fight the protagonists for the sake of the thrill of combat.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion:
  • While the Japanese reading clearly indicates the correct pronunciation ("live" like "I am alive" rather than "I live"), non-Japanese fans tended to be confused about the proper pronunciation of the game's title until the remake definitively confirmed it.
  • Because voice acting didn't exist in the original version, it gives no concrete way to pronounce OD-10's name; it can be pronounced as "OD-Ten", "OD-One-O", or "OD-One-Zero". The remake uses the pronunciations "OD-One-O" in the English dub, and "OD-Ten" in the Japanese version, meaning both of these are correct.
• Vindicated by History: Live A Live had been considered a below-average performance by Square and generally disappeared in the public consciousness in favor of its much more well known sibling Chrono Trigger, which wasn't helped by the fact that it was never localized and only managed to gain traction in niche circles due to the fan translation. It wasn't until the remake's release that a larger eye managed to be put on it, its soundtrack, and its story, with discussion of it nowadays singling it out as one of Square Enix's most unique games with a creative premise and memorable villain.
• The Woobie:
  • The Earthen Heart Successor regardless of who that ends up being. They start out as lowly thieves, come to lose their entire adoptive family — in Lei and Hong's case, the only family they actually have (Yun at least still has his grandmother) — and their beloved Shifu, who taught them all his secrets and gave them a better life, dies in their arms after giving them some last words of encouragement. At the end, the Inheritor is left to rebuild the school and keep training a new generation of Earthen Heart students alone, but with the knowledge that the Shifu and the other two students are watching over them.
  • Akira found his dad's corpse after hearing a gunshot, discovered the Conspirators' horrid plan of kidnapping and melting humans to fuel a false god's revival (and couldn't prevent the kidnappings anyway), had to hear and refuse his bedridden sister's request of being melted just to save everyone instead, found out his bestie had drugged himself lethally to empower a mech that's only thing capable of slaying the false god, and turned out to be the one who shot his dad.
  • Cube. He was built at the start of the story and is forced into surviving in a spaceship with a vicious alien and a rogue AI, has 4 of his fellow crew-mates die, and if you lose this chapter, the Game Over screen says, "Alas, Cube never made it to earth."
  • Oersted/Odio. Over the course of his adventure, his primary quest ends with two of his companions dead and no rescued princess to show for it, he is duped into committing regicide, he goes from a hero to a pariah overnight, he is arrested and thrown in jail, his last friend dies helping him escape, he finds out that one of his friends faked his death and orchestrated his downfall out of sheer jealousy, and when he kills the bastard, the princess acting as his emotional anchor tells him to shove off and offs herself. No wonder he decides to punish all of humanity and ruin many people's lives.
  • The incarnation of Watanabe Jr. in the Near Future chapter. While his other incarnations were darkly humorous, this one just feels wrong. He's not a Monster Munch to Odio like he is in every chapter. He's one of the major characters in the chapter as he lives in an orphanage with Akira and Taeko as he often wonders where his dad is and wished he would come back. He never made it back to his son, no thanks to Odeo's cult.
  • Huey Trumbull, good heavens. Everything goes wrong in his life. This Let's Play summarized it like this:
    So to summarize, Huey's job involves working with crates. His girlfriend left him for the ship's pilot, who never missed a chance to insult him and taunt him about it. He failed his captaincy exams, and Captain Hol didn't see one redeeming characteristic about him either, so he was probably going to get fired. And to top it all off, when he tried to rescue his ex-girlfriend, he ended up dying for his troubles, and she didn't even make it either. This game freakin' hates Huey!
  • The King of Lucrece has to deal with the fact that his tournament is the cause of everything that went wrong not just in Lucrece but throughout eight different time periods, led to his death, Oersted's fall, his daughter's suicide, and can only watch, blaming himself for what was just an innocent gesture.
• Woolseyism:
  • In the Japanese script, Kato's first choice for his robot's name is "Koro" — an onomatopoeia to describe something rolling around like a ball — to reflect the robot's shape. However, since "Koro" is a stereotypical pet name in Japanese, he decides to be more original and name it "Cube". While the official localization of the HD version translates this somewhat literally (Kato's original choice is "Roundy", which he thinks is too predictable), the Aeon Genesis Fan Translation of the original uses a clever localization to preserve the joke: he initially goes with "Rover", referring to the robot's roving treads while also being a stereotypical dog's name in the English-speaking world.
  • In the definitive fan translation of the original, each chapter has their own unique font to make them stand out. In the final chapter, each character speaks in their respective chapter's font.
  • In the remake, the use of Gratuitous Iambic Pentameter and Flowery Elizabethan English for the Middle Ages chapter aptly lends the entire chapter the air of a Shakespearean tragedy, and is especially effective during Oersted's Then Let Me Be Evil monologue, a soliloquy of seething rage and despair that is carried by its lofty writing and Dario Coates's thundering performance. This writing style is kept in the final chapter for the Big Bad and appropriately lends the confrontations with him a level of grandiosity not seen in the original. For bonus points, Streibough's Japanese and English voice actors are both well-versed in Shakespeare, which makes Streibough instigating the tragedies all the more fitting.

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