Probably the most disappointed I've felt in not enjoying a game that seems to be so beloved by others. The vast majority of the game feels like a prologue. Each character's scenario gives you a general idea of their personality, motivations, etc, but the short length of them didn't give me enough material to really come to care about any of the main cast as they barely felt fleshed out. Narratively, the majority of stories didn't pull any interesting takes, twists, or thought-provoking moments to get me invested in what was going on. Each story clearly took from other media genres such as Sci-Fi or Westerns, but they ultimately felt pretty... basic. Like watching a short-film where you already know what all is gonna happen 10 minutes in because it's just following typical genre tropes. That said, gameplay-wise I did appreciate how experimental Live A Live was in having each character scenario play out in mechanically different ways, with the Distant Future and Japan scenarios being highlights. Experimenting with ways to tell a JRPG story outside of typical JRPG gameplay conventions is pretty welcome, and that makes it stand out even among modern games.

The grid-based battle system is neat, but also suffers from that "20 hour prologue" feeling with the game constantly throwing mind-numbingly easy encounters at you. Even some boss battles could be cleared by just parking in one spot and alternating your Healing Skill and Damage Skill, or just damage-racing the boss if your character couldn't naturally heal because that's how the boss encounter was designed. Maybe you'll need to use 1 of the 20 healing items the game threw at you. It's such a waste of an interesting system, and while the combat does eventually open up and show its teeth with some difficult encounters, this happens when you only have around 3 hours of playtime left.

The game has cool and unique ideas, but doesn't do anything cool with them.