Live A Live / Tropes A to B

Tropes A To B | Tropes C To G | Tropes H to O | Tropes P to Z

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• 11th-Hour Superpower:
  • The Imperial China chapter, with the Heavenly Peaks Descent. In the Final chapter, however, once you learn this with the successor, you can use it however many times you want, thus making it an Infinity Plus One Skill.
  • In the remake-exclusive True Final Boss, you eventually get the chance to control all seven heroes against the Sin of Odio. And then Oersted becomes playable once more, to deal the finishing blow.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: Akira's chapter comes after Masaru's "present day" chapter, but not as far into the future as Cube's, looking like an average Japanese suburb if you don't account for the robots and other science-fiction material.
• Abhorrent Admirer:
  • In the original, the Relentless Maid acts as this in the Twilight of Edo Japan chapter towards Oboromaru. She can be killed, but you won't get the reward for sparing women.
  • The Bountiful Heart, the boss of the Final Chapter's Trial of Skill, is a male example towards whoever your player character is. You can scold and kill him for good. This was changed to a Blood Knight characterization in the remake.
• Ability Required to Proceed: In the Earthen Heart dungeon part of the Final Chapter, the Successor has to use a certain one of their skills on the many rocks blocking the doors, some of which need to be learned through levelling-up. However, they only really need one skill learned early on to get their special weapon.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: Level 99 doesn't seem like much, but most Arc Villains can be defeated around level 10 (the Mammoth King, arguably the most difficult boss in the game, can be killed before level 20), and that's when Level Grinding is even a possibility. Level 30 is almost overkill for the True Final Boss. And your final skills are learned at 16.
• Absurdly Short Level: In a game where most chapters take between two to four hours to complete, two of them stand out as much smaller than the norm. Both also don't let their protagonists gain experience (this also applies to Distant Future, but mostly because that chapter doesn't have standard battles).
  • The Western chapter contains a few dialogue scenes and a couple of battles that are nearly impossible to lose to before introducing its gimmick: the chapter boss is a powerful Flunky Boss and how many flunkies are present depends on how well traps can be set before they arrive. The chapter is only as long as the Timed Mission of searching through the town of Success for supplies is, and players can even skip hours if they're feeling daring enough.
  • The Present Day chapter is a Fighting Game homage: there's no overworld, just six boss opponents to defeat in any order followed by the chapter's final boss.
• Acrofatic:
  • Hong, despite being overweight, can run surprisingly fast when dine-dashing. Not so much in gameplay, though.
  • Jackie Iaukea in Present Day is a Hawaiian sumo wrestler. He moves no slower than the other fighters.
• Action Girl: Lei, who kicks ass as a thief before being taken in by the Shifu, and can potentially be the sole female protagonist.
• Adaptational Alternate Ending: In the Super Famicom original, the ending of the "Ninja" chapter plays out essentially the same whether you killed everybody or just a few people in Ode's castle, with the prisoner, Ryoma Sakamoto and you watching a clear morning sky rise over Japan. In the remake, however, the ending changes depending on how many people you killed (probably as a nod to Undertale, which was in fact largely inspired by the Super Famicom original):
  • If you didn't kill anybody, the ending plays exactly how it would in the original; you and the prisoner watch the completely clear morning sky rise over Japan after he hands you his Infinity -1 Sword.
  • If you killed some or even most of the people in the castle, without killing them all, the prisoner doesn't hand you the sword and the sky gets a bit cloudy, the amount of clouds covering the sky depending on how many people you killed.
  • If you killed all 100 people in Ode's castle, the sky suddenly darkens with black clouds covering the morning sun, and a strong thunderstorm starts while the narration simply states the number of lives you've taken. This suggests that the 100 murders you committed will weigh heavy on Oboromaru's conscience and implies that what you did will have dark consequences for the future of Japan.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • While small, the Gameplay Tips in the remake add a bit more worldbuilding or character details to certain chapters. An example in Near Future is the tips mentioning Tobei has known Akira for so long because he makes frequent visits to Bright Sparks to fix their furniture. Additionally, the player can now find a Steel Titan toy in the Distant Future chapter, something not present in the original game.
  • The remake adds an extra phase to the final boss in the best ending; after the boss rush, Odio's hatred coalesces into the Sin of Odio in one last gambit to prove his viewpoint, forcing the party to fight it, with all seven heroes and ultimately Oersted himself joining in the battle.
• After-Combat Recovery: All characters are healed after battle.
• After the End: The Dominion of Hate final chapter takes place in the ruins of Lucrece, some time after Oersted became Odio and slaughtered every single human in the kingdom, with Palette Swaps of monsters from nearly all of the chapters running wild around the area.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: OD-10, the mother computer running the ship Cogito Ergo Sum in the Distant Future chapter, goes insane after watching the crew frequently bicker and fight against each other, finally deciding that everyone should die for the sake of harmony. Eventually subverted as the ship's AI is actually the demon Odio and the only actual true AI in the game, Cube, is a pretty heroic guy.
• All Cavemen Were Neanderthals: Or at least were primitives with no language.
• All Just a Dream: Subverted with the Near Future chapter, where Akira wakes up at the park like in the beginning, then revealing he's in charge of Matsu's taiyaki stand. It's implied that the playable events of the chapter were his memories of recent events that he was dreaming about.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us:
  • The Imperial China chapter has Shifu return from kicking Sun Tzu Wang's ass again, only to find his dojo wrecked and all three of his students beaten, two of which are dead.
  • The Near Future chapter has the Crusaders set fire to the Bright Sparks Orphanage, prompting Akira to save Kaori and Matsu to step in with Steel Titan.
• All Your Powers Combined: The focus of the Wrestling chapter and Masaru's end quote with his chapter boss, Odie O'Bright.
• Ambiguous Time Period: The game avoids specifying dates at which chapters occur, although the timeframes are much clearer and the Present Day chapter can be surmised as taking place during the 90s. Logs in the Distant Future chapter even go so far as to hide dates with X's (although the "copyright" text in the Captain Square minigame makes it clear it takes place no earlier than the 22nd century). Interestingly, the real-world Twilight of Edo Japan and Wild West eras took place within a decade of each other. The credits for the Golden Ending if Oboromaru joins Ryoma shows the former defending the latter from an assassin, implying that their chapter took place before December 10, 1867; the date of the real-life Ryoma Sakamoto's assassination.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • The Prehistory chapter has cro-magnons^note even if Pogo and company are neanderthals, which is the the oldest plausible hominid that Beru could be, those didn't appear until 430,000 years ago, australopithecus^note late estimates say they died out 1.4 million years ago, and a dinosaur mixed together with a dash of Flintstones technology.
  • The Imperial China chapter has no idea what era it's supposed to take place in. Two characters are even seen wearing clothes from different time periods.
  • The Kingdom of Lucrece in the Middle Ages chapter is polytheistic, with mention of multiple gods. However, the Full Plate Armor that can be found was invented in The Late Middle Ages, when the kingdoms of Europe had converted to Christianity.
  • One of the healing items in the Middle Ages chapter, the Alice Biscuit, is meant to be a Shout-Out to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a 1865 novel. The medieval times lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries.
• Anime Hair: Most of the characters keep it down, but Pogo, Oboromaru, Matsu, and Akira more than make up for them. At least the latter two have an excuse: their chapter is modeled on a Super Robot anime. Also, Oersted, who naturally draws from the wild hairstyles of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest's protagonists.
• Antepiece:
  • In the remake's Twilight of Edo Japan chapter, entering the rafters room above the front gate for the first time shows a short cutscene where a mouse gets spooked, runs over the trapdoor in the middle, and falls down it, to show the player what happens. (It kicks you to the start of the castle.)
  • In the Far Future, most of the game is talking to other characters until you can proceed, mixed with some Survival Horror elements where you have to run away from a threat and maybe have to break open doors. The Final Boss is a typical end of chapter boss. Luckily, in the first 10 minutes of this chapter, you get to play a Game Within a Game called Captain Square where you try to defeat enemy aliens in the exact same way as the rest of Live A Live's combat system operates.
  • Related, but most of the chapter before the Behemoth gets loose has you visit every relevant room at least once before it's released, allowing you to get familiar with the ship's layout so you can run away to a safe area at a moment's notice.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Any skills that you missed in Masaru's chapter can be obtained by leveling him up in the final chapter, preventing him from being underpowered if you missed a majority of them.
  • The kill counter in the Twilight of Edo Japan chapter only goes up when living humans are killed. There are a number of non-human enemies in the castle (e.g. ghosts) that you can level grind off of so you won't be horribly underpowered for the mandatory bosses in a Pacifist Run.
  • The remake's version of the "Twilight of Edo Japan" chapter has Oboromaru note what the password should be when the bell rings, so anyone aiming for a Pacifist Run doesn't need to keep that in mind as much.
  • Branching from the above, the remake in general adds some quality of life features that make it a bit less tedious to play compared to the original game:
    • A radar now exists and shows the player where they need to go for plot progression via orange diamonds (for rooms/areas) or orange flags (for interactions).
    • Interactable objects will "sparkle", usually denoting items, but could also help players find particular objects for moving the story forward (such as an electrical outlet in the "Near Future" chapter).
    • The "Prehistory" chapter contains a room at the start where the player can get a hold of lots of crafting materials by interacting with the cavemen in it. In the original, this involved speaking to the caveman to cause another one to come in, and then speaking to that caveman to cause another one to enter the room, and continues until about 20 cavemen are in the room, where speaking to the last caveman who entered will net the player one of each crafting material. The remake streamlines this into a simple, short memory minigame with the original caveman.
    • Both the "Twilight of Edo Japan" and the "Distant Future" chapters add maps to help the player either figure out where they are (in the "Edo Japan" chapter) or how the rooms are connected (in the "Distant Future").
    • Not only do the sparkles on objects make finding items needed to set the traps in the "Wild West" chapter much easier, one of the layouts of the buildings was changed to make it a little easier to find a hidden room that contained a needed trap. Additionally, while Mad Dog would always tell the player how many times the bell has rung, the game now features a timer that indicate how many rings of the bell are remaining.
    • The stairs leading to the basement of Doc Tobei's lab in the "Near Future" chapter are now combined into one room in the remake instead of a bunch of separate, similar rooms. The same, seamless room layouts can also be found in the "Twilight of Edo Japan" chapter, lowering the amount of loading screens the player has to go through. Also, since cutscenes can be skipped in the remake, dealing with the randomness of Tobei's crafting mechanics is made much more bearable.
    • Midway in the Distant Future chapter, you need to answer a question which involved a very brief throwaway line at the beginning or you'll get a Game Over. Cube has the option to "Review Memory Banks" which eventually has the answer.
    • Also in the Distant Future chapter, several doors which required the limited-use Powered Prybar in the original are already open in the remake, making it much harder for a player to accidentally trap themselves.
    • The game now does an auto save in addition to the player's hard save. This is most relevant in the Distant Future chapter, as the frequent auto saves now makes getting a game over to the Behemoth much less punishing if the player hadn't saved in a while.
    • In the Earthen Heart Master's Bonus Dungeon, you must use specific techniques to Brick Break the rocks in front of the doors. In the original, you simply had to guess. In the remake, the Earthen Heart Master will give the player a clue when the technique menu comes up.
• Anti-Grinding:
  • In the Near Future chapter, leveling up Akira will also increase the difficulty of the random encounters on the overworld. If you level up too much at the start, you'll risk getting into a battle that you won't survive.
  • In the final chapter, enemies scale with the level average of the party, and by the end, half of the enemy groups give out 0 Exp while the other half that do give actual EXP are challenging to deal with.
• Anyone Can Die: Like any tale in history, not everyone is guaranteed to make it out alive....to the point all existence could be wiped out in the worst ending.
• Apocalypse How:
  • By the time the heroes get sent to the ruins of Lucrece in the Final Chapter, it's clear that a Class 0 had taken place, as every single human here has been Killed Offscreen and their souls are stuck in The Trial of Heart. It's implied that Odio had only slaughtered Lucrece at that point, given the comments in the remake's True Final Boss that he's drawing all of [his] world's hate towards him.
  • A Class 2 to all chapters should Oersted's final chapter be completed normally — the last dinosaur terrorizing the wild around it, a cruel kung fu master ruling with an iron fist, war breaking out in feudal Japan, an outlaw gang free to raze settlements, fighters being murdered by a power-hungry monk, an entire city drowned in goop, and an AI arriving on Earth after emptying their ship of humans, with the one behind it all immortal.
  • You can pull off a Class Z by choosing the Armageddon option when your health is low in the final chapter with Oersted. The same ending also plays if you die while fighting Purity of Odio. In the remake, this extends to all of Odio's forms.
• Apocalyptic Log: If Cube is defeated by OD-10, a final entry that details the doomed fate of the Cogito Ergo Sum will show up.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Your party can only hold four members, which is best shown in the Final Chapter where you can recruit three of the other six protagonists into your party, and removing one due to full capacity has them run back to the spot you first met them at. The remake's Sin of Odio fight throws this out completely when the missing three protagonists who weren't in your party show up to help the incapacitated four, and Oersted helps strike down Odio at the very end, bringing the battle party to eight playable characters.
• Arc Villain: Each of the final plot bosses with Megalomania as their boss theme in the scenarios. Played with — all of them except Streibough are incarnations of the Big Bad, Odio/Oersted, spread throughout time and space. Subverted with Odo in the Caveman chapter and Odeo in the Near Future chapter, where they are the Greater-Scope Villain. In the former chapter, the plot is driven by the Kuu Tribe Chief and Zaki, while in the latter chapter, the plot is driven by Odeo's followers.
• Armies Are Evil: The two times in modern times that a human army is mentioned, they're never portrayed as good people:
  • In the Near Future chapter, the Japanese Army are at the beck and call of General Yamazaki to prevent the Steel Titan from stopping the advent of Odeo where many humans are horribly liquefied.
  • In the Distant Future chapter, the human army forcibly had Darthe and their captured Behemoth get a passage on Cogito Ergo Sum, a civilian-class ship, as a guest, and gave Darthe a secret order that in case the Behemoth escapes, its life should be preserved while the crew's deaths are 'acceptable sacrifices'. Even Darthe eventually thinks the rule is bullshit, kills the Behemoth in self-defense and after surviving the events, he quits the army.
  • Heavily downplayed with the soldiers of Lucrece in the Middle Ages chapter, who only start antagonizing Oersted after being tricked into thinking he's the Lord of Dark.
• Armor of Invincibility: The Cosmic Armor set in the final chapter provide good, if not the highest defense and immunity to Petrification. This latter fact is very important given some of the final boss's attacks. There are five pieces, each guarded by a different superboss:
  • To get the Cosmic Helm^note 15 Defense in the original, 10 Defense in the remake, complete the Trial of Wisdom. Return and at the end of the first puzzle room, there will be a robot named Euraokos that will attack you for stealing Cube's weapon, the 17nm Diode. It will drop the Helm.
  • To get the Cosmic Glove^note 15 Defense in the original, 10 Defense in the remake, let all eight bells ring in the Trial of Time to get attacked by the Jaggedy Jacks. If you're able to kill them, you'll get the Glove.
  • To get the Cosmic Mail^note 45 Defense in the original, 30 Defense in the remake, run away from battle 100 times. After the 95th, a countdown will begin for the last five, after which the Death Prophet will attack. Beat it to get the Mail.
  • To get the Cosmic Boots^note 10 Defense in the original, 7 Defense in the remake, meet Odio at the end of the Archon's Roost, but try to leave instead of fighting him. You'll be taken back to the void in the beginning of the chapter, where the Headhunter will attack if you don't reach the stairs in time. Fight and beat it to get the Boots.
  • To get the Cosmic Ring^note 10 Vitality, Evasion Up to Rear, Projectile, Grappling, Thrusting in the original, 8 Physical Defense and Resistance to Light in the remake, Evasion Up/Resistance to Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, & Spirit in both, find a Golden Topknot at either the Trial of Power or the Archon's Roost and take it to the lake in the Trial of Instinct. Lucretius will offer to fight; beating him will give you the Ring and some minor exposition.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy:
  • Ou Di Wan Lee, being a Wuxia story villain, runs a brutal kung-fu school which values power above all, even going as far as murdering all opposition and rivals.
  • Odie O'Bright has such a superiority complex that he kills his defeated opponents.
• The Artifact: In the Distant Future's Captain Square minigame, the Uranus level has a majority of enemies called Pymli, disguised as the Electric Tiles, which their "leader" tends to hide behind and their sole skill is creating several real ones to hide themselves further and replicate. The remake makes this a lot easier due to the graphical overhaul, leaving said enemies using the old pyramid-shaped electric tiles on top of the new ones.
• Artificial Stupidity: The combat mechanics of this game, among other things, requires you to not just use the right move at the right time, but be in the right position to not only avoid attacks, but deal attacks of your own. The AI is quite bad at this, rarely moving enemies out of the way of your potential attacks and/or moving them in position for their own strongest attacks — which becomes painfully obvious when you control the final bosses in Oersted's version of the final chapter, which not only allows said bosses to take advantage of your quite superior tactics, but makes the protagonists victim to the game's Artificial Stupidity.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Tarokichi (aka Taroimo), Kaori's pet turtle, is apparently dying from a necrotic infection. In order to save him, Akira asks Tobei to turn said turtle into a liquefied organism. The transitioning of living tissue to a liquefied state would do little to nothing to stop a necrotic infection. It just means that it's still there, either dormant or active.
  • For that matter, being liquefied means that the living subject would no longer have a spirit or consciousness since the brain is destroyed in the process. Unless, of course, the subject's brain cells are somehow preserved (and even then, the connections between the neurons would be destroyed).
• Artistic License – Paleontology:
  • In the remake, it's stated that the dinosaur whose skeleton lies outside Pogo's village in the Prehistory chapter was slain by the elder when he was younger. Furthermore, the final boss of the chapter is a Tyrannosaurus rex called Odo. However, there are no other dinosaurs in the entire chapter. Odo can also be justified, as it is an avatar of Odio and therefore may not even be natural.
  • Gori's name suggests gorilla heritage. He's fully bipedal, with traits that suggest he's Australopithecus or Paranthropus, but these genera are distant cousins of the gorilla rather than ancestors.
• Ascended Extra: The True Final Boss added for the remake is the actual Demon King that was encountered by Oersted in his chapter. In the original, they were one-and-done with Oersted taking their place.
• As Long as There Is Evil: Oersted's final words to the heroes can be summed up as this... well, more like As Long As There Is Hatred. And rather than saying that he will come back, he says that anyone could become the next Lord of Dark.
• As Long as There Is One Man: Subverted horribly. Oersted believes that he can continue to fight, even as everyone else in the world turns against him, as long as there's one person who believes in him. She loses faith. He doesn't take it well, to put it mildly.
• The Atoner:
  • Alethea, as a spirit in the Trial of Heart, gives Akira his best weapon and finally gets the team out of the dungeon, which formerly had no exit. Streibough also, to a lesser extent, but only as far as realizing just how much his jealousy cost Oersted and the world (and even that is debatable).
  • Matsu, having performed a Heel–Face Turn some indeterminate amount of time after he killed Akira and Kaori's father.
• Attack Its Weak Point:
  • The LH Combat Unit W1 boss in the Near Future chapter has an absurd amount of health, high defense, and dodges nearly every attack. One way to defeat it easily is to attack it from behind where its liquefied human container is, then it'll likely perform a self-destructing move as a counterattack.
  • The Dominion of Hate's Death Prophet can be defeated easily when you hit him on the tail. When you do, he may unleash an attack called "Not the tail!", which will deal minor damage to the attacker, but deals 999 HP to himself, killing him outright (he only has 960 HP).
• Attract Mode:
  • The original release’s title screen had small snippets of gameplay in a handful of chapters if left running, some of which played in cutouts of the title.
  • In-Universe with the Captain Square game in the Distant Future chapter, which keeps playing the cheery retro theme no matter what is happening. This was presumably a hint to the player throughout the course of the chapter to keep this in mind, as the game console itself is a major factor in taking down OD-10.
• Avengers Assemble: In the remake, during the battle against Sin of Odio, the boss will use an attack called Absolute Condemnation to incapacitate your main party, causing the other heroes to jump in as backup. Eventually the main party is freed, allowing you to control all seven heroes. Even better, Oersted eventually frees himself from the clutches of Odio and delivers the final blow after Absolute Condemnation incapacitates the heroes again.
• "Awkward Silence" Entrance: Given that it's such an iconic trope for westerns, of course the Wild West chapter would use this trope; moments after the Sundown Kid enters the Crystal Saloon, a deafening silence suddenly forms… except for one mariachi that keeps obliviously singing and has to be silenced by his partners.
• Badass Biker: Matsu, riding a huge motorcycle. Akira inherits the trope and the motorcycle after Matsu dies.
• Badass Crew:
  • In the Final chapter, if not played from Oersted/Odio's perspective. You pick one of the protagonists to play as and recruit three more to defeat the Lord of Dark, but getting the best ending requires you to use all of the protagonists at one point.
  • Corporal Darthe from the Distant Future chapter gets special mention. He takes out the fake Cube quite handily, kills the Behemoth (a beast so strong that it touching you results in instant death) by himself, and lives. It's safe to say that if the military picked someone a little less badass to escort the Behemoth, Cube would've never made it to Earth.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work:
  • At the end of the Prehistory chapter, the Kuu tribe leader gets eaten by Odo. Given that his fervent sacrificing to the dinosaur created the chapter's conflict in the first place, this heavily benefits all parties once Zaki takes over and buries the hatchet.
  • At one point in the Twilight of Edo Japan chapter, a bunch of guards come after you, only to be attacked by a masked man. You can let the masked man kill the guards for you if you're going for zero kills.
• Bad Moon Rising: The majority of the Twilight of Edo Japan chapter takes place under an eerie full moon glowing neon purple. At the end, the sun rises to a new dawn in Japan's history.
• Bad to the Last Drop: A Running Gag in the Distant Future chapter is that the coffee provided on the Cogito Ergo Sum is too bitter for everyone's tastes aside from Kirk. At the end of the chapter, Corporal Darthe takes a cup and doesn't mind the taste, given everything else that had just happened.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • During the Imperial China chapter, after Shifu saves a couple of waitresses from Sun Tzu Wang's gang, he can speak to them to get items. One pulls him aside to the restaurant where she's obscured, and Shifu's shocked by her showing him "a beautiful peach". Turns out she was giving him a peach bun, which he was praising the craftmanship of.
  • Used extensively in the Middle Ages chapter:
    • The premise and presentation itself is this, as it takes typical JRPG tropes that the other seven chapters went out of their way to avoid (Medieval Fantasy setting, the hero is a Heroic Mime Knight in Shining Armor that uses a sword as his main weapon, you get a full party of 4 made of classic RPG jobs such as Knight, Priest, or Mage, Random Encounters, the plot is rescuing a Damsel in Distress that also doubles as the hero's Love Interest^note While the Prehistory chapter's plot is also that, it is softened by the fact that unlike Alethea, Beru is playable in some sections, and even helps taking down the chapter boss, etc), which may make players wonder what's so special about this chapter that it needed to be unlocked by finishing the other seven first. The you get to the Lord of Dark boss battle and despite the heroes killing him, the quest ends in failure and two of your companions die. Things only get progressively worse for the heroes, culminating in a massive Hope Spot at the end that results in the main character hitting the Despair Event Horizon hard and becoming the game's Big Bad.
    • The identity of the titular Lord of Dark. At first, it looks like it's the demon who kidnapped Alethea. Then, it's implied from his machinations and treachery that Streibough is actually the Lord of Dark's real identity^note Though it is possible that he did briefly become the Lord of Dark during your fight against him. It's shortly shown in the ending that Oersted becomes the Lord of Dark.
• Battle Theme Music: Every chapter has its own fight theme — "Kiss of Jealousy" for Pogo, "Clash in China" for the Earthen Heart Shifu, "To Arms!" for Oboromaru, "The Wilds" for Sundown, "Knock You Down!" for Masaru, "Playing with Psychos" for Akira, and "Heroic Struggle" for Oersted. (Cube never gets into a random battle in his chapter, unless you count the Captain Square theme for his chapter's substitute. During the Boss Rush where the boss fights use the character's battle theme instead of "Megalomania", the OD-10 fight plays "Unseen Syndrome".) Chapter bosses all share the same theme, "Megalomania". Which is not the only thing they share. This culminates in the Final Chapter, where the main battle theme is the title theme.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy:
  • Ryoma Sakamoto fought robots... and an incarnation of the Lord of Dark!
  • O. Dio from the Wild West chapter claims to be the sole survivor of the 7th Cavalry. In real life, there was indeed one survivor… A horse named Comanche.
• Behind the Black: In the Super Famicom version of the Wild West chapter, Sundown and Mad Dog immediately throw off their duel at the last moment to gun down two Crazy Bunch members in hiding across the road, who would've been in view of the townsfolk watching the duo. This was changed in the remake where it's shown that they were shooting at a hay cart and stack of hay bales, making the Crazy Bunch members hiding more plausible.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: In the Near Future chapter, the army commander Yamazaki, the temple head Unryu, and the mad scientist Livingstill team up to revive the god Odeo.
• Big Bad Slippage: Oersted wanted nothing more than to be a hero and Save the Princess. However, things don't go as expected and quickly get increasingly worse for him instead, pushing him far past his breaking point and resulting in the birth of Odio.
• Big Eater: Hong, and to a lesser extent, Beru. In fact, if you want to recruit Hong during the final chapter, you have to feed him first.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • The Imperial China chapter. Ou Di Wan Lee has been defeated, the successor of the Earthen Heart style has been named, and the successor is welcomed as a hero in the town, rather than being the bandits they used to be, but the other two students are dead, and the Shifu you've spent most of the chapter playing as dies just after recognizing his last student as his successor.
  • The Near Future chapter ends with the Big Bad Ensemble defeated and their plans ruined, but Lawless died due to his overdose, Kaori's condition is still unclear as she's still bedridden, Watanabe presumably still doesn't know that his father was turned into the now-destroyed LH Combat Unit W1 and won't be coming back, and there's likewise nothing that can be done to help the 2,000 innocent people who were liquefied for Odeo's revival. Meanwhile, Akira takes over Lawless' taiyaki stand which has increased in popularity and inherited his motorcycle, but the Steel Titan now lays dormant as Akira is unable to reactivate it at will.
  • The Distant Future chapter. Cube managed to defeat OD-10 and shuts down her higher functions and at the same time Darthe kills the Behemoth, ending its threat. Sadly, only three of the characters survive and make it back to Earth (Cube, Darthe, and Kato) while Kirk, Huey, Rachel, and Hor are dead due to OD-10 going haywire. Notably, this chapter is the only one to have the somber "Cry A Live" theme playing during the credits.
  • The Golden Ending. Odio is defeated and the 7 main protagonists go to live their lives. However, although the curse of the Lord of Dark is lifted over Lucrece, Oersted was still robbed of his future and was the last remaining human in the kingdom following his rampage according to Lucretius, leaving the kingdom to be a Ghost Town.
• Birth-Death Juxtaposition: In the true ending, Oersted peacefully passing on comes before Pogo returns home to see Beru giving birth to their child.
• Bleak Level: Of the starting seven chapters, the Distant Future one has the darkest tone of them by far. The story quickly descends into a Survival Horror plot, the setting is very uneasy and claustrophobic, the music is completely atmospheric and subdued, and the characters are all played very seriously. The Captain Square minigame is likely the only lighthearted thing you'll ever find in the whole scenario. The utterly tragic second half of the Middle Ages chapter arguably makes the Distant Future chapter look outright sunny in comparison.
• Blood from the Mouth: Hasshe starts doing this just before he dies from the plague.
• Body Horror: A significant part of the story in the Near Future chapter is people being turned to liquid, which still maintains some degree of intelligence and consciousness. You can even use Akira’s mind reading powers on the containers.
• Bonus Stage: The entire game of Captain Square in the Distant Future chapter, which mainly serves to provide the grid battles from the other chapters.
• Book Ends:
  • The Prehistory chapter starts with Pogo's rite of passage of hunting small game for food. It ends with him hauling in perhaps the biggest game anyone at the time could dream of, being a giant dinosaur, which they happily feast on. Additionally, the optional sidequest with the monolith featuring Pogo throwing a bone into the air parallels the movie’s famous Match Cut, with the Distant Future chapter taking place on a spaceship which is also run by a faulty AI.
  • The Imperial China chapter begins with the Earthen Heart Shifu practicing his art and then attempting to split a rock. When he fails, he realizes that he's grown too old and must find students. At the chapter's end, the successor practices the art in front of the graves of the Shifu and the other students, turns to the rock, and splits it with one punch.
  • At that start of the chapter, as the Shifu crosses the bamboo forest, Lei will be seen trailing him, implying that Shifu knows she's there. If Lei survives the Indomitable Fist attack, when the Shifu tries to leave her behind to go assault their palace, Lei jumps out in front of him near the end. Since there's no shots of her like before, it's implied that she did legitimately get the drop on him this time.
  • At the start of the Wild West chapter, Mad Dog stops the Sundown Kid as he rides across the desert, and challenges him to a duel. The Kid wins, and escapes from Mad Dog by shooting his horse's reins, spooking her into running away from Mad Dog. At the end of the chapter, if Kid spared Mad Dog by running from his duel in Success town, the same scenario plays out, with the same conclusion. Only this time, Mad Dog is riding the horse that was O. Dio.
  • The Near Future chapter begins and ends with Akira waking up on a bench in the park.
  • Near the beginning of the Distant Future chapter, Cube learns to make coffee, but is violently rebuffed when he offers some to Darthe. At the end, Darthe, wounded and exhausted, sits down and quietly asks Cube to bring him some coffee.
  • One of the first things you do in the Middle Ages chapter is defeat Streibough in a friendly duel in a tournament. The final boss of the chapter is a Duel to the Death with Streibough.
  • The music that plays at the title screen serves as the standard battle theme for the final chapter.
• Booze-Based Buff:
  • In the original game's version of the Wild West chapter, most of your healing items consist entirely of various alcoholic drinks. Of course, getting drunk comes with its debuffs.
  • In an attempt to emulate psychic powers to control Steel Titan, Matsu consumes a lethal amount of Matango which leaves him completely drunk.
• Boring, but Practical: Techniques that move, turn, or interrupt the target rarely deal that much damage, but prove indispensable no matter the chapter. All enemy actions, including reorienting themselves, can only be performed when their action meters are full, so repeatedly hitting an enemy with no-charge moves that force them to move back into position will slow their attacks and may even stunlock them if they have no attacks with backwards range. Interruption attacks typically carry these attributes, and most bosses with dangerous charged attacks can be defanged by striking them at the right time with these. The balancing factor is that enemies are also aware of this, and will happily shove the party around or disrupt their charged attacks if given the chance.
• Boss-Altering Consequence: The Wild West chapter has you prepare traps to deter O. Dio and his squad of bandits known as the Crazy Bunch, who are coming to raid the local town. Depending on how well you do with the defense, O. Dio will have less minions fighting alongside him, and if you do perfectly, the only threat you will have to fight will be O. Dio himself. If you do not set up any defense, the battle will be stuffed with additional goons to take out, which will greatly increase the challenge, but not make the battle impossible.
• Boss Banter: The bosses tend to be very chatty in the remake, throwing out taunts, threats, and various other comments in response to their current status and the player's actions.
• Boss in Mook Clothing:
  • A monster named Ishtar in the final chapter gets no special fanfare, but not only does it have much more power than a normal enemy, it has the boss death sequence. The good thing is that it gives boatloads of experience points.
  • If you have been leveling up your party extensively in the Final Chapter, then you will eventually run into an enemy called Darkwall, a Palette Swap of the LH Combat Unit W1 from Akira's chapter. It possesses immensely powerful attacks, including Majin Ryunosuke's "Violence Honed" and Steel Titan's "Metal Strike", that can devastate even high-level parties. While it does possess the same weakness as the enemy it's based off of, its maximum HP of 2032 ensures that it will take more than one (also very damaging) self-destruct attack to bring it down. If you can defeat it, it will give massive experience, though by the time you do meet this enemy, you'll more than likely be ready to finish the game.
• Boss-Only Level:
  • The Wild West chapter consists pretty much entirely of buildup and preparation for the chapter's boss, which is the only major fight in the whole chapter. There's a small handful of other battles for story purposes, but they're all against single enemies who go down in a couple hits and are nearly impossible to lose to.
  • The Distant Future chapter literally contains only one fight, against the boss. The rest of it functions more as an adventure game than an RPG, and it’s still one of the shortest chapters. The only traditional battles you can find are from the Captain Square minigame before you fight OD-10 in it.
• Boss Rush:
  • Applies to the Wrestling chapter; the entire chapter consists of seven battles, but they're all against boss-level enemies.
  • If you've fulfilled the requirements for the Golden Ending, Oersted tries for one last-ditch attempt at killing the heroes by having them face his incarnations once more, although they're now much too powerful for the Lord of Dark.
• Bound and Gagged: When we first see Beru during the Prehistory chapter, she trips out of a rope wrapped around her before fleeing from the men about to sacrifice her.
• Bounty Hunter: Mad Dog, who pursues The Sundown Kid for his bounty.
• Bowdlerise: In the remake, several dirty gags and other questionable details were changed:
  • In the Prehistory chapter:
    • Beru doesn't flash Pogo when given certain equipment while she's hiding in a haystack in Pogo's room; instead, she comes out and takes Pogo into the haystack with her, with what they do left to the player's imagination.
    • Zaki's pixellated crotch when throwing his lizard loincloth as an attack and Gori's prominently exposed butt when using his fart attack are instead covered with a smiley face.
  • In the Twilight of Edo Japan chapter, the statues fought as enemies^note Icon of Flame, Icon of Water, Icon of War originally looked like Buddha statues. The remake completely changes their design to resemble Fujin instead.
  • In the Wild West chapter:
    • The alcohol and cigar healing items were replaced with topical medicine and strips of beef jerky respectively, and consequently they don't inflict negative statuses when used.
    • One secret Joke Item, Annie's nighties, is replaced with her diary (though it can still be equipped as armor). The Easter Egg scene where running straight into her room after stepping into the Crystal Bar for the first time and accidentally catching her in the middle of changing clothes is altered to her just writing in her diary.
  • In the Present Day chapter, for The Great Aja's stage, the Mexican flag designs used on the mat in the original version were replaced with a skull instead, through still painted with the muted colors of Mexico's national flag.^note In this particular case, however, this is very justified for legal reasons, as Mexico is notorious for strictly forbidding the use of its national flag for trivial reasons outside official use, and very especially by foreigners, for understandable reasons, compared with the U.S. and other countries. Considering that The Great Aja is a rudo, and a very mean and vulgar one to boot, the last thing Square Enix wanted is to have an international incident on relating the use of the Mexican flag to a villain.
  • In the Near Future chapter:
    • Akira and Watanabe's scheme to steal Taeko's panties is changed to just stealing her pocket money which results in a line of non underwear-related items, starting with Watanabe's pocket lint instead of his own boxers.
    • It's no longer possible to randomly end up in the orphanage's bathroom while Taeko is washing herself when using Teleport to escape from battle.
  • In the Final chapter, the Bountiful Heart has his characterization changed from a Depraved Bisexual Abhorrent Admirer to a relentless martial artist who takes great thrill in combat and pesters the heroes because he wants to have fun fighting them, presumably because the original joke did not age well at all since LGBTQ+ awareness is a much more sensitive issue in the 2020s.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The first thing you see at the start of the Near Future chapter (and its trailer) is Akira's eyes staring right at you. He then starts addressing you directly for a short time before the action cuts to his actual story.
  "So, tell me. You happy with your lot in life?"
• Broken Record: In the Distant Future chapter:
  • After a certain point, Captain Hor only repeats, "What, are you serious? That's... quite unfortunate..." Later, it's revealed to be a recording OD-10 made after killing the captain.
  • Once OD-10's intent to kill the whole crew is revealed, it ceases to say anything other than "It would be in your best interests to stop. This ship is my domain, and I its master." It even bleeds into the loading screen tips.
• But Thou Must!:
  • Oboromaru's mission is to rescue the prisoner from Ode Iou's castle. Rescuing him and then bolting to the exit will have him refuse to leave, wanting to meet the man in charge.
  • You can't avoid fighting with Pike in the Western chapter — accepting his glass of milk and drinking it up will just lead to him ordering another until Sundown finally refuses it.
  • Played for Horror in the remake's Distant Future chapter, where at one point your radar will direct you towards a room with leaking acid, then the cargo hold where the Behemoth immediately ambushes you. Both trips serve no purpose story-wise besides being event flags, which implies OD-10 hacked your radar to try and get you killed.
  • Throwing the initial match against Streibough in the tournament, in both the original and the remake, doesn't net you a game over sequence like in the other chapters; it just takes you to the save screen to try again. Beating Streibough is the only way to progress the story.
• Butt-Monkey: Anyone or anything with the name Watanabe is humorously subjected to cruel misfortune in several chapters of the game:
  • Prehistory: An unnamed son's^note Due to the lack of spoken dialogue in the Caveman chapter, we never knew what this incarnation of Watanabe is named father fell into a hole and never came back out; he obviously died.
  • Imperial China: Wan Tan Na Bei gets a stroke of bad luck. Only appears if you have Hong as your successor.
  • Twilight of Edo Japan: The Papa Rat of the Watanabe Clan is killed by a Samurai after trying to get a stash of valuables, unless Oboromaru had killed said Samurai prior, so he's instead successful and presumably alive during and after his escape.
  • Wild West: Watt's father is shot dead by the Crazy Bunch Gang before they ride into town.
  • Present Day: Some audience member^note Due to the lack of spoken dialogue in the original version of this event, the context of this scene is left unknown until the remake. Also lacks a name. throws a can at the Great Aja… and gets beaten in front of his son.
  • Near Future: Played for Drama. Watanabe's father was abducted and turned into a liquefied human powering a robot, and has to be put down.
  • Distant Future: Played for Horror. The Watanabe HyperCaster consists of a main and sub antennae, and the former gets critically damaged by an explosion. Kirk then dies attempting to repair the system.
  • Middle Ages: Watt of Nabe is eliminated/killed by Streibough in the semifinals of the tournament, causing his son to run up on stage in tears.
  • Final: The Watanabes are subjected to eternal suffering as petrified statues.

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