Skip to main content

Nintendo Switch loses an exclusive Square Enix game next month

Square Enix’s beautiful HD-2D remake of Live A Live will no longer be a Nintendo Switch exclusive starting next month. The game comes out on PlayStation consoles and PCs on April 27.

Live A Live is a unique grid-based RPG with a fun narrative gimmick. Its story is split up into eight different sections set across eight different sections: Prehistory, The Middle Ages, Imperial China, Twilight of Edo Japan, The Wild West, Present Day, The Near Future, and The Distant Future. Each comes with its own protagonist and gameplay gimmicks before they all crescendo together in a final chapter.

A duel in the Wild West section of Live A Live.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

On top of that, this remake of a 1994 SNES game also gives the experience an extreme visual facelift with the HD-2D visuals that make games like Octopath Traveler 2 shine. Digital Trends found the game charming, with George Yang saying Live A Live “has the hallmarks that make it a good entry in the genre” in his three-and-a-half star review of the title. 

Recommended Videos

In North America, Nintendo published the Switch version of Live A Live. Now that the game is coming to other platforms, though, Square Enix has taken back over. To promote the upcoming release, Square Enix has released a demo for Live A Live on PS4 and PS5 today, which lets players try some of the Twilight of Edo Japan, The Distant Future, and The Wild West sections of the game.

Live a Live is available now for Nintendo Switch and will be released for PC, PS4, and PS5 on April 27. PlayStation Plus members can currently preorder the game for a 20% discount as well.

Tomas Franzese
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A former Gaming Staff Writer at Digital Trends, Tomas Franzese now reports on and reviews the latest releases and exciting…
Until Dawn’s PS5 remake heavily teases a sequel with post-credit scenes
Sam in the remake of Until Dawn.

A remake of Supermassive Games' Until Dawn was released for PlayStation  and PC last Friday. And those who beat the game over the weekend, myself included, have discovered post-credit scenes that heavily tease a sequel.

Spoilers for Until Dawn to follow

Read more
PlayStation is remastering the wrong games
Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.

Love it or hate it, a notable PlayStation trend this generation has been remastering PS4 games for PS5. Even though the console is fully backward compatible, we've gotten dedicated PS5 versions of the two The Last of Us games and will soon be getting new versions of Until Dawn and Horizon Zero Dawn for PS5. I find these remasters understandable, yet unnecessary, but I'm more frustrated that Sony isn't giving this treatment to the games that really need it.

I might be beating a dead horse by complaining that PlayStation VR2 doesn't have good first-party support. A year and a half into the headset's lifespan, it's abundantly clear that Sony is ready to move on to the hardware, especially now that there's a PC adapter available. Still, I can't help but wonder if the discourse around PSVR2 would be different had Sony decided to remaster games like Astro Bot Rescue Mission and Blood & Truth in the same way it is doing with Horizon Zero Dawn.

Read more
Recent PS5 firmware update may have caused big issues in some games
Final Fantasy 16's main cast standing together.

The latest PlayStation 5 firmware update has reportedly caused a lot of problems for players, making some games like Final Fantasy XVI practically unplayable thanks to intense graphical glitches.

Most of the reports (via Tom's Hardware) have come from players, although the official X (formerly Twitter) Final Fantasy XVI account said that Square Enix is looking into the issue.

Read more