Live A Live: How to Beat Captain Square, and Rewards

Live A Live is more than your traditional JRPG, with plenty of variety in its presentation for fans of a blend of turn-based tactical gameplay, and even a mini-game that will help you hone your skills and tactics in an otherwise combat-light chapter, the Far Future.  Playing as Cube, you’ll find this game in the arcade cabinet of the spaceship’s recreation room, and it’ll be a challenge you can undertake to impress Kirk, a crewmate who is particularly fond of the game.  It will likely prove to be a challenge for players, so read on for our guide on How to Beat Captain Square, and the Rewards in Live A Live!

Live A Live: How to Beat Captain Square, and Rewards

Before you get too far into the experience, it should be noted that there is no reward for beating this minigame, but it’s a worthwhile challenge that’ll help with more challenging battle scenarios, particularly in the unlockable finale after you’ve beaten all the other chapters.  But Captain Square is a set of battles styled like the rest of the battles in Live A Live, each taking place on planets of our solar system, so 9 in total.  Each battle makes use of most of the titular hero’s unique skills, and his HP is based on Cube’s Max HP, so he can prove to be bulky, but think of each scenario as a battle puzzle.  For solutions, we’ve compiled the following approaches you can use to win any of these battles:

• Mercury – A total cakewalk and a good warmup battle, these Clickarocks can be easily dispatched by Plasma Ball shots, fired diagonally, so keep your distance and let loose.
• Venus – The Headberts can be hit with a Spacephage attack from a distance to score a One Hit KO (OHKO) from a safe distance.  You can use Pion Bomb as well, but this risks you getting hit with their deadly Explode attack, due to Pion Bomb’s longer charge time.  As always, keep an eye on your charge gauge.
• Earth – Don’t kill the Waterspouts at first, and bait at least one toward the Firewhirl to set off an Aquaflare, which leaves water terrain that can instantly kill them.  With the remaining Waterspouts, use Supernova, it’s a quick-charged attack that will instantly kill all of these enemies.
• Mars – Fire a Spacephage at the Teil Pup nearest to the Teil Broodmother, to set off as many negative statuses as possible in the first attack, then spam Spacephage on the Broodmother, potentially stacking poison damage.  Kill the Broodmother, all other enemies die instantly (always kill the leaders, with flags next to their HP bar.)
• Jupiter – The Cosmotrollers can only hurt you if you’re within their horizontal charging distance, so the 2 horizontal rows they occupy are what you must avoid.  You can chase them away using Spinning Star, and then use Pion Bomb to attack them while they helplessly scramble to get away.
• Saturn – Keep your distance from the Gemparapets and hammer them with Spacephage, using Plasma Charge to heal from their counters.
• Uranus – Also known as the literal worst, focus your efforts either on stacking poison damage from afar with Spacephage at the El Mirage (the only enemy that’s not an electric yellow square) or use Spinning Star to force your way through the Pymlis to a safe spot to pick the ones off on the south end of the boss, exposing him to your Quark Sword.
• Neptune – Make a mad dash straight up to the Lala (star with the biggest smile, Lalu’s look constantly surprised) and hit them with a Quark Sword, instant win.
• Pluto – Essentially a tougher rehash of the Venus level, there’s not much point in distinguishing these enemies.  Pion Bomb will deal with their heavier HP, but their explosion attacks are also deadlier and their head barrage attacks can interrupt this attack while charging if they knock you back.  Spacephage is a reliable, low-risk option.

You can play this throughout the chapter, either when Kirk is around, or not.  If you’ve advanced the story, you’ll be able to access Kirk’s quarters and use his computer, where there’s a note guarded by a password, which is “warp speed” that tells you he keeps his memory card at the foot of his bed.  Use this if you need to quit the Captain Square game but wish to save your progress, because if you die or quit otherwise, you’ll have to start over.

This concludes our guide to How to Beat Captain Square, and the Rewards in Live A Live!  While it’s not a game giving the most tangible rewards, yielding a potentially hollow catharsis, it’s good practice for tough combat scenarios.  Be sure to check out our other guides for the game!

Live A Live was released exclusively for the Nintendo Switch on July 22, 2022.