The menu commands are fight, item and flee. But instead of just attacking when you choose "fight", you have to choose WHICH attack the character should use. Each attack has different range and effective area (For example, work diagonally 4 directions and affect an area of 3x3 squares) Some attacks take just one round to perform, some take several. Some temporarily levels you up, some down, some pushes the enemy backwards, some turn the around, som damage the board... Thus every attack has is advantages and disadvantages, and to keep track of this might seem difficult, but is actually quite easy to remember. As the characters advance in level, they learn new, more effective attacks.

Even the enemy has range and effective area on his attacks, so it's wise to keep track of where it is safe to be standing. Like in FF, you can get poisoned, drunk, paralysed, petrified etc, and even the battlefield can be damaged by such things as ice, poison, fire etc. Happily enough, all characters heal automatically, and for free, after every battle. Thus the process of healing the characters after every battle, is unnecessary.

As this becomes a quite complicated system, the number of fights in Live Alive is very small compared to a normal RPG. Instead, as described above, each single fight is more important and involving. Moreover, enemies do not appear at random, like in FF, with a few exceptions.