The allure of the sea-green GameBoy screen is difficult to resist. Picking up from where Pokémon left off two decades ago, Letalis is a bleepy-bloopy retro RPG about wandering from town to town and doing battle with dodgy local leaders to prove your worth. But you won’t be doing the fighting yourself, God no. Leave that to the squad of Roman gladiators hiding in your back pocket.
It’s not exactly like the Pokémon battles of yore, to be fair. Fights involve up to three battlers at a time, feeling a bit more like classic Final Fantasy. And their moves are determined mostly by whatever weapons they’re holding. A shield will let them block and lower the damage of an incoming attack, for example. Some weapons slash multiple opponents in a single swing. Others cause enemies to steadily bleed health, or become dazed and miss a turn.
All fairly classic stuff then. Standing in for the elemental types of Fire, Earth, Water, et cetera are some different warrior classes with distinct fighting styles – Bandits, Centurions, Tritons, and… a Ronin!? How the Japanese warrior ended up in a world of ancient Roman arenas, I don’t know. But it’s no more outlandish than a yellow rat that shoots electricity from its cheeks. There are libraries in each town that will steadily explain how each fighter stacks up against the others, but to be honest I normally need a big child-friendly chart to help me out with this stuff. Luckily, the fighting screen will show the word “advantage” when you inspect an opponent to show that your current fighter will draw extra blood.
There are other subtleties fitting of turn-based biffing. Using the same attack twice in a row will result in half the usual damage. And you can level up your brawlers by killing foes of greater rank (the flashing “evolve” animation for this slaps me in the memories). You learn all these details by wandering around the first village, chatting to the folks bobbing up and down as they stand in the street. Ah, it’s just like 1999, when understanding a game meant milking every drip of dialogue you could from the wise people of your hometown.
There is one more blood-soaked difference. Your fighters can die outright. No precious “fainting” or life-saving escapes to the Poké hospital here (though there is a lady who will cure you on the road for some cash). The permanent deaths of your team makes things a little more hardcore (and probably a bit grindy if things go badly wrong). But your fighters also regenerate health if you put them on the bench for a fight.
All in all, a neat injection of nostalgia. I will say it feels weird as hell to play GameBoy style games on a giant PC screen. If you have a SteamDeck though, you’re sorted. This is another little treat we’ve found in our recent trawls through the great Steam Next Fest lagoon. Not sure when the full game is coming out, but you can play the demo now.