Hello!
As usual, once in a while, I choose one old game of the past worth playing (last time the game was Professor McLogic Saves the Day), and this time it will be Strangeluv's Leo & Leah: a love story, a 2010-2011 RPGmaker2003 game that was also the RMN.net featured game in March 2011!

This will also be the last time I review a game by Strangeluv, since I reviewed them all! Now let's see them, if you're curious:
- A Home Far Away
- Wyesse
- Spike Lee's The Twilight Zone

It's important mentioning these games because, while not connected to Leo & Leah, I found some "parts of them" in this game: some monsters and their spries from Wyesse, a minigame and interface from Spike Lee's The Twilight Zone, and so on. Little, maybe unimportant details, but still interesting.


In this game there are talking animals, so why not also ghosts and other supernatural beings?

Anyway let's start talking about Leo & Leah from one of the strong points, the story: apparently it's a classic clichè', Leah was kidnapped and we play as the brave little Leo, a lion cub. This will be an odissey for the little lion, that will explore caves, jungles, a castle, a ghost pirate ship and others locations where he will meet friends and foes. Friends like the black cats that are used as save points, or the penguin that will set a shop and will sell healing items to him. But also enemies, like frogs and monkeys, and other antagonists that I will not mention to avoid spoilers.

An important aspect I can mention is the fact that besides Leo's adventures, there's a lot going on: many characters have other difficulties and quests (otherwise this would be like those old classic arcade games in which the hero need to save her princess/girlfriend/family/brother/son), just like our protagonist, but their stories are sometimes only touched, Leo gets infact involved with these events but rarely solves them, most of the time he'll left these people to solve their problems by themselves, other times he mai even worsen their situation. And speaking about the story and events, do not expect just a little lighthearted tale, because there are funny moments and sad situations, despite the presence of talking animals this is still a world where even innocent creatures die. I must say that this is a game with many surprises!


In this battle I've to catch the notes avoiding to be shot, while listening to Sergio Leone's "Ecstasy of Gold" from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"

Now the gameplay: Leo & Leah isn't a classic rpgmaker jrpg game but has many aspects of them, despite the unusual setting and talking animals, anyway it also features some custom made sections and minigames. Enemies are always visible on the maps, and can be avoided, if you walk they move around randomly, if you run (keeping pressed the Shift key) they will look out for Leo. And pressing 3 Leo can dash forward to attack and get the first strike in combat.

Combat is the classic Rpgmaker2003 encounter with side view battlers, standard attacks and special skills, and exploring the maps will also lead to discover new skills, or items that can give bonus to the stats or special abilities like a better dash attack or the ability to swim. Items can be found or bought, and speaking about the skills, each character can equip three optional skills from a pool of six, but each slot allows equip two particular skills, so the customization is a bit limited. These skills are all quite useful, and the dash attack is the key to win, anyway remember that ending a battle with a high value of SP (Survival Points, the equivalent of MP or Mana Points of the other games, in other words the resource needed to use skills) is rewarded, and one rewards is healing. Cool. Consider also that healing items do not heal a fixed number of points, but a percentage, so even the old items become useful at later stages. Oh you can also recover Hps and Sps just by walking but, as you can probably guess, the recovery is veeeery slow!


The game includes also some classic battle encounters... EWW! She spits in disgust!

Now the visuals... they're simply AWESOME! This game is stylish, it looks like a SNES game, the various places are colorful and full of little details, if there is something I can complain about is that some maps are really big and there is some backtracking required. This is really the only problem I had, otherwise this was an excellent work, because dispite the use of ripped sprites and edits, the final result is surprisingly coherent and charming (Secret of Mana-style). Cutscenes are well made, dungeons and locations looks also different, there are many creatures and places, so there is no repetitivity of the scenarios during the adventures of Leo. The music is really interesting, it has some particular choices and popular themes that you probably already heard before, in any case it's a good selection and I found nothing out of place or even bad at all. Good job here too!

Final Verdict
Leo & Leah, despite some really minor flaws and a gameplay that still has a lot in common with many other rpgmaker games, is a cool adventure that will keep you entertained for 6-7 hours. Even if sometimes the secondary characters almost outshine the real protagonists of the story, I found it to be a really charming adventure and carefully crafted world and story. Very very good.


Oh well... what about NO?