What I wouldn’t give to have this be a real (but potentially less lethal) sport! My uni days were filled with split-screen versus games and Lethal League very often found it’s way into our daily rituals of junk food, occasional studying and lovingly competitive abuse. The premise is simple but expertly stylized and amazingly satisfying when mastered. When I came across it in the PS store by chance it gave we a wave of nostalgia so intense it knocked my proverbial socks off. While this isn’t a story-esque epic it is exactly what you need for gaming parties or chill out sessions. The perks of playing it in Japanese are always a win but being able to relive the fights of Candyman and Latch again warms my heart. This ones for you Taylor!
Platform and Languages
Lethal league used to be a PC exclusive however it’s now readily available on most platforms aside from mobile. For this review I played through the Playstation port. It can easily be picked up on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Playstation or Xbox for around £10-£15.
The language options are fairly standard, including around 10 languages, mostly European, but obviously with Japanese across all platforms I’ve seen. The language can be changed from the settings menu on the title screen but not during any gameplay.
Glossary
Usability
Lethal League is one of those games that features little to no language at all within the primary game play, aside from 2 or 3 words to say how many wins or outs you’ve had. I initially wasn’t expecting much so this wasn’t exactly a disappointment. I went in with the mindset that any language found would be a plus. Lethal League does seem to have moved on a bit since my early 20’s though (or I’ve become ever forgetful) because I don’t remember there being a story mode. You can imagine my surprise as well when it turned out to be pretty damn good!
The story is broken down into a branched node-like progression, each branch focusing on a different character or objective. The “missions” themselves follow exactly the same formulae as the regular 1v1s but with an added cinematic dialogue before and after each bout. These can either be narrative, spoken by the mysterious Queen, or conversations between the opponents. While there is no voice audio there are noticeable differences between the manners of speaking for each character. Due to the cool and almost gang-like aesthetic, especially in certain characters like Switch and Raptor, a lot of the speech features rough colloquialisms and quirky vocab. This type of text can be slightly more difficult to follow at times however it’s not in any sort of huge volumes here so it makes it more digestible and extremely useful in expanding your variety when it comes to reading spoken styles. An odd curveball (perhaps pun intended) was also seeing a variety of themes, such as sport (obviously) but also politics, investigation, police work and institutionalising. All of these are good themes to come across when looking for them but it’ll also keep you on your toes here, bolstering your vocab.
It really does help that the ratio of readable content to gameplay is as balanced as it is as, for me personally, I found myself less inclined to spam through any dialogue as I knew it would be brief. The matches would be over in a flash too so I wasn’t getting pulled into any intense and focus absorbing gameplay on a regular basis. If anything I found that the matches were the most tedious part of sitting and playing the game! Having not seen the story before I wanted to sit and absorb it, taking in what was happening or who the big bad would be, as well as seeing a sprinkling of new characters to delve into the back stories of.
It helps all the more that the UI and clarity of the language is on point. At no points are there any losses in clarity. The text is well sized and reasonably unstylized, allowing the focus to sit with the much more interesting artwork. Additional, the cutscenes mentioned before have been made to emulate widescreen. This gives the bonus of making the scenes look objectively cooler, almost like a movie, but also allows the text to sit on a clear black backdrop, whereas other titles can be guilty of putting subtitles directly over gameplay.
Included in the options from the single player menu is the tutorial. This is a very simple and very short two parter showing you all of the moves and tactics available to you as a new Lethal League combatant. You’ll be pitted against an empty level, occasionally a training dummy, and asked to carry out the easiest of inputs, however, you’ll receive written instructions on screen in a step-wise manner. Even if you’re familiar with the game (you may not need to be anyway, there are like 6 buttons…) it’s still worth playing through both tutorials, perhaps a few times, to familiarise yourself with the basic language of each move.
Next up is the menus. From the title screen you’ll be able to view quite a few sub-menus (some significantly better than others). All feature the same above mentioned quality so are easy on the eye and worth reading. You can mostly disregard the online and challenge menus if you want to find readable content, however, the single player and contents menus are much more abundant. In the single player menu you can select the mode you’d like to play and move on to the character screen. Here you’ll find a descriptive breakdown of all of the playable characters available, including their species, age and how they’ve come to be in the Lethal League.
The language here is manageable, typically spanning 5-7 lines of text, however features much less conversational and much more difficult descriptive language. It’s also further encouragement to unlock all of the characters. All of the character descriptions provide a different but welcome challenge compared to the story mode seen before. This theme of language also extends into the content menu where you can view or shop for costumes, levels, game modes and more, each with further descriptions.
All in all, Lethal League is a sports game, and a short one at that. I can by no means recommend it to learn a books worth of new vocabulary however it is a lot of fun, can be played without too much focus if required and can even be played amongst friends in your target language. It exceeded my expectations and explored a lot of themes while doing so. Definitely give this one a look, especially if you’ve played it before and fancy some vibrant, violent nostalgia.
Challenges and Methods
The Multiverse Achievement
As you progress through the story you’ll notice that certain nodes are ticked while others aren’t. The reason is that you can play the same mission multiple times as each character in the scenario. If you do this with all characters available you get an achievement call the Multiverse. Aim for this, but while doing so ensure you read all of the dialogue, soaking up all of the new words and repetition.
Join the League
Descriptions! Descriptions are always the key, and in a game like Lethal League, where the content is quite scarce, they are the best real source of readable content. There are only 12 characters (at least at the time I wrote this) and so learning all of the words in their profiles is possible and recommended. Try it out, limit yourself if you want to make things more of a challenge. Only use a character if you can read their full description perfectly!
Previous Posts
Additional Images
Games & Kanji 