Letalis is Pokémon for GameBoy except you're battling with Roman gladiators

rockpapershotgun.com:

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