Assault Suit Leynos 2 Saturn Tribute Review: Mastering Retro Challenge

Assault Suit Leynos 2 first thundered onto the Sega Saturn in 1997, but until now it remained locked behind Japanese hardware and untranslated text. In March 2025, City Connection’s “Saturn Tribute” brings this mech‑shooter to Western consoles for the first time. At its heart, Leynos 2 is a side‑scrolling assault: you command a squad of armored suits through industrial wastelands and fortress corridors, laying down suppressive fire, shielding against onslaughts, and dashing past enemy ranks.

This Tribute edition layers modern comforts over the original’s demanding design. Full English menus and dialogue transform mission briefings from puzzles into clear objectives. A rewind feature and save‑state slots let you correct missteps in the heat of battle. Custom button mapping adapts the six‑button Saturn layout to today’s controllers, placing weapon swaps and tactical functions at your fingertips. Optional assists—reduced booster drain, stronger shields, extra armor—offer a safety net, yet they never dilute the rush of narrowly escaping a swarm of fighters.

Leynos 2’s steep difficulty feels intentional, rewarding careful ammo management and constant movement. Unlockable weapons and suit parts sit just beyond reach, tempting you to improve your rank and experiment with new builds. Even after decades, this package captures the pulse of 90s mech action while inviting fresh players to master its systems.

Framing the Mission: Story and Structure

Set against the conflict between the Sanraal Republic and the Zenith Empire, Assault Suit Leynos 2 casts you as part of the renegade 12th Special Assault Suits Squad—Kyle, Eddy, Maria and Dolph. Each pilot’s personality seeps through mission reports and radio chatter: Kyle’s brisk orders, Maria’s level-headed reassurances and Eddy’s quips under fire turn faceless missions into shared experiences.

Briefings unfold as scrolling text before each sortie, spelling out objectives and stakes. At first this feels like ticking off bullet points, but once your mech touches down, in‑battle radio calls bridge that gap. A sudden alert about incoming bombers jolts you to redirect fire, while offhand exchanges remind you that teammates share your risks. The English translation reads naturally, sidestepping stiff phrasing so that urgency and banter land with equal weight.

The twelve‑mission campaign cycles through enemy clear‑outs, tense convoy escorts and desperate defense holds. Early levels guide you through clearing squads of attackers, then convoys force decisions—race ahead to dismantle mines or guard a flank first?

Holding defensive positions demands careful movement more than raw firepower. Shifting objectives keeps momentum high, yet sometimes plot context slips away, making orders feel rote. When mission importance fades into rank checks, you sense untapped potential in tying each assignment to the squad’s personal arcs. It shows that tying mission goals directly to the characters’ stakes could make each firefight hit harder emotionally.

Engineering the Fight: Gameplay Mechanics

Leynos 2’s combat hits you with purpose from the first deployment. As a side‑scroll shooter, it gives you a dash boost that overheats if held too long, demanding a balance between sudden bursts and measured pacing. Tapping the boost to weave through enemy fire feels thrilling, especially when paired with the energy shield—an emergency buffer that flashes red as it absorbs damage. You learn quickly that standing ground under hailstorms of bullets isn’t an option; every encounter favors pilots who keep shifting and managing their resources.

Your mech carries six weapons slots, each with its own ammo count. Emptying your primary cannon forces a quick swap to backups—often a weaker machine gun or missile pod—so ammo tracking becomes a constant undercurrent of tension. These constraints mirror classic bullet‑hell games, where conserving shots fuels deeper engagement with each mission. Boss fights turn this into a dance, pressing you to switch weapons on the fly and exploit openings in massive armor plating.

Weighty physics give your suit a sense of mass. Turning or halting mid‑air needs careful timing, but thruster bursts counterbalance that deliberate feeling, reminding me of the nimble dodges in Freedom Planet’s action sequences. Here, the push‑and‑pull between heavy momentum and sudden agility creates a satisfying layer of mechanical depth.

Aiming options split between manual precision and an auto‑lock that can snag stray targets. Auto‑lock shines when pinning down flying units, but it can betray you in swarms, latching onto a weaker drone and leaving a tank‑class mech unchecked. Flipping aim modes with a single button keeps you in the moment, though I found myself accidentally triggering it at critical seconds.

AI teammates chip in with support fire, though they’re not reliable bodyguards. Their occasional saves highlight how much responsibility rests on your shoulders, similar to squad members in Metal Gear Solid 5 who flare for extraction but won’t rescue you in a pinch.

Specific missions crank the challenge up. Convoy escorts litter routes with landmines that force you to choose: clear traps first or fend off incoming fighters? Levels with tight corridors put your mobility under a microscope, turning every dash and shield into a statement about how well you’ve mastered the core mechanics.

Precision at Your Fingertips: Controls and Interface

Leynos 2’s control scheme asks you to master both weight and agility. The original Saturn pad had six face buttons and two shoulder triggers—a layout that modern controllers reframe with bumpers and extra triggers. The in‑game remapping menu removes guesswork, letting you assign weapons, boost, shield and menu access to whichever button feels natural. Custom layouts keep you focused on the fight instead of hunting for functions.

The heads‑up display tracks ammo counts, shield energy and booster cooldown at a glance. A small gauge shows your mech’s integrity, so you sense danger before alarms blare. Dialogue boxes and mission alerts appear on the edges, legible without pausing the action. That clarity helps the story unfold in rhythm with gameplay, rather than interrupting your momentum.

Pressing the “minus” button reveals the manual and Extra Options panel. Here you can toggle rewind, quick‑save slots and gameplay assists without leaving the cockpit. Rewinding a misfire or reloading a save state feels like part of the strategy, offering a moment to breathe before you dive back into chaos.

Forging Your Arsenal: Customization and Progression

Leynos 2 transforms each mission into a personal experiment in mech tailoring. The load‑out system offers nearly fifty weapons—everything from rapid‑fire machine guns to explosive cannons—and eight distinct suit frames that balance speed against armor.

Choosing a nimble scout model with limited plating turns every dash into a heartbeat‑quick challenge, whereas a heavy chassis soaks damage but demands careful positioning. Reward tiers—based on mission rank, completion time and hidden score thresholds—unlock new parts, encouraging you to push for higher performance.

That freedom breeds diverse approaches. On a fortress assault, I once outfitted my mech with long‑range missile pods and a reinforced shield, staying at the rear to pick off enemy turrets. In another run, I stripped down to a lightweight frame plus rapid boosters, weaving through hailstorms to disable objectives before foes could regroup. Those contrasting experiences illustrate how Leynos 2’s mechanics support its narrative of a ragtag squad adapting to impossible odds: your builds become part of the story you tell each playthrough.

Between missions, the parts shop menu feels less like a dry upgrade screen and more like a war‑room briefing. Redistributing power between weapons, shields and thrusters mirrors the strategic shifts you plan for upcoming stages—whether you need shield endurance for a mine‑littered convoy route or extra firepower for a boss with massive armor plates.

Replay value spikes as you chase top scores. Unlockables tempt you back to familiar levels, where new weapon combos reveal hidden tactics and unspoken story beats—like discovering that a plasma rifle excels at breaking cover before your squad moves in. In a landscape crowded with linear shooters, Leynos 2’s depth and experimentation leave you wondering which build will reshape the next mission’s narrative for good.

Sound and Sight in Motion

Leynos 2’s 2D sprites still command attention with surprisingly intricate detailing: rivets glint on mech hulls, and weapon firing animations leave trailing sparks that sell each blast’s impact. Boss encounters feel monumental thanks to dynamic scaling—the first time you lock onto a towering Zenith behemoth, its shadow looms across the layered background, reminding you of how small your suit truly is.

Parallax scrolling gives depth to industrial skylines and debris‑strewn battlefields, making each stage visually distinct. When screens fill with fighters and explosions, you occasionally notice a dip in frame rate—an echo of the Saturn’s original hardware hiccups, which strangely reinforces the vintage appeal even as it interrupts the flow.

Display choices split between a centered 4:3 window and a stretched “large” mode. The former preserves pixel clarity for purists, while the latter fills modern screens at the cost of slight distortion. Both options remind players that pixel art can still hold its own against contemporary shaders when treated respectfully.

The original FMV intro arrives in grainy, low‑resolution glory. It doesn’t match today’s standards, yet it feels like a time capsule—an invitation to what follows. In‑mission, the soundtrack blends driving electronic rhythms with orchestral swells, matching tempo to firefights and lulls to tactical planning. Explosions thump in the audio mix, and translated voice briefs land with crisp clarity, ensuring you never miss a warning or team call. This package honors the decade‑old source while inviting you to listen—and look—closely at every mechanical beat.

Taming the Trials: Difficulty, Accessibility & Replay Value

Leynos 2 greets new pilots with relentless pressure. Early missions throw waves of foes and limited ammo at you, teaching that pausing to reload or hide invites rapid defeat. Running dry on shells often means restarting from checkpoint, though backup weapons offer a brief lifeline. This tight resource management injects tension into every skirmish, so each dash and shield use carries weight.

To ease that sting, the Tribute edition adds a rewind feature that rolls back a minute or two of action—ideal for correcting frantic misfires. Quick‑save slots give mid‑mission lifelines, and toggles for lower booster drain, stronger shields or extra armor let you calibrate toughness before battle. These options aren’t crutches; they serve as training wheels, helping you grasp core systems before you disable assists and face Leynos 2 on its own terms.

Hardcore mech‑shooter veterans will savor the unyielding challenge, while newcomers can use assists as a bridge. Starting with every aid turned on, you learn pacing and movement without punishing failure, then gradually strip away support for genuine triumph.

Replay value pulses through its scoring system. Earning higher ranks unlocks new parts and weapons, tempting you back to familiar battlefields with fresh strategies. Experimenting with bespoke load‑outs on hardened levels reveals hidden tactics—and that satisfying spark when a risky build finally clicks. What build will rewrite your next run’s story?