Toroko Warriors/Leah

Leah is a playable character in Toroko Warriors, being one of the twelve default playable characters in the game. She is a fairly crazed doctor with a split personality; she can be rude at times or a bit playful, she can also appear to be sour or very stubborn. Her feelings seem to stretch to a lot of places; she has had suicidal tendencies before and has been manipulative at points in the past. All this being said, just the idea of pissing Leah off may not appeal to you, as you are rather unlikely to be on her "don't-kill" list.

Leah is very unique in Toroko Warriors as instead of being based off of just her current self, she has a whole movepool unique to her to focus on her doctor elements. She does however have moves that are based on her different selves in the past and even has a few moves based on alternate reality versions of herself or Leahs from other dimensions, such as RTAverse Leah. Out of everyone in the support class, she is the only one with both good offense and defense, making her a rather unique character for such a category but she lacks some speed.

Playstyle
Leah has average height and weight as well as good offense and defense, a very rare combination of statistics unique to Leah. Her speed and health are rather mediocre, but they're not necessarily bad. Even then, she can use red thread to take herself atop ledges or utilize knives to climb walls, so her athletic ability isn't exactly limited or anything. She is a support character however, so her statistics are used to aid her allies more than herself. Smart players will find that Leah can fill a plethora of different roles, rendering her an unpredictable and dangerous character, akin to her personality.

Leah is a very complex character with a wide variety of different tools in her arsenal, each able to serve different purposes both in battle and when aiding a partner. In fact, Leah should actually be working with a partner at all times, as her playstyle is much more effective when she's working with someone else. It doesn't matter who Leah works with actually, she can team up well with dangerous Crow or the unpredictable Mistake and have little to no problems as long as she keeps moving and supporting them. The rules to working with others are simple; if they have low defense, take out foes. If they have little or no offense, defend them.

Unique to Leah is her needle finger, which has a wide variety of uses in this game, so many in fact that it keeps her game unpredictable as her movepool of strategies is so large. This finger is often used in her combos, which mostly consist of punches along with leftover powers from her D-E-A-D S-A-G-A stage of life, which utilize disturbing imagery and tentacles and detached mouths to attack her foes. This needle is special for a reason; the player can switch out that needle for another, she has a total of eight different needles overall with different effects that can really affect the tides of battle.

Her needles come in red, blue, green, orange, brown, purple, yellow, and black colors, the player able to easily select which ones to use using the right thumbstick after pressing down on it to open up the menu. Knowing Leah's needles is important and vital to her overall survival on the battlefield, especially as Leah could be the key to her team's success. These needles have very different effects; some are used for offense while others are used for defensive or supporting purposes. The needles however have no effect on robot characters or those with metal defenses; namely the Mistake and Iron Mask. Here they are:


 * Red: The usual needle that does decent damage when it hits foes. Can hit up to multiple times without any problems whatsoever.
 * Blue: Does less damage than the red needle, but quickly dizzies up the target and temporarily messed up their controls. Can be used to make a quick getaway. Takes nine seconds to refill.
 * Green: The weakest of the needles initially, it will soon prove to be a lethal toxin that quickly drains at her opponent's health and must be cured at a healing station. Takes eight seconds to refill.
 * Orange: A very strong needle that breaks upon contacting anyone. When it hits, it will break, requiring thirty seconds before it can come back. It is a powerful and reliable finisher move.
 * Brown: Like the green needle, this poisons, but instead of doing damage it reverses an opponent's control scheme. Takes twelve seconds to refill.
 * Purple: This needle injects a quick healing substance into whoever it hits, but overdoses can eventually poison the target. Players should only inject the needle up to three times, then take a minute to let the healing take place.
 * Yellow: It's actually just piss in a needle, if this is injected into anyone, they will begin experiencing very strange behavior, such as attacking themselves. Takes sixteen seconds to refill.
 * Black: This needle simply behaves like a tranquilizer dart, lulling whoever forcibly to sleep. This can be used to stop strong foes from getting too close up or put wild teammates to sleep. Takes thirty seconds to refill.

Leah retains plenty of attacks from her appearance in Fantendo Smash Bros. Victory, able to slash forward with needles between her fingers (also changeable; multiplies the power) and spin around a suitcase to damage foes. If this suitcase is hit, it will burst open to reveal eggplants! She can also lean forward and do a precise cut with a surgical knife, which she can also throw around lazily to hit off-guard opponents. A few new moves involve being able to eat up the eggplants to heal or throw the knife straight at her opponent's heart to deal massive damage.

Leah's defense is about as good as her overall offense, although it still requires careful managing when attempting to nurse a Crow player back to health or dealing with malevolent allies. She can create walls of tentacles to prevent foes from coming up close or threaten to bite them with her D-E-A-D S-A-G-A esque mouths, and she can also fire needles or utilize doctor equipment to keep herself and an ally safe. Experience from learning the teachings of a separate Leah also gives her great healing talent; she can heal herself and allies with the purple needle and "magically" remove diseases or toxins from them if given a bit of time.

The player has multiple strategies to use when controlling Leah, although most involve having a partner to stick around and aid. One is to follow a player into the battlefield and focus on keeping their health intact (like a Team Fortress 2 Medic) while keeping their own health up. Another involves tagging with a partner to dispose of foes that the other player cannot fight well but she has an advantage over. This works very well as she has a great hand in teamwork. In any situation, she can decide to ditch her partners if things look too bad for them both...like a traitor.

As for strategies for herself only, Leah can infiltrate enemy bases and poison or mess up her enemies to death, she works well as a one woman army and can take care of more than just one person at a time. She can easily fill in the guardian role that Sakeena can already do well or be the destructive defense-breaker that Quartz already fills in. In other words, Leah is a very good replacement character that can function in almost battlefield, like how she can find her place easily in about any game or fiction. She can scout for allies and heal them up if she has nothing else to do as well.

Leah isn't without her flaws though. Her speed isn't very good, meaning that she has a bit of a tougher time getting around compared to some others, but she works very well with speedy partners. Leah's needle switching is a little time-consuming to do too and she requires multiple moments to reload a few of her more useful needles. In addition, she's rather tricky to use because of her wide assortment of moves and the fact that the player has to constantly switch between movesets to use what they want to. In tough situations, the player can become really pressured and screw up while playing as Leah if they're not calm, leading to a demise.

Leah highly enjoys working with speedy, tricky or powerful fighters; playing with defensive or supportive players is a little boring and not really worth the player's time. The former three classes sometimes have trouble keeping their health up or holding their own ground against foes, and need support especially when facing their greatest fears. Leah is more than capable of pushing away or attacking any opponent, as she has very few real counters and her abilities are just enough to keep multiple foes away from her. She appreciates offensive characters the most, as they can deal with really speedy characters with her help.

While Leah can do all these different things, she is particularly useful in totally weakening the other team, closing them into their hideouts, and healing her teammates. She is a good partner for anyone -- including Crow -- but her best teamup is with Syande, who can reliably outspeed and defeat what Leah is threatened by, while Leah can take care of the electric and powerful foes that Syande has trouble taking care of. Their teamup is extremely lethal if it's two expert players working together, as they can take care of literally anyone -- besides Oni, who can destroy them both with absolute ease for she doesn't mind Leah's needles or her blood taken.

Leah's FINALE is the D-E-A-D S-A-G-A REBIRTH, an attack uniquely designed for her. When the player is ready, Leah will undergo a transformation that returns her to her disturbing goddess self, now at full power once more albeit only momentarily. While this FINALE takes the longest to charge up, its effects are perhaps the most devastating -- all across the battlefield, mouths, weapons and deformed imagery will pop up everywhere, and will randomly attack her opponents and even careless allies. During this stage, Leah will have highly enhanced speed and her needles have effects with quadruple the original power. The move ends after thirty seconds.

Leah is a strong, stable character in the support category with a wide variety of different moves she can utilize. She does have weak speed and few truly powerful moves, but she is a worthy support member and can be recognized as a staple for any team. Recommended for expert players only.

Needle Switch
By pressing down on the right thumbstick and rotating it around, the player can select different needles for Leah to use. Needles that are currently broken or are in the process of being refilled are grayed out, but those that can be used are glowing bright colors.

Needleburst
Needleburst can be activated by running forward and pressing either of the basic attack buttons twice. Leah will run forward with her needle and skewer it into the opponent, doubling its usual attack power and each move poisoning the opponent with the metal.

SAGA Rampage
If the player presses the attack buttons at the same time during a combo, Leah's limbs will transform into powerful, "gross" creatures that can do much more damage. When the combo ends, Leah will return to normal.

Stretcher
Is one of your allies injured? Hold down the bottom trigger buttons to call over Xerox! She will come over to you with a stretcher, and you can use this to take one of any highly injured ally or even yourself and take them back to home base.

Soul Bind
Shall Leah happen to be near death, pressing the special attack button RIGHT before her fall will allow her to flash red and take her opponent down WITH her. This is a rather cheap move, but it can help take down otherwise dangerous foes. Activating her FINALE instead of Soul Bind will give her a second of pure immortality as she gets pushed away from the foe.

Switch It Up
By pressing the inner triggers, the player will be able to switch between Leah's offensive and defensive movesets. Use whichever one you find more useful for your situation.

Standard

 * "This woman is one of Toroko's most famous characters, being this rather odd woman with a split personality and uhh...questionable past, full of insane moments -- once she was a GOD, another time she was a member of a cruel organization, and she did a ton of questionable things about this X-Ray girl...yeesh! So I bet you could guess she's a pretty odd fighter in this game?"

Alt

 * "Leah is actually a pretty formidable fighter in this game; while she is of the support class, she sports some pretty damn fine offense and defense here.  Because of her ability to almost take on anything, she can fit in well as a replacement member for anybody that's fallen, and help continue roles that have otherwise just fallen apart.  Utilize her needles to harm foes and heal friends, and see what's in store for you with her wide movesets!"

FINALE

 * "D-E-A-D S-A-G-A REBIRTH is a very interesting move indeed!  While taking the longest to charge, it has the most devastating effects, plummeting all her opponents (and allies, what a traitor) into a hell full of wide open mouths and harmful tools -- so much can happen in these thirty seconds, so you better take care to survive this hell of a battle!"