Gladius Playstation 2

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Great game, bad ending

I just broke this out of storage; it's been years since I've played it and beaten it. It seems I'm falling in love with it all over again.

It's cool to use the different type of strategies of choosing your gladiators and where to put them at the start of the battle. My favourite gladiators are the Secutor and Murmillo.

The "swing bars" are a lot of fun to use, and with enough practice you can crit all the time.

The only thing that really disappointed me about the game is the hastily constructed ending, where your gladiators wage a battle against this silly, coming out of the ground, multi-headed tree trunk type thing. It ends very abrubtly, and you can't even play or look at your characters... it just goes to the credits and that's it. Kind of odd way of ending a game that you have just poured countless hours into. Very melo-dramatic; and is the only reason that I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

The world needs a Gladius II !

"Wonderfully and fearfully made"

There are few enough strategy games for PS2, and this one is hugely addictive if you like turn-based battle gaming. I may have played this game more than any other! But, ... but, but, but, ... Part of that is that it takes such a long time to play this game.... An enjoyable peice of work, but poor game design prevents an unqualified endorsement. This is a very slow game to play. There are an unnecessarily large number of menu screens, a fairly pointless wandering-in-the-world component between arenas, and agravatingly and annoyingly slow moves on the battlefield. Also, a disappointing level of diversity between arenas and the number of characters on the field at any one time. In other words, a really good game (if you enjoy this sort of thing), but marred by some appalling design.

The title rhymes with Tedious

Gladius is a Gladiator-like PlayStation 2 game developed by LucasArts. The premise of the great seemed like a winning combination of role playing elements and combat. The end result was a little boring and repetitive. Gladius is not that bad of a game - just time consuming.

Before you can really be able to play the game, you will spend about an hour going through an extensive training session that teaches you how to play. The game developers were kind enough to include every single instruction on gameplay into the game, so you don't even need to open the included instruction booklet. The problem this creates is you have to keep reading screen after screen of mostly redundant or self-explanatory instruction. Occasionally, the characters onscreen will have pointless mini-conversations that only slow things down more.

The game is played by going to different towns and fighting in their arenas. Some fights have entry fees, but the rewards are much greater if you win. After you have fought and won several smaller fights, you may compete in the town tournament. If you win that, then there is a town championship. With each fight you win, your respect in that town will increase. Higher levels of respect get you better prices on equipment and more choices for recruiting more gladiators to fight with you.

Your characters gain experience after each winning battle. Like any other RPG where you build up your characters, each level gained brings you more abilities and options to learn skills which help you in combat. The game also features 4 different nature Affinities: earth, wind, water, and fire. Choosing to follow a certain Affinity allows you special moves and more damage with weapons favored by that Affinity.

Once you make it past the obligatory training sequences, you will be able to walk around the land and visit a bunch of other cities and towns that have their own arenas and gladiators. Each environment and the included opponents are different, bringing some degree of variation to the game. However, combat is basically the same no matter where you go.

Combat in Gladius is turn-based, but most of the combat area maps are so small that there isn't really any room to develop a strategy. It comes down to moving and attacking and moving on. Whoever is strongest wins and that's pretty much it. You do have some skills and things you can use to best enemies, but you can guess the outcome of any battle just by looking at the average level of your opponents. All in all, combat plays like a glorified board game.

The name Gladius rhymes with the word tedious. That's called irony. Each combat session requires you to watch a 10 second overhead view of the arena at the start and end of the battle. This combined with loading times makes each fight take about a minute to start, not counting the actual combat. During combat, you get to see the same animations over and over again so much that you ignore them. When it comes time for your move and you choose to attack, your only interaction is a swing meter than functions like what is used in a lot of golf games. You have a bar with some markers on it and you try to hit your X button when the fast-moving cursor goes over certain markers. It couldn't be any more simplistic.

All in all, Gladius is actually kind of fun to play. I am one of those people who obsess over games where you can level up your characters, so I keep making myself play just to see how much I can build up my people. This is really nothing more than a board game with a few extras.

Good Graphics, really slow play.

I rented this game when it first came out. It is a decent RPG. The problem that I had with it is that all the arena look exaxtly alike. There is very little variation from town to town within the game. Although the character development is a bit tedious it is very in depth. I love RPG's for the story aspect. This one has a pretty good story. Overall, I would say that it is OK. It certainly is not a Knights of the Old republic or a Final Fantasy.

Great sword-swinging fun!

Gladius is a turn-based tactical strategy game. That is, your gladiators and your enemies each take turns moving and attacking in a grid-based arena. Gladius is very deep and can be complex if one does not take the time to learn how to really play it. I had this game for a month before I really discovered how great a game this is. I would reccomend the strategy guide as well, to help you spend your gladiator's earned Skill Points more effectively.
There is so much customization and character development - it is great! The gold you earn from battles is spent on better Weapons, Shields, Armor, Helmets, and Accessories. The graphics are very good, and the "paper doll" representation of your character looks great as you try on all the different equipment. Just like in Japanese RPG's, your character stats change colors, red or green, to indicate if the equipment will help or hinder your chance of success in the arena. You can also customize the color of your character's hair, skin color, armor, and clothes. They also have four different styles of outfits you can choose from for each character - you can make all your gladiators the same color (i.e. team colors) or just make them all individually completely different. It's really cool.
As you earn more Experience, your Level or stats goes up - Hit Points(HP), Defense(DEF), Power(PWR), Damage(DAM), Accuracy(ACC), Initiative(INI), Constitution(CON), and Move Rate(MOV). As these abilities go up, the better your gladiator will perform in the arena. Different equipment will also change these a bit. For instance, a certain sword might increase your DAM by 2, but reduce your DEF by 1 which might be good for your offensive-heavy Samnite, whereas your Archer might prefer a weapon that increases ACC but decreases MOV, or whatever. That's just two examples, but the customization is limitless.

Your gladiators are divided into 5 classes - Light, Medium, Heavy, Support, and Arcane . Combat works on a paper-scissors-rock style. Light beats Heavy, Heavy beats Medium, Medium beats Light. Support and Arcane classes are best used from a distance (arrows and lightning bolts, obviously.) As you go up in Level, you also earn Skill Points. These are used to customize your fighters even more! Each character has dozens of different Skills to potentially learn, but you will never earn enough Skill Points to learn them all, so you must select few that complement the gladiator to your liking the most. Once again, I recommend the Gladius strategy guide to help you choose the best Skills for each Class - there are so many branches to develop your character, it can get daunting and hard-earned Skill Points unwisely spent.

The Swing Meter is what keeps the combat from getting boring and static. Just like in golfing games, it's a meter at the bottom of the screen. You have a normal hit(yellow), critical hit(red), and miss zone(blue). It's not too terribly difficult to score critical hits on a semi-regular basis, but it makes you pay attention and be involved in how your fighters do in battle. Enemy A.I. is actually OK. During the fights where the object is something other than all-out combat, (i.e. Points Battle, Barrel Break, Defend the Statue, or King of the Hill) the computer will do some dumb things, but during true battle the computer will stomp you if you don't employ the right tactics and appropriate gladiators (luckily, you can preview who your opponents will be beforehand, so that you may assemble your team with the best advantage.) You are the leader of a gladitorial School, so you are able to recruit a large variety of fighters to choose from.

This game is HUGE. It will take a long time to go all the way through it. You must travel with your School through 4 different lands and compete in numerous Leagues and Tournaments, with the ultimate goal of being able to take on the best Schools in the High Tournament in Caltha.
Each land you travel through (Nordagh, Imperia, Windward Steppes, and Southern Expanse) all have an average of 3 to 7 towns. In each town, there are numerous Leagues and Tournaments to compete in.

Please give this game a try. If you enjoy deep and involved games that can quickly consume hours of your free time, this is a game for you. I hope this game does well, so that we might be able to look forward to Gladius II.