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The title rhymes with Tedious

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: May 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

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.

The Best Game of The Year-Ben N.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 27
Date: July 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is by far the best game of the year it proved to be powerful success at the gaming aution gamers praying for a chance to even look at this game were overwelmed with joy Gladius is a type of Gladiator Game that take you Beyond the Stadium and into the Ring itself feeling as if your the one who is alive feeling the pain itself of course this game has naother adventure the role playing part which is spectacular when this game arrives buy it with pride-----Thumbs Up!!!!!!!!

Overall Grade: A

Fun, and Repetitive

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: July 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing Gladius for a little over a week now, and when I first began playing I could not put the controller down, after turning the game off last night I have not been able to bring myself to turn it back on. The gameplay is your normal stategy type RPG, the voice over acting is so bad it's actually funny. The fact is this game is not very challenging at all, as an avid RPG fan the fact that your charecters cap at level 13 is very frustrating. Random encounter are virtually non existent, One good thing about this game are the charecters each have there own distinct advantages and disadvantages, the skills are excellently done with one gripe that you can't unlearn any skills if you decide they stink which a few do, stay away from combo 1 and save for combo 2 you'll use that more often. Overall this is a fun game for about 30 hours of play it becomes extremely repetitive midway through.

Very fun and well done

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: April 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

To start, this game is listed as an RPG and while it is most certainly that, it is a turn based RPG, which means that players take turns on the battlefield plotting out their moves, attacks, spells etc. If you've ever played Final Fantasy Tactics on PS1 and liked it, then you will like Gladius. If you aren't a fan of those games and are buying this game because you expect a Final Fantasy type of game then I'm afraid you will be disappointed. That being said, on to the game. The game starts off a little slow with some tutorials on how to adjust to the battle system and flow of the game. Luckily, if you have played it and know what you're doing or just want to figure it out for yourself, you can skip through most of it fairly quickly. The graphics are fairly good--the people and the beasts look pretty realistic. There is a lot of customization in the game --you can choose where to put skill points and like Final Fantasy Tactics the armor you wear will also improve your HP on top of leveling up. The strategic gameplay on the battlefield is also very fun and simple to learn, although I really don't use the affinity system much myself and am probably missing out, but I succeed anyways. The game is a game that you can easily put down and then come back to and it's not so addicting that you'll waste your life away playing. I find that its a very fun game to play leisurely when you have a half an hour to kill or more. You can play it battle after battle if you want. So to be brief, I will give the pros and cons in a list:
Pros
-Very fun gameplay that is easy to learn
-Lots of characters to recruit for your school for a changing face in the gameplay
-Customize the colors of skin, hair, and outfits of your gladiators
-Story that is not too deep but well enough written to move the plot along
-Lasting fun

Cons:
- Corny voiceovers and dialogue
- Battling gets tedious sometimes

So there you have it. This is a good game that is pretty cheap right now and if you are fan of tactical games like I am, go ahead and pick it up! I promise you won't be disappointed.

Your the Gladiator.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 10
Date: January 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is going to rock! I'v heard everything there is to hear about it out and this game is going to be awesome. I know its been said that no game lives up to its hype, but thats not true-GTA3, GTA:Vice City, Metal Gear Solid:SOL, Final Fantasy X, and Ace Combat 4 just to name a few. I believe that this game will be one of those exceptions that will astound you and make you further appreciate the fact that you own a PS2.
This is a role-playing type game, but there is really no way to put a certain label on this game. There are several character classes to choose from at the beginning of the game and each one has its own strengths and weaknesses. When you choose a character, you then go on to prove yourself in the Colliseum. While doing this, you can create a band of gladiaters from different character classes and whats cool is that based on your decisions and strategy in the battle or in the game, then they will start taking a personality of their own. Check into to this game more, because I can almost bet money that this game will become a hit and possibly strike up a new franchise!

Good Graphics, really slow play.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: February 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

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.

"Wonderfully and fearfully made"

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: May 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

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.

Turn Based Combat Gladiator Style. Woot!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is turn based combat. If you don't know what that means, you may not like it, ok. However, if you think that Front Mission 3 was one of the best games back on the PSone, or Advance Wars is some killer GBA action, then you just might be very pleased with this.

I've only played to the Egypt like land in the Viking gal half of the game, which I assume is about 75%. That's about 60 hours of play.

This game differs from Front Mission 3 or Advance Wars is that this is with Gladiators. And you're fighting in arenas. Characters level up, you buy new and better equipment, and recruit and expel fighters from your school.

The graphics are good. The load times are acceptable, and it's also nice that questions from the FAQ are presented during load times. Combat is tense at times, or overly easy at other times. And, even though I have 20 gladiators in my party, I really tend to use a core five or six mostly. And these actually aren't the main characters in the game either.

With it selling for $10 used here on Amazon right now, anyone who likes strategy or knows they like turn based combat, this shouldn't be missed.

Decent concept, mediocre execution

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: November 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I must say, this game is pretty fun. However, there are lots of little things that have decreased the enjoyability of my experience, this game definitely lacks polish.

The most critical thing for me here is the lack of stability. During the beginning of the game, it is very stable and fully playable; but the further I progressed, the more and more it crashed on me. It is very frustrating to lose the results of a 20 minute battle (assuming that you save between every battle) simply because the code just isn't robust.

There are plenty of other pet peeves that I have with the game, but they are relatively small, and numerous. This game is good, and I probably would've given it 4 stars if the stability wasn't so poor. Keep in mind, this is for the PS2 version, I do not know about XBox or Gamecube versions.

i got bored very quickly.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 9
Date: July 13, 2005
Author: Amazon User

let me start off saying that this was an impulse buy. on the back, it had a rating of 9/10 from game informer, and it was made by lucasarts, a company i trust, so i thought, "okay i'll get it." big mistake. I played it as soon as i got home, expecting a fighting game where you could actually control how the character fights and moves. but instead it's a game where the characters move in an almost chess-like manner. and the dialogue is very very slow. luckily, i also bought LOTR The third age, where you can at least go through the game without menu-surfing 24/7.

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