User Reviews (1 - 11 of 28)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Great turn-based strategy and little else.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I really enjoyed this game for its turn-based strategy. While the strategy here is not as complicated or in-depth as say, Final Fantasy Tactics, it is fun and engaging to play. The only real problem with the strategy is that because of how the leveling up system works, character choices in the context of skills become less and less relevant as the game goes on. What I mean by this is that at the beginning of the game there are far more skills than points that you have to buy with them. But as the game goes on you end up getting enough points to buy basically everything that is possible. What this means is that for both you and your opponents the uniqueness of your character disappears because by the end of the game every character already has so many of the same skills. This problem could have easily been taken care of by reducing the number of average points throughout the game, or at least during the second half. This is a significant balancing flaw that should not have been overlooked.

As for the rest of the game, there simply isn't much there. The videos are boring, the voices are mundane, and the plot is paper-thin. Microsoft seemed to put its heart into the strategy portions of this game and skimped on everything else.

All in all this is a great game if you love turn-based strategy and a not-so-great game if you don't.

Even so, given that there are almost no strategy games like this anymore, and Microsoft has no plans to make a sequel, strategy lovers should pick this one up without a thought.

Gladitorial combat at it's best

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 22, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is one of the few gladioator type games I like. It's a fantastic game. I can not believe there is no sequal to this game.
This is a gladiator turn-based RPG game. The leveling up is great. The battles are like Knights of the Old Republic(how you choose what ability you use) and chess(sans the restricted movement).
You choose from over 14 realistic classes (such as a legionare).The one thing I don't like about this game is that you can only have 20 people max.What kind of gladiator school is that!?
Oh, by the way,this game isn't a total gore fest like some people say. The goriest parts are the drawn cutscenes.There is a little blood in the battles.
This is a fantastic game.I'd reccomend it to anyone who likes RPGs and Gladiators.

Slow play

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: January 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Maybe it's just me but I felt like the battles were a bit to slow to me. There is a very nice story line in this game no matter which character you choose to start with, but it almost seems like more thought was put into the story than in the method of combat. Don't get me wrong I like the game I just think the combat could have been done diffrently to help give it the excitement it was appearently ment to have. The slowness of game play just seemed to cause me to lose interest a little sooner than I would have otherwise.

Just my 2 copper. If it helps great if not... *shrug* can't please everone.

GLADIUS IS AN RPG???????

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 30
Date: November 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I DON'T LIKE RPG'S BUT AS ALWAYS LUCAS ARTS MAKES IT BEAUTIFUL

Much Ado About Nothing

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 10
Date: December 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Based on the picture on the box cover, I got this game thinking it was based on the movie Gladiator. I thought it would play similar to the Lord of the Rings games, which were fast moving and pretty fun. Wrong! We played this game together as a family and all of us agreed it was the most boring and tedious game we had ever played. A great deal of time is consumed by the character's trite and meaningless conversation. Blah..blah..blah..we thought they would never shut up. When they acutally do get around to fighting, you have to plan every single movement and attack in advance for every single character in turns. Everything in this game takes forever. It took about 30 minutes for all of us to give this gladiator game thumbs down. Someone should put this thing out of its misery.

Worst game ever played

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: December 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Where do I even begin to explain how terrible this game is. First I'll start with the dialogue. I don't think they could have put less effort into it. What makes it worse is that they talk about 85% of the game just jabbering away in a monotone voices. I thought that I was gonna be running around killing guys in a wrestling game kind of way but with swords. Boy was I surprised, you make moves as if you are playing chess or something. You're character is stronger than everyone else so you just exchange blows with your enemy until he is dead and the only thing that plays as a variable is boxes, whoever is higher hits harder. I tried to get a little into the game before I made a judgement on it, but that didn't change my mind at all. If I haven't changed your mind yet, rent it from blockbuster they have it there. I do not doubt that you will be greatly disapointed with this terrible video game.

Great Plot, maybe TOO gory...NOT

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 11
Date: December 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Welcome to an alternate world where people, much like the ancient times in Greece. You are a gladiator, your only purpose in life is to kill your opposing foes.

This game is a lot of fun, not to mention so incredibly gory it's sickening. This game almost makes you vomit at the realisticness and gore...ALMOST. This game is so much fun to play, and so much fun to make horrid combos that will knock your enemie out cold, for good.

Overview:

Fun- 15/10, After you play this game you feel disgusted, it's great.

Gemplay- 15/10 a lot of fun to put together bone-crushingly brutal combos.

Graphics- 20/10 so gory, so great.

Difficulty- 10/10 pretty hard.

Overall-60/40

This game is so gory it's uncanny.But this game is a lot of fun to play.

Rent this game and see what you think, before you go out and buy this "Gore-Fest"...It's a lot of fun, but it depends how much gore you gcan tollerate.

Finally A Perfect Gladiator Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 10
Date: October 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is going to be perfect because it all reminds you of the gladiator days; from weapons to arenas. Graphics look perfect and so does the gameplay.

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.

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.

Review Page: 1 2 3 Next 

Actions