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Great sword-swinging fun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 26
Date: January 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

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.

Strategy, role-playing, violence...everything but a plot.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: January 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Actually, my title is misleading. It has a plot. But this isn't what I've come to expect. If, in the beginning of FF7, the narrator explained in overdramatic tones who and what Cloud was, what Sephiroth was planning, and constantly hinted that Aeris was going to die, who would give a rat's rear end about the plot? That's what they did with Gladius. I kid you not.

Narration aside, this is an awesome game. Anybody who loved playing FF Tactics is probably going to like it (although it's much, much easier than Tactics.) It's NOT an action game. It's a strategy RPG. Expect some battles to take a while.

I expected the wide variety of classes and huge number of weapons to be worthless baggage, but LucasArts seems to have balanced the game well. It's decently complex wihtout requiring you to memorize the inch-thick manual that comes in the DVD case.

Of course, too much of a good thing can get annoying. You travel around the world and fight in many arenas, but it's pretty much all the same. A decent grasp of basic tactics will see you though the whole game. Paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper.

I noticed someone else complaining about enemy AI. They're right. The computer is STUPID. You can set up a beautiful, classic defensive formation, with archers ready to rain down death and soldiers guarding them, and the enemy will blindly charge at you. Even weak, arcane classes that the tutor character Usus claims should 'hang back and pelt the...gladiators with spells' will try to beat an ogre to death with their staves. However, the head-to-head option is pretty darn cool, as is the in-game multiplayer support.

My biggest complaint: replayablilty. There isn't any. When I spend fifty bucks, I wanna be seriously entertained. And while Gladius is addictively fun, the plot isn't going to draw me back. Niether is the character development system: by the time you've beaten one of the character's games, you've used every skill and every class that exists. They could take a serious lesson from Dungeons and Dragons.

All in all? Fun game. If you're thinking about getting that sacrelige FFX-2, blow your fifty bucks here instead.

2 Years Of Waiting Pays Off!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: November 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Before I start to review this, let me say I had reserved this game 2 years before realease. That's how much time, maybe even more, i would wait for this game. Wow. From the beautifully done opening sequence, to the intense brutality of the galdiator rings, this game is one of a kind. It has a Final Fantasy Tactics feel to it in the sense of the way you move and attack. In my opinion, the most innvoative feaeture is the swing meters. I like how if you time your swings right, you do more damage. Another thing that just blows me away is the animations. From Ursula's spells to the incedible cut scenes.
That brings me to another point. The acting in this game is phenominal. Kudos to the actors and writers!! Gladius also lets you create your own school. This makes for a very open ended experienece. It almost follows Baldurs Gate in the sense of having a story, but not really having to go with it. You can do quite a bit without the story. That is because of the Godly world map. Yes godly. This may be one of the best world maps i have ever seen. It rivals FF7 and Wild arms 2 in terms of vastness and beauty. I honesty spent 3 hours alone on the world map gazing at its supreme beauty. The arenas In this game really bring the experience together. They are all differnt and have differnt scenarios like King Of The Hill, Domination, Deathmatch, Fast-Money, and Beast Battles. This makes for an ever changing gameplay experience that never gets old!! I also love how the characters advance. It is very easy to understand and very easy to master. This makes a gameplay experience that all can enjoy. All in all, Gladius is one of the best RPG experinces for any console. I reccomend this game HIGHLY!! It's now one of my 4 favorite games. Please Check this out!! I finish with the words of Crowe: "In the ring we die, and in the ring we are more alive than ever"

Great turn based combat with a plot too!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: November 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Gladius plays on the popularity of Gladiator by bringing arena combat to the main console systems. It's not Rome this time, but a fantasy planet with good and evil.

I had originally played the Demo of Gladius on XBox and wasn't very impressed. Luckily they did make some solid changes to the game by release time to add to the interest factor.

There's a basic story of good and evil, with the Queen of the Valkries giving her life to slay the demon of chaos. There are also two human tribes, in essence the Vikings vs the Romans. When you begin the game you can choose to be a Viking woman or a Roman man, both strong, young warriors.

You work your way up through gladiator combat, which is the 'peaceful' way that the two tribes work out their aggressions now. You earn certificates in various areas to allow you to fight, and move through various stages of arena level. You build up your skills, gain team members, and learn more about the plot and the underlying good-evil conflict as you go.

The graphics are reasonably good, and I have to say, I'm actually impressed with the plot. It's not just "filler" for button-mashing combat. It really does give you a sense that these characters have dreams and worries, that they have friendships and that things affect them. The characterizations and voices were well done.

There is in-arena combat which is just fought until there is a winner, and out-of-arena combat where the fights are to the death. The locations do feel different from each other, and you get a sense of wanting to gain more reputation and explore your options.

I'm much more a real-time combat person myself - I love Dynasty Warriors 4 and Return of the King, for example. I felt sort of stifled by the turn based system, having to stop and wait for my turn to move on the grid and attack. But really, I love the Final Fantasy games and those are turn based. So it's something about the moving and fighting combos that just wasn't my style. People who are more into turn based will really love this game.

Highly recommended for turn based fans looking for a quality game!

A game worth the hype!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: July 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

So far I have only played the demo for this game. The demo offers 3 different arenas where you max out at 4 gladiators per battle, all with different abilities, although it looks like there is empty slots in the 'real' game for about a dozen members on your team. Each gladiator has several basic weapon attacks, some have magic attacks, and some can even shape change into animals such as a bear and a wolf while in the arena. The gladiator team is almost always outnumbered so careful strategy has to be employed. The combat system for combo strikes and ranged weapons has a unique system for determining accuracy and damage, done through the player having to quickly mimic a random combination of buttons flashed on the screen when a specific strike is selected. All I can say is that I am an extremely picky person when it comes to video games that I'll consider worth my time. So far, in a year of having had PS2, the only games I have thoroughly enjoyed were SOCOM and Mark of Kri. As long as the developers speed up some of the loading time between battle sequences, I think Gladius will probably be one of the best and most unique games on the market, finally a game worth all the hype and price of PS2.

Enjoyable RPG

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: December 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I had fun playing Gladius for PS2. The graphics, story, and gameplay were all well-done. I think the voice-acting was a little wooden at times, but it didn't detract significantly from the game experience.
The thing that really stands out in the game is the strategic element. Learning to use the various classes in the proper way, as well as taking advantage of terrain variations,takes a bit of time, but it is necessary to be successful.
The reason I didn't give the game 5 stars is because the enemy AI in the game often did some pretty inexplicable things. For example, archers will often fire an arrow up into the air instead of defending themselves, even if they are really close to getting split in to by the nearest axe-wielding Samnite. And with free-for-all battles, one usually needed to merely stay put and wait for all the enemies to wipe each other out before mopping up the beat-up survivors.
I thought that the game got fairly easy after the battle with those three goons right after winning the Imperial Championship, but the end made playing through the story worthwhile. Overall, it's a great game.

Fun but gets boring

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: July 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

When you first play the game, it is fun to use your moves, recruit people, and buy weapons and armor. As you play more and more you find yourself getting bored because you use the same moves over and over. You can buy new move that do alot of damage but you can use weak moves and still win because its easy. The end of the game is hard but its too hard. When you first play the game it will be alot of fun but once you beat it or played it alot, it gets very boring. There are cool things in the game like customising your gladiators, using affinity moves, and the combo moves are cool but like I said it will get boring. Rent it before buying it.

Fun for awhile, but the lack of difficulty gets old quick

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have to admit, when I stated playing the game, I enjoyed it very much. At about the halfway point, I started getting irritated and now I am playing just to get to the end.

There is minimal story, which is fine, especially since I just finished Xenosaga and the last thing I want is a lot of clips. If you're really into customization, you can do everything from change the color of the character's skin to choosing abilities for them to learn. The strategy potion of the game is well developed. Strategy has been incorporated into the landscape, with higher and lower ground, areas that cause status effects, and barriers. The character classes are diverse, each with their strengths and weaknesses and their own customizable abilities. Even deciding which battles to enter, who to enter, and where to place your characters on the battlefield takes a certain amount of thought. As expected, good use of your powers and abilities during battle (because you are limited in what you can do and how often it can be done), as well as good choices as to placement will get you far. You get to be involved in the battles by trying to make critical hits by doing various different things with the gamepad. You might have to match buttons or try to get a slider to stop on a particular spot. Things that generally aren't too difficult to do, but you will mess up now and then. You even have to worry about the spectators. If they like you, certain stats will increase, if they don't, then they're probably rooting for your opponents. Sounds like a great strategy game so far, but wait... onto the bad.

The battles are often unnecessarily slow. If the speed of walking was just increased slightly, I think it would probably cut out a few hours of playing time. And sometimes it takes forever for characters to take their turn, especially the summoners. Most of the turns go fairly quickly, but after you've seen the move a few hundred times, you'd really just rather get on with the game.

The pace of the battles isn't a deal breaker. The main problem with the game is that it is just too easy. It gets repetitive because you do the same thing over and over and over and you rarely lose a battle... in fact, most of the time your opponents fail in defeating just one character in your group. This isn't a game like FF, where you have to restart if you lose a battle. Your characters don't die if they are defeated. You are expected to lose battles and then you simply try them again. There will be the occasional battle that requires a bit of effort, but you will never have to attempt a battle more than twice. I feel as though the game probably wouldn't be as repetitve if the opponents were a better match. The game does a good job of providing different types of battles, it just happens that it is so easy, it often doesn't matter what you do.

The game would be amazing if the AI was a bit better. I haven't played against a person yet, but I'm glad the ability to do that is there. It is this feature that kept me from giving the game a three star rating. This feature takes away the major downfall of the game... that is, unless you have idiots for friends.

Awesome Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: June 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is one of those games you set the school/work clock ahead on friday to get home early for. The story line is well thoughtout and the graphics/portraits are amazing. Great by that is well worth the money.

There need to be more games like this

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is great. It may not be for everyone, but I love it and everyone I know who even remotely enjoys strategy games has fun playing it. I own it for the XBox, but I sold my Xbox to get an XBox 360 and the game is not backwards compatible. When I found out it was coming out on the PS2 I had to order it. My roommate has a PS2 and we both can't wait to play it again, despite the fact that we've each beaten the game twice. To me this game is an instant classic. I played over 150 hours my first time through, and I'm looking forward to a third time through. The turn based strategy gameplay is like a complex game of chess (except way more entertaining), and the meter and button combo style special moves are a refreshing change of pace and add chance and excitement to the battles. Eventually you get so good at the meters that it's second nature and you learn the best army to take against the opposition, but it still retains it's fun factor. Repetition is inevitable, but the complexity of the characters and classes, as well ad the relative open-endedness of the storyline make this easily one of the top ten all-time games I've ever played.

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