Weakness: -the battles take too much time -graphics show their age
Anyone who loves turn based strategy games will probably like Gladius. Gladius takes place in a fantasized roman era where you're as likely to battle minotaurs as you are to fight with other gladiators.
The battles are turn based so you move characters one at a time, inching your way towards enemies. When you select attack, a meter will pop up and you have to time a button press in order to make contact (kind of like taking a swing in golf games or like in Shadow Hearts). As you can imagine, battles can be quite long and drawn out. When you're not in a battle, you do everything via menu screens whether it's going to a shop to buy weapons or recruiting new warriors.
Gladius isn't a bad game, but it is quite time consuming which will narrow its audience.
Weakness: No one dines in Hell; doesn't feature Russell Crowe.
Gladius puts you in the sandals of one of two characters: Ursula, our spry female warrior whose campaign is easier because the game is sexist, and Valen, your stereotypical beefcake brute, who may or may not fight the Roman emperor in a duel to the death while poisoned. (See how good I am at building suspense?) The game employs the often-hailed, often-derided rock-paper-scissors system, with three different character classes triumphing over one but being defeated by another. The combat itself is a bit superfluous since every attack forces you to interact with a swing meter; press the button when the cursor is in yellow zone to attack normally; the much narrower red zone is for critical attacks and deal more damage; overshoot the red zone and you go into blue, which is a miss. The problem here is that there are combo attacks, and each segment of the combo must then be interacted with in this way, different segments having varying levels of difficulty. You can tell the game to skip these scenes entirely, but every attack will then be normal. All in all, Gladius is a solid game, but if you were looking for a more action-y game, this isn't the game you are looking for.
Testseek.com has collected 1 expert review for Gladius and the rating is 80 of 100. Click below and use Testseek.com to find all ratings, product awards and conclusions.
Gladius receives an overall TopTenREVIEWS rating of 3.07 out of 4.00. It is ranked the #2,341 game of all time, #88 game of 2003 for the PlayStation 2 and #476 PlayStation 2 game of all time. The rating and ranking is based on an average of 61 critic scores, awards and other criteria. To see a breakdown of the game ranking, read individual critic reviews, or see how other games ranked, click on...
Gladius is a strategy/RPG with a very unusual trait: it was designed and programmed in America. I salute the suits at LucasArts for having the guts to enter a console genre dominated by Japanese developers, and the skill to deliver a game that competes with the best in the category. Would that more American game companies, with a lot less to lose than LucasArts, were as willing to experiment with...
Born from a time of war and an uneasy truce between Imperia and Nordagh, the gladiator games were again at the forefront of entertainment. Into this setting two warriors emerge, one taking to the fields of battle to represent the Imperia, and the other the daughter of the Barbarian king of Nordagh. As the story goes, Imperia (which is akin to an ancient Roman society) was marching against the...
Slaves, criminals, and foreigners were forced to fight for their lives on the hard packed dirt of an arena. Throngs of commoners and aristocrats perched on the edge of the tiered seating, staring down at the combatants. With each drop of blood that spilled onto the earth, the throng's clamor rose. While not directly impacting the skill of a gladiator, their support, or lack thereof, can mean the...
Time consuming even for a Strategy game!
Strengths: +fairly interesting characters/world
Weakness: -the battles take too much time -graphics show their age
Anyone who loves turn based strategy games will probably like Gladius. Gladius takes place in a fantasized roman era where you're as likely to battle minotaurs as you are to fight with other gladiators.
The battles are turn based so you move characters one at a time, inching your way towards enemies. When you select attack, a meter will pop up and you have to time a button press in order to make contact (kind of like taking a swing in golf games or like in Shadow Hearts). As you can imagine, battles can be quite long and drawn out. When you're not in a battle, you do everything via menu screens whether it's going to a shop to buy weapons or recruiting new warriors.
Gladius isn't a bad game, but it is quite time consuming which will narrow its audience.
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