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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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"

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.

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

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.

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!