Gaming Target - GameCube: Gladius

Written by D'Marcus Beatty on December 10, 2003

Full Review: Bringing the large chanting voyeuristic masses and bloody battles to your cozy living room.

Gladius is the long-awaited strategy RPG from Lucasarts, the video gaming company that generally develops Star Wars licensed products. Gladius is one of their largest non-Star Wars in-house projects to date and fortunately, this deviation from their norm produced a fantastic and enjoyable gaming experience, especially for lovers of the strategy RPG.

Gladius is a game that is set in the mythical land of Gladius, which is an approximation of ancient Rome. Instead of engaging in large-scale bloody wars, the people of Gladius settle their disputes in gladiatorial arenas. This sets the stage for the story, which follows either Valens, the son of a legendary gladiator trying to fill his father's shoes, or Ursula, the princess daughter of a barbarian king. The pair have two distinct storylines that involve the future of Gladius and will inevitably intertwine, allowing players the ability to see the entire story from both sides while simultaneously increasing the replay factor.

The heroes and their companions travel from town to town competing in the gladiatorial games. Players must first prove their worth by competing and winning a number of matches in the league battles, then winning the tournament, and finally the championships for each region. Between battles, players recruit new fighters for their particular school, upgrade their current fighters, purchase gear and weapons, and learn more of the story through the well-scripted cut-scenes.

There is a great variety of fighters to choose from, which keeps the battles fairly fresh. In addition to regular combatants, players also have the option to choose from archers, lancers, magic users, and even monsters such as a skeleton or a Minotaur. Players will also need to have a fairly eclectic party, as some of the battles will have restrictions, such as limiting your players by their nationality, race, size, or more. In addition to this, certain fighters have advantages over others, such as large fighters being too slow to attack the light fighters, but having the advantage over medium weight gladiators, who in turn can decimate the light fighters. There are also advantages to height placement and attacking from the side and rear, which all add to the overall strategic element. However, fighters move and act relatively slowly, which causes battles to drag. This isn't really much of a problem, as Gladius tends to entertain despite its slow pacing.

The graphics in Gladius are nice and well animated, although not particularly exciting. The facial animation in the cut-scenes is especially well done, complementing the superb voice acting. There isn't a great variety to the animations for taking damage and dying, and some of these canned animations become irritating to watch over and over. Fortunately, the sound is good and appropriate, setting the ancient Roman feel accurately. Most of the music is repeated too much, however, as the themes are recycled many times over in their respective regions.

Gladius does attempt to break out of the RPG turn-based trappings by implementing a formula for combat to involve the player. Most of the combat moves require direct involvement from the player, such as timing a button press to make a sword slash more effective. This is a wonderful innovation, but can be a bit limiting at times. Mistiming the button press results in a weak attack, which is really disappointing coming from a character that has been leveled up to a point where he/she should easily be capable of much more. There are also some fairly difficult combo attacks, which require players to not only time their button presses, but also to change buttons mid-combo. If a player can't master the involvement for his characters, no amount of leveling up is going to make their character a worthwhile investment. On the other hand, players with excellent hand-eye coordination and timing will have little problem with Gladius. To add even more to Gladius' replay value, there is a multiplayer mode that allows gamers to challenge other gamers' schools with their characters. This is a rare option for RPGs, and is a welcome addition.