User Rating: 5.7 | Gladius XBOX
I'm probably the only person to put in a negative review about this game, but there are some glaring flaws I need to put out. When I first started this game, I really enjoyed it. Honestly, I was completely addicted and hooked for the first 15-20 hours or so. These problems aren't bugs, but design flaws. Apparently, the designers of the game were too lazy to actually create graphics for the different kinds of armor, so your body armor (not shields weapons or helmets) will always look the same, even if you wear none. The graphics are so sharp, they created such nice graphics for the helmets shield and weapons, why couldn't they do the same for the armor? That's not a huge gripe, but it's a little annoying. More importantly, you can only get to level 5 in the first tier, I got to level 5 within the first few hours of the game and so do most people, so you spend the entire time in the first area at level 5, totally stagnant through most of Imperia, until you go to the next region. The next flaw is really irritating. Once you go to the next region, you can't back-track. I haven't beaten the game, so maybe you can go back to places after 90 hours of gameplay (who knows)...but until then, you can't go back to buy any of the equipment you couldn't buy before, and you can't recruit any of the gladiators that you couldn't recruit before, and you can't compete in any of the games that were locked out to you before. Why are there games in Imperia that I can't compete in, if I can't return to compete in them! Really stupid and totally uneccesary design? Definitley. I also found to my pleasant surprise that I CANNOT EXPEL any of my gladiators since i came to nordagh, not even the yeti that I recruited here in Nordagh. No matter what I do, the game won't allow me to expel any of my gladiators, it doesn't even give an explanation of what the circumstances are, it simply greys out the expel option. Wonderful. This might be a bug, who knows. Plus, the side quests give you NO information on how to complete them, and no matter how many times i go back and forth to shops and compete in games, no one gives you missions, i've only got three so far, and could only complete 1 of them being that it's a friggin wild goose chase usually. (Like finding sigi, given in mordare, even though i got into random fights, it still won't show me sigi so I can't rescue her). Plus, as you level up, so do all opponents in the game. See the problem with that? You never gain an advantage over opponents, you always stay level with them. Being thats the case, what exactly is the point of leveling up, if it's always gonna be status quo. I have no motivation to level up, and i've beat all of imperia and nordagh, and I no longer have any motivation to complete the game. The battle system is great and engaging, but the context of the fights gets very repetetive as you can imagine, there's only so many ways you can say "kill this guy!". I honestly wish they had spent just a little more time on the game, because it could have been so rediculously good (IMO, I know many others out there love it) Great idea, but they just destroyed it with these absolutely moronic ideas of putting restrictions where they aren't meant to be (Yea, it's really prudent to not allow me to travel from land to land, or allow me to expel my gladiators, or allow me to gain an advantage over opponents....they call this an RPG?) 
