With the fading turn-based RPG market, it's fantastic to see a game as good as Gladius be out there.
User Rating: 9.1 | Gladius XBOX
Turn-based strategy games are exceedingly rare these days, which makes Gladius, a new game from Lucasarts, all the more appealing. Billed as a “gladiatorial RPG,” Gladius takes traditional turn-based gameplay and puts its own unique spin on it, providing a handful of little tweaks to the standard formula as well as allowing for a lengthy, open-ended adventure that is full of replayability. If you’ve enjoyed other turn-based RPGs or want to start getting into the niche genre, Gladius strikes a nice balance of accessibility and challenge that makes it suitable to either camp. The kingdom of Nordagh used to rely on the foresight of witches to plan for future troubles that lay ahead. After the witches claimed that the King’s daughter, Ursula, was part of a dark prophecy, he cast them out of the kingdom forever. Years later, Ursula has become a young woman and is ready to take up steel with her dear brother Urlan to complete in the gladiatorial games. Reluctantly, the king allows the two to go out and fight – but what if the witches’ prophecy is true? What if Ursula is linked to the Dark God that was banished many years ago? The story of Gladius is certainly a competent one, but in execution is stuck in the back and, since it’s a little light on content, gets revealed very slowly over the course of the lengthy quest. The forefront of Gladius is firmly planted in the combat. As previously mentioned, Gladius used a turn-based system for its combat – instead of running around mashing buttons, both you and your enemies move one at a time via a series of movement cursors and manipulation of the on-screen interface. All of your actions are dictated by two factors, the most prominent of which is turns. You can only do a limited number of actions per turn – you can move a few squares on the map, move to and attack an enemy at the penalty of decreased movement, or if you’re already in attack range, perform one of a variety of special skills that you character possesses. However, a few types of skill points will also dictate what commands you can use. Non-magical attacks take up regular skill points. If you don’t have enough of these points to execute a desired attack, you will have to wait a few turns or perform a basic attack, since these are the only two methods of gaining these points back. If the attack is magical, it will exhaust your stockpile of Affinity skill points. In order to charge your affinity, you must use regular or special attacks with a weapon that matches the innate affinity of your character (for example, if your character knows only fire affinity skills, you must have a weapon with a fire “charge” on it) in order to build up these points. In principal though, these function the same as regular skill points. Things aren’t as simple as just that, however. After selecting a basic or special attack to perform, you’ll have to time a variety of what are called “swing meters.” These meters are pretty similar in function to a swing meter in a golf game; a marker will slide across the left of the meter to the right, and you’ll have to press a button to mark the meter in a desirable location. The vast majority of the bar is orange, symbolizing a regular amount of attack damage. Closer to the right side of the meter is a small red area – this is where you want to mark the meter, since this area will give you critical attack damage that is two to three times more powerful than an orange attack as well as a strike that is virtually unblockable to any opponent. However, ill-timing a critical strike will land your marker in the blue area, which causes you gladiator to somehow mess up attack (i.e. having a poor gripping technique on his weapons hilt, etc.), resulting in an attack that is two times as weak as a regular attack. As you start getting in Combo Attacks and the like, the timing meters quickly begin to get much more complicated, presenting odd button press rhythms as well as up to five button presses, though they carry the obvious benefit of being far more powerful attacks if they are timed properly. These timing meters bring in some action-oriented gameplay elements that are typically not associated with turn-based strategy games, and Gladius is certainly better for having these meters; beyond having a good strategy, continued practice is required in order to master these meters, and the fruits of your labors will surface quickly enough that you get a real sense of accomplishment of mastering them. You’ll have a lot of swing meters to memorize, since you’re not just controlling Ursula and Urlan – you’ll have to recruit other gladiators if you want to partake in the games. You’ll find a large number of recruitable men and women throughout your time in Gladius, be they humans, Berserkers (enraged warriors that must be angry before stepping into an arena), beasts such as wolves and bears, and many others. Each of these gladiators is also grouped by weight class – light, medium, or heavy – and combat class – arcane, barbarian, etc. - to give you an idea of how they fight in the arena, how fast their movement is, and what kinds of skills they have. Diversifying your lineup of gladiators is paramount to your success, since many leagues and tournaments you’ll encounter have lots of restrictions that you’ll need to be able to bypass – the Spirit of The Valkayrie league battle, for example, is only open to female contestants, while others require only heavy fighters or only beast gladiators. Since you’ll have to complete the majority of the battles in Gladius in order to proceed, it’s important you come prepared for such things. Luckily, you have a good amount of freedom and can avoid most battles that you wouldn’t be interested in fighting in, so if you hate battling with magic types, for example, you can typically steer clear of all arcane-only matches and still get through the game. You can also move around any of the gladiatorial arenas in the area at will as needed. And you will need to, since many battles require mementos from other leagues and tournaments in order for you to compete in them; select battles have special badges and other forms of certification that you will need to earn before competing in some of the more elite battles in the surrounding area. Once you begin moving to new lands and upping the tier your school is classed in – you’ll move from amateur to semi-pro to pro – the feel of the game changes quite a bit. Simply rushing your enemies works pretty well for the first six or seven hours of the game, but after that you’re going to have to step it up. Luckily, tons of advantages can be titled in your favor if you know how to use them. Height advantage is the most powerful environmental gain you can have – if you are standing right next to an opponent but are higher on the ground than he or she is, either via an elevated crate or by means of natural landforms, you have a more clear shot at his head and, hence, do lots more damage from this vantage point. Vice versa, you will take far more damage if you find yourself lower than your foe. Another huge advantage is what is called the “facing” advantage. If an enemy and one of your men are attacking one another, their eyes are locked, meaning they are paying little attention to their surroundings. If you sneak an enemy to the side (or behind for maximum effect) of the enemy and strike him, you will deal more damage than if he had a chance to defend himself. Unfair, perhaps, but it’s a good way to deal some heavy damage. However, fighting dirty using maneuvers such as those can do more harm than good than good at times. You see, each arena and area has different crowds that attend the games, and each crowd has different tastes. These tastes are reflected via crowd meters that belong to each team currently in a match. If you, say, use a magic attack and you gain loads of crowd favor, you’ll definitely want to keep making them happy, since the more crowd favor you have, the more bonuses you’ll gain for your team. These very depending on where you’re fighting – you may gain additional damage for critical hits, or perhaps your characters will be able to move farther every turn. The crowds can very well be the key to winning a battle where the odds are stacked against you. However, the crowds tastes can seem to fluctuate throughout the course of a battle, and you seem to lose favor a little too easily – simply getting the notion of being attacked will cause your favor to drop, so even if an enemy attack misses, you’ll still lose some recognition with the crowd, which is a little odd and can be annoying sometimes. In all though, the gameplay mechanics of Gladius are damn near flawless, with no major complaints to be made. Gladius even looks great, which is a rarity for the genre. The character models have lots of nice details on them, animate smoothly (with altered animations depending on how you time your swing meters), and even have some pretty good lip-syncing to top it off. However, it’s the arenas you’ll be fighting in that are the main attraction. You’ll be doing battle in everywhere from sunny beached arenas to dark dungeons to icy caverns, and all of them look splendid, incorporating bump mapping and particle effects along with the inherently clean look of the game to create a cohesive visual style. The world map looks pretty ugly and there is some minor slowdown when you are fully zoomed in and an effect-heavy action is taking place, but since that viewpoint is more or less useless during gameplay and the world map makes up a very small percentage of the gameplay, both of these are relatively minor complaints. The audio in Gladius wouldn’t sound out of place in an blockbuster movie, incorporating an epic musical score with the high-quality sounds and voice acting we’ve all come to expect from a Lucasarts product. Each of the four main areas of Gladius has their own unique music for both in and outside of the ring, and all of the short interludes sound fantastic. The sword strikes and magic spells sound very powerful, and the cheers and boos from the crowds are very effective in bringing a mood to the battles. The voice acting is mostly fantastic, with all of the main characters and monsters having voices that perfectly suit their look. The only real problem that belies the audio is repetition – most of the character’s sayings will get old pretty quickly, and since the game clocks in at around forty hours, you’ll be hearing all of the themes for about ten hours straight until you change to a new land. Overall, the audio in Gladius is very good and is certainly nothing to sneeze at. If you’re a turn-based RPG fan, you’re probably convinced that Gladius is a sound purchase, and indeed it is. Lots of challenging battles await as you work through the game, and you’ll find tons of weapons, armor, accessories, and skills to fine-tune your characters with, and since you cannot learn every skill during the game, you’ll probably play through Gladius again to check out the skills you missed the first time around. For beginners, a thorough and effective tutorial fills you in on just about anything you’d ever want to know about Gladius’ rule systems, so if you’ve been looking for a game to get you into the turn-based genre, this is it. At just thirty dollars, neither camp should miss out on this highly refined product. 
