turn based

Well I remeber playing many many turn based games on my PC when I was younger...now everything is RTS or just pressing lots of buttons mindlessly. Its hard to find any turn based tactical/strategy games anymore...that why I picked up Gladius.

Gladius is all about combat and character development. As stated its not for kids looking for button mashing killing madness. There is some degree of planning necessary to win battles - although I did find it to be somewhat too easy. Even so, this game will keep you busy for a long time and has a nice amount of variety built into its combat system with an amazing amount of weapons to choose from and an interesting group of characters to recruit for your gladiator school.

On the negative side, it does get repetative fairly fast. There are a few side quests, but this game is centered on combat in the arena. The in game dialouge to get to the side quests is very lengthy and not worth reading page after page after page...

An overall good tactical game that will give you your moneys worth in time spent completing this game!

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.

This game started out great. During the first half of the game I thought I was playing one of the best turned based strategy games ever made. The character classes were unique, interesting, and fun. Unfortunately, that did not last. The last half of the game is an exercise in boredom. The caster classes enter the game during the last half and proceed to use the same abilities over and over. Wonderful animations such as "steal affinity" or "summon power" were used so many times the sounds and animations have been etched in to my brain. Surely, the developers and play testers found this to be rather mind number and annoying too, this would have been an easy problem to squash, and really detracts from the game. The casters are bad, but they are not the worst part of Gladius.

The absolute worst part of Gladius is the totems on the arena floor. These wonderful objects get one turn per round and do the same thing each and every round. Very bad and very boring. The later tournaments have as many as 8 totems on the arena floor. You will spend more than half of your playtime watching a totem spin and spit out some form of magic. It is painfully boring and completely pointless. After playing a series of 2 vs 2 gladiator battles with 8 totems on the arena floor I completely lost interest in this horrid and extremely boring game.

I would sooner scratch my own eyes out than finish this game.