Reviewed: December 1, 2003
Reviewed by: Aaron Daigle
Publisher
LucasArts
Developer
LucasArts
Released: November 4, 2003
Genre: Strategy
Players: 4
ESRB: Teen
9
9
9
10
9.3
Supported Features:
It’s fairly rare to see a LucasArts title that doesn’t revolve around a rough n’ tumble archeologist, X-wings, or pirates. When I first saw Gladius at E3, my initial reaction was something like, “LucasArts?” Shock and awe aside, it’s cool to see a turn-based-strategic-RPG (enough genres already!) hit the Gamecube from a US development house.
Gladius is set in a fantasy land where, in the wake of a war of the gods, the people have come to use gladiator games as a way to settle disputes. But like most seemingly peaceful game worlds, Evil is brewing just beneath the surface. Choose your role, fight it out, learn new skills, recruit and equip new fighters for your school, and smash your adversaries as you meet your destiny over the course of 500 plus bone crushing confrontations.
Gladius is a turn-based strategic RPG that plays a lot like the Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre series. At the beginning of the game you are asked to choose a character, Ursula, the upbeat princess or Valens, a warrior looking to follow in his father’s footsteps as a champion of the gladiator games. After a few very well designed tutorial battles, you are thrust into the thick of things battling through the various leagues and local championships.
Battle objectives vary from simply wipe out the other side(s) to holding key positions for as long as possible to destroying as many barrels as you can within the time limit. Some battles require certain classes and genders in order to compete. In order to succeed, you will need to recruit additional fighters to your school by checking in each town you can find a plethora of characters that you can hire permanently or just for one engagement if you need to fill a hole for the battle requirements.
As you rack up the wins you will eventually level up your characters and be awarded skill points that can be used to learn new attacks and abilities. From an aesthetic perspective you can fiddle with your fighters’ appearance to your heart’s content, maybe go with a school motif, or color code your sluggers to be easy to tell apart from your support fighters or use them au natural, it’s up to you.
The battle system in Gladius is really sleek and well designed. The C-stick is used to pan and zoom the camera to take in the action and can feel a little clunky in the smaller arenas, but for the most part works just fine. A single turn can be used to perform one of several actions; you can move your character, attack with either a ranged or melee weapon, or burn through some of your five ability points with a special attack or power up. You gain back one ability point per turn, sort of ensuring that players can’t ever rely strictly on super attacks to level their foes.
When you decide to attack, you are presented with a sliding power meter that will rapidly move from left to right, pressing “A” while the meter is in the orange will unleash a normal strength blow while pressing it in the red will loose a strong attack, letting the slider hit the blue will result in a “slip” and only do a minimal amount of damage. Spells are cast in a similar fashion, by rapidly taping the “A” and “B” to drive the meter into the red to decimate your enemy with a magical assault. It may seem a little awkward on paper but it plays super smooth and allows you a little more control over your fighter’s success than most games of this type afford you.
In another innovation for the genre, Gladius features an attack and defend system unlike anything before it. If you attack your opponent from any direction, they will turn to face you, and potentially block or evade your blow before it lands. However if they are already engaged with another fighter they will not try to defend as you attack their rear or flanks. As for death, it is conspicuously absent from Gladius. At the beginning of the game it is explained that all of the arenas have powerful healers standing by to revive fallen warriors once the fighting is done. As a caution however, random encounters do occur, however infrequently on the world map as you travel from place to place. These random encounters will result in permanent death for any members of your school that fall, and if your main character perishes, the game is over.
As you work you’re way through the local leagues, you will accumulate cups which are required for entry into the tournaments in each town. Working you’re way these tournaments will give you access to the regional championships and from there you will be able to travel to other lands to compete. The length of the game and the fact that it manages to stay fresh while slowly advancing the story is impressive. The writing and voice acting are both top shelf and the game is liberally smattered with tongue in cheek LucasArts humor.
On Multiplayer, Gladius supports up to 4 player co-op play in the single player campaign and also sports an unlockable “VS.” mode. This is definitely a step in a new direction for the strategic RPG, one which could very well help to popularize the genre with the mass market.
While not quite up to the level of "pretty" that the Gamecube is capable of, Gladius isn’t ugly by any means. The poly count isn’t up there with say, Rogue Leader, but the lip synching is spot on, the animations are smooth and natural and personally, I feel the world map is one of the prettiest I’ve ever seen. The character and weapon design is really super and I really wish that LucasArts could produce quality like this more often in their Star Wars titles.
I am so glad this game sounds as awesome as it does. I really spent the first few hours I was playing waiting for the other shoe to drop. The big brassy strains of Gladius’s score are really worthy of an old time Hollywood epic. While you will hear the battle tunes a lot, they never start to grate on you, which I like to think of as a plus. It’s too bad you don’t spend more time in this game wandering the world map, because the tunes go so well with the scenery.
The voice acting is the same, high quality work you would expect from any recent LucasArts title and like I said above, is impeccably lip-synced. Sound effects are an area that some developers seem to have a tendency to be satisfied with “adequate.” Gladius is a shining example of how sound effects should be done; crisp, authentic sounding clashes and guttural grunts as people take damage, the roar of beasts as they tear into the competitors. It’s just really good stuff all around, nothing that sounds glaringly out of place and all of the audio work I feel effectively works to draw the player further into the game world.
If you haven’t gotten the message yet, Gladius is probably the best multiplatform game I’ve had the pleasure of indulging in this year. The game is bloody huge at 500 plus engagements, two difficulty levels, some side quests to uncover, and the evolutionary multiplayer support just adds to the potential replay value. The in-depth tutorials and on-disk comprehensive list of FAQ’s make this game totally accessible to even the greenest of gamers. Despite the “Teen” rating I would recommend this title for anyone in your family old enough to be interested.
Another strong showing for LucasArts is what this game boils down to. Gladius shows a lot of innovation in a genre that is mostly driven by foreign developers. For a multiplatform release, the level of polish that has been applied to Gladius is pretty impressive, and shows that games that appear on multiple consoles don’t have to be mediocre. I whole heartedly urge you to pick up this title if you have even the smallest interest in RPG’s, or strategy gaming or are just a LucasArts fan.