Gladius Review - Xbox

one end of the globe to the other, however unfortunately you can't simply walk up to somebody on a path and battle them, unless you are supposed to. One thing I must say was a good feature in Gladius is that every time you hit a loading screen, you get a nifty little hint. Occasionally these hints take a while to read, so they've made up for this by allowing you to push A once the load is complete, or once you've finished reading. As you get through more of the game, the hints become more like a guide with how to use your gladiator in battles, and how to avoid defeat.

When you win battles, you are rewarded with gold which can then be used to buy new weaponry, hire people for your school, or even buy new magic techniques. When hiring a new person, you can either make it permanent, or for a much cheaper price (usually about a tenth of the price) you can hire them for 1 battle. If you hire them for one battle, they will control themselves and do as they please. Along with money, you can also gain prizes which can then be used at your school to help train your students. Every game about past times is always full of twists and turns, and with magic comes evil enemies. You'll start off battling common gladiators like yourself, then as your skills progress you will meet new types of magic, and end up battling giant scorpions and very ugly looking bugs; however as your gladiator gains experience you will have no problem conquering all corners of the arena.

Graphics

Gladius does not excel much when it comes to graphics. Sure, the atmosphere is great and suits the gladiator period entirely, however the details of your surroundings are not illustrated nearly as much as they could be. The arenas you battle in are well structured, however such things as the spikes around the outside and the crowd are looking about 1/8th as good as they could be on the Xbox. The actual character models that you use and face against are well designed, but look sort of like a cartoon. Overall, the Gladius fan won't be disappointed by the graphics within, as the game is more focused on the gameplay anyway.

Sound

When it comes to Gladius, there isn't really much to be said about the sound. You've got the Gladiator type music when you're about to battle, and all through the menus, but when you're in battle you get cheesy comments from your gladiators and the enemy, and the hacking and slashing sounds fairly average too. Considering Hollywood now creates movies with excellent sound quality, our expectations of slashing sounds in games like Gladius are probably exceeding possibilities; however implementation of a solid sound system wouldn't be a terribly hard job to do.

When you're getting taught how to play the game ...