Caltrops - Reviews - more Gladius blowing

Forum Overview :: Reviews

by bombMexico 06/17/2005, 4:51am PDT

Picked this up when Circuit City went momentarily crazy and had their $5 fire sale on new games. Certainly worth the $12 used i've seen it for recently

Enemy levels are always equal to yours, so powerleveling is not a requirement, just a way to get access to more skills.

As the enemies keep pace with the leveling, their armor and weapons keep up too. This is fine until the heavy units get access to the Executioner's Sword, which has like a 1 in 3 chance of instakilling. That sucks.

You have special attacks that deplete a slowly recharging skill meter, and an elemental-based POW-meter for super attacks. Combat can be a simple fight, or things like King of the Hill, destroy the base, 4 on 4 skirmish, or dumb things like "See who can break the most barrels before time's up" and "See who can deal the most damage points without actually hurting your enemies before time's up." Luckily not every league game is necessary to get the trophy/advance a league/etc.

While the plot is drool-bib simple, the setting is great and the units and equipment look authentic. Roman legionaires look like the real thing and German bezerkers are half-naked, covered in woad tatoos and scream like lunatics. Plus any equipment you buy is actually shown on the unit in combat, which is always a plus in my book. My one big complaint is that while the surrounding arenas look great, terrain is usually clumsily represented by things like a pile of crates or an oddly-placed ox-cart.

Anything that wasn't a coliseum was disappointing. i mean, an arena with spike lined walls or the fucking desert. The complaints i've heard most often are usually the "fantasy" skeleton and troll type characters (understandable but gay) and that the game's not very difficult. This is supposedly remedied by setting the combos to automatic, taking away the huge damage they do as well as most of the fun. If you desperately need challenge, you can just have one or two powerhouses (centurion or the absolutely unstoppably awesome bear) and fill the team out with the pussy faggot characters you only keep on to fill league requirements (cool looking but worthless beserkers, any animal other than bear, magic types) and now you have an uphill battle.

Definite agreement on the weapons and armor. Your characters end up wearing armor based on looks. Sure, the multicolored fez takes more damage, but what self-respecting barbarian would wear it? i'll take the wolf's head cap thank you. Also, being able to customize took some of the sting out of having to lug around 3 versions of the same guy. so you end up being able to choose your own tattoo pattern for the beserkers or have a school of lazy but cheap mexican legionnaires.

The game lets you play as two different schools, one that starts in rome and one that starts in germany. The only thing that makes the roman one "advanced" is you can recruit a wider variety of gladiators and fight a wider variety of opponents at the beginning. I think it also doesn't nerf the AI at the start for the romans, either.

I think the "choice" of schools (you have to fight through both countries) was just an easy/hard diffucutly setting. In Germany you're chopping up wolves and nekkid people, when you get to Rome your opponents actually start wearing armor.

So in the end, if you like the combat and character development of FF Tactics and would rather just get to the fighting without having to wait as it S... L... O... W... L... Y... types out the plot letter by letter between battles, gladius is cheap, balanced, and fun, if a little buggy.

I remember reading Lucasarts had already started on the sequel before getting the depressing sales figures. So it looks like Lucas went back to the drawing board before coming up with Shadow of Rome, average hack n slash gameplay with stealth and chariot racing. THE GOD OF FAGGOTRY IS PLEASED THIS DAY