It's a rare occasion for LucasArts to publish anything less than stellar, so it seemed to be a safe bet that Gladius was going to offer the greatness that Lucas is known for. Unfortunately, there are a several issues that keep Gladius from being a must-have. If you're a strategy RPG fan, Gladius may appeal to you, but anyone else should probably look elsewhere. Let me explain where this game goes wrong.

The first thing you'll notice about Gladius is the load time. It seems to be loading all the time, and it loads for a good ten seconds for almost everything. The developers did try to lessen this wait by adding some helpful gameplay hints to read while it loads, but some of them are useless as they are common knowledge for any RPG. After you've read through all of the hints, no matter how useful you find them, you're still stuck waiting for the game to load. After awhile you'll get used to the load time, you won't like it, but what can you do.

At the beginning of Gladius you are given two character options. You can chose Ursula, the female gladiator, or Valens (the male gladiator). Ursula is immediately joined by her brother Urlan, while Valens is joined by his life-long friend Ludo. Players new to the strategy RPG genre will probably want to pick Ursula as she starts in an easier region than Valens. However, the stories of both characters intertwine, so you won't miss much if you pick one over the other.

There are four regions in the world of Gladius. Your job is to visit each town in the various regions and win their local tournament. Once you have won each tournament in a region, you will be able to compete in that region's championship. Win the championship and you will be guided to the next region. While you can move freely between the towns, you cannot move between the regions whenever you want. This makes the game somewhat linear, but it's not as bad as Final Fantasy X or a few other RPGs.

In addition, while the regional map is in 3D and fairly detailed, each town is comprised of only a few menus. You enter the town and are presented with a main menu containing access to the arena, the local equipment shop, and your school. Choosing one of these options simply gives you another menu. You're never able to actually walk around the towns.

The arenas are fairly bland as well. They each have their own unique appearance, but nothing that really takes advantage of the PS2's graphical power. In fact, since the arenas are so bland, you would think the gladiators themselves would be heavily detailed. Instead, they look fairly plain and the character models look more like they belong on the Dreamcast instead of the PlayStation 2. On a positive note, the animations are very well done, as are the sound effects when you land an attack. A fatal blow really makes you feel as though you just clocked your opponent.

As you progress through Gladius, you will need to strengthen your school with new gladiators you can recruit at each town. There are three levels your school can obtain. When you first start, your school is ranked amateur. After you complete the first region you will move up to semi-pro, and finally professional after your third championship. In the amateur ranking your characters are limited to level five and you can have no more than eight total gladiators in your school at one time. Each progression allows you to recruit more gladiators and lets them more up to a higher level. Every time someone in your school levels up, you gain skill points that can be used to give your gladiators new abilities. However, even with the level cap, after the first region your gladiators will be so powerful you won't have to worry about leveling up.

There are many different types of gladitars that you will have access to as your progress from region to region. There is a basic rock, paper, scissors format for the three basic types (heavy beats medium, medium beats light, and light beats heavy). Various animals that you come across will also fall into the main classes, but you'll find other classes such as arcane (spell casters), mongrels (half-beasts), undead warriors and many more. From time to time you'll run into a battle that requires a certain type of gladiator, or that restricts certain gladiator types from being used. It's a nice way to mix up the battles, but they still tend to get a bit repetitive.

Another minor issue is the control scheme. You have to use the analog stick to move your character because the digital pad navigates which attack you want to use. However, the analog isn't very accurate and it's sometimes difficult to move the cursor where you want it to go. It frequently took a couple a tries to get the cursor centered on the enemy. On the bright side, almost all of the attacks require you to time your button presses. A multi-colored meter will appear when you're ready to attack. If you hit the attack button in the blue zone, your attack has a good chance of being blocked. Hit it in the yellow area and your attack with have standard properties. Hit the small red zone and you will earn a critical hit which can't be blocked. This adds a nice touch to the combat system, but at the same time, if you master hitting the red zone (which isn't hard with certain attacks and gladiator types) your opponents can never block an attack and the rock, paper scissors setup is almost mute.

Gladius could've been a lot better than it is, but it's not necessarily a bad game. For the first region and a half, the game is very intriguing. After you complete the first region, you will open up the two player mode in which you can battle against a friend's school or have them assist in battles. You'll also learn the various intricacies of the combat system and gladiators, but even with the level capping, you just get too powerful and the battles become too easy. In addition, the story moves along at a snails pace, so you're basically just going from town to town fighting the same battles over and over with little to no story in-between. You do get quality voice acting when the game uses voice (about 40% of the dialogue), but you can't do simple things like name your gladiators or even your school. The music will also start playing over itself which doesn't sound very good, and the game crashed a couple of times as well. These bugs don't help the game at all. Give Gladius a rent so you can at least experience the first region, but that's about all the Gladius you'll need unless you're an avid strategy RPG fan.