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Gladitorial combat at it's best
This is one of the few gladioator type games I like. It's a fantastic game. I can not believe there is no sequal to this game.
This is a gladiator turn-based RPG game. The leveling up is great. The battles are like Knights of the Old Republic(how you choose what ability you use) and chess(sans the restricted movement).
You choose from over 14 realistic classes (such as a legionare).The one thing I don't like about this game is that you can only have 20 people max.What kind of gladiator school is that!?
Oh, by the way,this game isn't a total gore fest like some people say. The goriest parts are the drawn cutscenes.There is a little blood in the battles.
This is a fantastic game.I'd reccomend it to anyone who likes RPGs and Gladiators.

Great turn-based strategy and little else.
I really enjoyed this game for its turn-based strategy. While the strategy here is not as complicated or in-depth as say, Final Fantasy Tactics, it is fun and engaging to play. The only real problem with the strategy is that because of how the leveling up system works, character choices in the context of skills become less and less relevant as the game goes on. What I mean by this is that at the beginning of the game there are far more skills than points that you have to buy with them. But as the game goes on you end up getting enough points to buy basically everything that is possible. What this means is that for both you and your opponents the uniqueness of your character disappears because by the end of the game every character already has so many of the same skills. This problem could have easily been taken care of by reducing the number of average points throughout the game, or at least during the second half. This is a significant balancing flaw that should not have been overlooked.

As for the rest of the game, there simply isn't much there. The videos are boring, the voices are mundane, and the plot is paper-thin. Microsoft seemed to put its heart into the strategy portions of this game and skimped on everything else.

All in all this is a great game if you love turn-based strategy and a not-so-great game if you don't.

Even so, given that there are almost no strategy games like this anymore, and Microsoft has no plans to make a sequel, strategy lovers should pick this one up without a thought.

There need to be more games like this
This game is great. It may not be for everyone, but I love it and everyone I know who even remotely enjoys strategy games has fun playing it. I own it for the XBox, but I sold my Xbox to get an XBox 360 and the game is not backwards compatible. When I found out it was coming out on the PS2 I had to order it. My roommate has a PS2 and we both can't wait to play it again, despite the fact that we've each beaten the game twice. To me this game is an instant classic. I played over 150 hours my first time through, and I'm looking forward to a third time through. The turn based strategy gameplay is like a complex game of chess (except way more entertaining), and the meter and button combo style special moves are a refreshing change of pace and add chance and excitement to the battles. Eventually you get so good at the meters that it's second nature and you learn the best army to take against the opposition, but it still retains it's fun factor. Repetition is inevitable, but the complexity of the characters and classes, as well ad the relative open-endedness of the storyline make this easily one of the top ten all-time games I've ever played.

Awesome Game
This is one of those games you set the school/work clock ahead on friday to get home early for. The story line is well thoughtout and the graphics/portraits are amazing. Great by that is well worth the money.

Fun but gets boring
When you first play the game, it is fun to use your moves, recruit people, and buy weapons and armor. As you play more and more you find yourself getting bored because you use the same moves over and over. You can buy new move that do alot of damage but you can use weak moves and still win because its easy. The end of the game is hard but its too hard. When you first play the game it will be alot of fun but once you beat it or played it alot, it gets very boring. There are cool things in the game like customising your gladiators, using affinity moves, and the combo moves are cool but like I said it will get boring. Rent it before buying it.