Great turn-based strategic combat with loads of character and surprisingly deep gameplay.
The graphics and sound are serviceable, conveying a slightly cartoonish world of imperial fighters, fierce berserkers, ferocious beasts, and mythological monsters, just to name a few of the opponents you'll meet on your path to greatness. The technical aspects are nothing special, even for the aging PS2 platform, but they're bright and colorful and distinctive enough to let you feel like you're living in a swords 'n' sandals epic.
Character animations are simple but effective, and there's a nice variety of them to go with the myriad weapons available. In combat, weapon strikes are visceral and suitably violent; they look and sound like they hurt about as much as they should. Your equipped armor and weapons also appear on your character in combat, a nice touch that adds some visual variety when you start swapping gear around.
There's a nice variety of arenas in which to do combat, although they're limited to a few basic designs tied to the regions of the gameworld in which they appear: Icy tundras, desert maps, grassy plains, etc. The enemies you'll face in the arenas vary by region too, forcing you to frequently rethink strategies and keep secondary characters leveled up for use against particular foes.
The RPG elements of the game are accessible and deep enough to make leveling exciting, but don't expect complexity like you'd find in a D&D or ES game. Skills and abilities are tied to particular classes--you'll never have a centurion casting arcane spells, for example--but the class-specific skills make sense and give you a reason to recruit a wide variety of gladiators to your "school". You earn XP and money by fighting in the arenas, and each time you level you allocate points among the range of abilities available to you: Pretty basic stuff and no skills-based leveling to manage, but it's effective and fun and doesn't detract from the combat portion of the game.
The story, such as it is, is pretty weak; it basically exists to move you along from one arena and region to the next. The cutscenes use the in-game engine so they're nothing much to look at, and they're generally brief and not that frequent. But this probably isn't a game you're going to play for the story.
The game does have some drawbacks--frequent loading times, an unimaginative world map, and the inherently repetitive nature of fighting one arena match after another--but the overall package is addictive, fun and effective. There are a number of side quests, too, incuding some well-hidden ones that lead to strong fighters and/or equipment for your school, so there's tons of value here for a gamer on a budget.