A great beer and pretzels strategy game that is very fun despite lacking challenge and depth.
The story is indeed cliched and the characters fairly wooden in their personalities and the cut scenes are a little painful to watch (but nowhere near as awful as the original Resident Evil) but one does not play Gladius for story or character development -- you play it for the combat and the game does deliver a surprisingly fun combat experience.
The battle system is pretty simple with all characters belonging to six basic character classes : light, medium, heavy, support, arcane, and beast. A paper-rock-scissor system is in effect in a superficial manner -- generally medium beats light, heavy beats medium, and light beats heavy. Support and arcane are somewhat outside the spectrum, being equally effective/ineffective against all classes. Beasts are nominally classed as light or heavy according to the manual, but in practice they are similar to the arcane classes in being outside of the rock-paper-scissors spectrum. All classes have special abilities that are bought with points awarded upon the character advancing in level. These abilities are usually combat related, allowing a character a multitude of special attacks, or defensive in nature thus allowing a character to counter-attack, block better, or be immune to conditions such as confusion, blindness, and the like.
There is a good assortment of character classes that are all pretty colorful such as barbarian, satyr, minotaur, undead channeler, bear, wolf, amazon (who are pretty hot and jiggly), centurion, and so forth. Individual gladiators can have their appearance customized to a degree which is a nice touch. The weapon, armor, and other gear selection is decent and weapon, helmet, and shield selections are reflected in the game by showing your gladiator decked out in the appropriate gear -- unfortuantely armor choices are not graphically reflected but that is a minor concern.
Battles are varied according to the city and region in which you fight, each city has different styles of battles and each region is replete with different classes of gladiators. There is good variety in opponents but most battles fizzle down to "kill all your enemies" - but that is kinda expected in a war game so I am not too set aback by that.
The graphics are well detailed and the characters have a range of idle motions they go through which is entertaining to watch. The light secutors hop and dance around while the heavy ogres lounge back and half-heartedly intimidate their enemies. The characters have appropriate things to say while attacking or being attacked which still amuse me several years after the fact (other people's mileage will vary). I still chuckle when the satyr takes a chug out of his wine jug and says "Watch me dance! Watch me dance!" and a central female archer shoots and arrow into a a legionnaire and taunts "Like what you see, Imperial?" or the amazon attacks somebody and boasts "I'm twice the woman you are." Animations are smooth, colorful, but lacking in blood, so that take as you will.
My biggest gripe is that once you pass the initial learning curve, you will never *ever* lose another battle unless you are just stupid. When your characters are low level and weak, you really have to pick and choose your fights but once they reach around level 5, your competition is toast. Money soon becomes a non-issue and you will learn that money maxes out at 999,999 denarii.
Knowing that you will not lose a fight is a turn-off, but the game is still addictive due to the smooth gameplay and wide array of special attacks your gladiators possess. Also, the fact that the world is static and it seems that no other gladiatorial school is doing anything but waiting for you to give them a horrible beating is disconcerting but it does make you feel like the greatest and most skilled player ever. Those of you who are not good at strategy games will love Gladius as it is a very forgiving game and it is hard not to do well in it.
That being said, Gladius is a fun game, but not a great game. To put an even finer point on it, when I had to pay court-apointed alimony to one of my ex-wives, I sold the bronze castings of my son's feet but I did not sell my copy of Gladius.