Gladiator Begins Critic Reviews

Although it's too bad that Gladiator Begins landed with nary a whisper, it's clear to see that the title would never have found a large audience to begin with-it's aimed at a certain hardcore niche, and for those outside of that niche, there will be little here of interest. However, for players who love to take a zeroed-out character and build them up into an overwhelmingly powerful force via grinding, creative equipping and numeric management, this combination of swords, sandals, and statistics is an experience not to be missed.

While the deep equipment options and versatile combat are appreciated, the random difficulty highs and lows, practically (and perhaps, blessedly, I suppose) non-existent story, and eventually tedious lack of any real gameplay variety make it hard to recommend.

Gladiator Begins' smaller successes still can't compensate for its significant problems, and the game as a whole never quite gels in an effective way. Brutality, splashes of blood and gigantic swords might look and feel great, but I feel like Caesar wouldn't have mercy for this fighter's incompetence and missed marks.

Being a gladiator in ancient Rome probably wasn't much fun, and it's not much fun in this repetitive fighting game, either.

Fans of historical pseudo-realism will find the format intriguing but a disappointing fighting system nestling at its core scuppers much of the potential of Gladiator Begins.

A brawler with a weak combat system. Had the combat been tighter, then perhaps I could have given this a glowing review, but when the heart of a game is flawed, all of the other components are going to suffer.

A thumbs down, we're afraid.

The game feels like one big grind and even the eventual showdowns with tigers and elephants offered few thrills during our feeble quest.

Not good enough to be set free, not bad enough to be tossed to the lions.