Gladius

A turn-based tactical RPG developed and published by LucasArts and Activision and released for the Gamecube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2003, Gladius focuses primarily on, appropriately enough, gladiatorial combat.

Playing as either Ursula or Valens, you aim to win the prestigious Caltha Tournament. However, you end up having to destroy Mortuus, the Dark God. You can recruit a roster from a very large selection of combatants. Because the number of recruitment slots are not enough to recruit one of each fighter, and the fact that some fighters work better with others, the game has great replayability. The arenas you fight in towards the Caltha Tournament are all unique, ranging from a simple pit in the ground for close quarters fighting, to a trench-like miniature roman battlefield, to palace gardens with lethal rotating statues. All of your units are completely customisable. The player can change any unit's (even the main characters) skin color, hair color and armor style, offering a nice personal touch to the team. Each weapon, shield, and helmet has it's own unique appearance which shows on your character.

The gameplay is turn-based, with each character having his own turn speed. Facing, height advantage, and weight class all play a role in battle. The game also allows players to plan out their movements ahead of time, so fighters move during other people's turns.

The game sold poorly but received excellent critical reviews, often called "one of the best games you've never played."

The story ends with many unresolved plot points, but given its abovementioned low sales and LucasArts no longer existing as a developer, a sequel is unlikely.

Not to be confused with the similarly-spelled Gradius.

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Tropes used in Gladius include:

• Ancestral Weapon: All of Munio's equipment.
• Annoying Arrows: Inverted with throwing weapons; javelin and spear throwers are incredibly strong, enough to reliably kill most classes in a single hit with good equipment. Played straight with actual archers. Even moreso with skeletons, who gain an increased defense against projectiles, which makes sense... a bit (no flesh to bleed).
• Amazon Brigade: There are leagues (ones that are required to progress) that only allow female entrants (by contrast the only time males are required is when you need to deploy both a male and a female).
• The Archer: Eiji.
• Artificial Stupidity: The AI is odd. For one it equips their ranged units with "bear form" that it uses when they are engaged in melee (A fairly reasonable idea, given that bear form gives melee abilities and ranged units can't attack at melee range, though not reasonable as ranged units do far more damage than bears), but it will always drop the shift if you move away, taking another turn and even do this in a points battle (all fighters are immortal and have to do as much damage as possible, ranged units are the most damaging units). The AI has some oddities it won't even justify, like passing up a chance to attack your back at a height advantage to attack your side at a disadvantage.
  • Another good example is the channeler AI. Although stealing a friend's elemental charge is the best way to prepare your spells, it gets a little ridiculous when multiple channelers are fighting each other over their charges and not bothering to, say, attack you in any way.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Ursula at the end of the game. She is a Valkyrie after all.
• Back Stab: A specialty of the light classes, especially bandits and secutors.
• Barbarian Hero: Ursula and Urlan. Most of the units you can recruit in Nordagh apply as well, with special mention going to the...well...Barbarians. Portrayed much more sympathetically than most examples of this trope.
• Battle Couple: One cup has this as a theme and requires you to deploy 2 units, 1 male and 1 female (this is the only time you are forced to deploy a male). Nothing stops you from deploying the twins Ursula and Urlan here (except that they don't really compliment each other ability wise, being both physically based medium class combatants). It's a Lucasarts game after all.
• The Berserker: The berserkers. Just maybe...
• Big Badass Wolf: The greater wolves, with an emphasis on big.
• Big Brother Bully: Urlan. He improves.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: An entire tribe of them exists, and you can even recruit two of them, although only one permanently.
• Body Horror: The Dark Wolves and Dark Cats look like skinned animals with human skulls. The only visual difference between them is their battle pose.
• Booze-Based Buff: Almost every Satyr specific skill. This includes restoring health and curing status ailments. Strangely enough, they never seem to get drunk.
• Breakable Weapons: Shields will break from sufficiently powerful strikes. Myrmidons can buy unbreakable ones, and the special equipment for your lead character unlocked near the end also comes with one.
  • It's also possible for Helmets to be broken by a special attack designed to do this.
• The Captain: Centurion units. They're decently beefy Heavy combat units, but what sets them apart from full-on bruisers like Samnites is their spread of team-boosting abilities.
• Character Select Forcing: Goes with Required Party Member. Because specific leagues need specific character types, it is nigh-impossible to compete in every league. Even if you rent party members, you can't have any more than your number of character slots allow.
• Combat Medic: Channelers, maybe Centurions and, surprisingly enough, high level wolves.
• Combos: Available to all classes. Good for charging up affinity and doing good amounts of damage. Bad because enemies charge their defensive affinity just as fast and, if you miss, the rest of your combo fails and if the enemy can counter attack in any way, you get hit for each attack you would have gotten in.
• Critical Hit: Overpowered due to being controlled by the swing meter. Not only do you do increased damage but you also ensure the attack hits. This makes Heavy characters, who normally have about a 5% hit chance on Light characters, extremely imbalanced. In fact, accuracy only plays a role in status effect attacks to anyone who has mastered the swing meter.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Despite being directly related to the dark gods, the undead Unalive gladiator skeletons will follow the arena rules and will allow the gladiators to be healed after each match. You can even recruit one of each of the Unalive classes.
• The Dark Side: As dark legionnaires and dark beast can attest, it's not as powerful as one would expect.
• Deadly Game: Averted. No one dies in the gladiator matches, due to having the best healers at your service. Despite this, there are always exceptions.
• Duel Boss: Quite a few. Justified given the setting.
• The Empire: What? Were you expecting Imperia to be a pacifist theocracy? The world is currently at peace, but they qualify in the backstory.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Affinity attacks avert it, amusingly; there's no real innate strength bonus given to any Affinity element over another.
• Eleventh-Hour Superpower: Munio's equipment in Valens' story, Valkyrie equipment in Ursula's storyline.
• Everything's Worse with Bears: Until you get them on your side, anyway. And they're oddly small....
  • Played straight with the giant bears (and cats), who take up four squares on the board, can hit two squares with one attack, and can't be recruited.
• Evil Eye: The Cyclops, who can use their eye to strike fear into opponents and shoot laser beams. With a class-specific accessory, the Blindman's Eye, they can also have perfect aim.
• Eye Beams: Cyclops can do this.
• Face Heel Turn: Ludo.
• Fantastic Racism: Mentioned a bit. Again the undead Unalive (having any in your party causes a bigot to slightly annoy you at one point on the world map) and the other "monsters", but for the most part, over shadowed by actual human on human bigotry. None of the four regions seem to like each other, except the Expanse, which seems rather neutral. Almost suspiciously so, possibly due to being rushed.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: In the most thinly veiled sense. Imperia is Rome, Nordagh represents the Nordic countries, the Windward Steppes are Asia, and the Southern Expanse is Egypt. The maps even match almost exactly.
• Fake Balance: At around the level 18 mark, heavy enemies will start to wield the one hit kill Executioner's sword, although past that level they stop appearing and equip more reasonable equipment. To a lesser extent, the Dervish, who are inexplicably immune to Air Affinity attacks.
• Fartillery: Used by Ogres and Samnites. Actually very effective, since it lets a Samnite fart enemies away from point zones in Capture-oriented matches.
• Final Death: Dying outside the arena. Which is a shame, because after you beat all the leagues random encounters are the only battles which give full experience.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: When fighting in Orus, the active volcano, you are frequently told that there are other dangers than your opponents. A Genre Savvy player would assume that there would be steam or lava spouting from the cracks of the arena floor. Sadly this is not the case; the entire floor is safe. (Although they might be referring to the group of unaligned, annoying archers who will shoot you during some matches, which you cannot kill.)
• Gladiator Games: The entire concept of the game.
• Glass Cannon: Channelers, although they, like most other Arcane classes, have no real weakness in the class triangle.
  • Berserkers are even weaker than Channelers, lacking the evasive defenses of the other Light classes while still retaining their low health and being unable to equip any armor. Made up for by their extremely useful shouts and the fact that they can...well... go berserk, becoming Heavy classes with a bonus to health and damage, and their high turn rates. They also receive a damage boost when in critical condition.
• Hair of the Dog: The name of a Satyr skill which removes any status effect. Including bleeding. Go figure.
• A Handful for an Eye: Used by bandits and secutors.
• Heel Face Turn: Eiji, who helped with the theft at Roanor.
• Hello, Insert Name Here: a rare example where the player can't actually name any characters. The characters talk to each other and address each other by name. A funny instance is when they address a summoned skeleton, which they address as "Undead_Melee", underscore included.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: One arena in Nordagh has a three-stage battle. The first two stages are fairly tame. The third stage pits you against a high-level giant bear which will kill you in one hit at early levels. The organizer explains that he keeps the bear around to avoid giving the full payout. That said, you can actually beat the bear if you're strong enough, but the first time you definitely won't be.
• Hulking Out: Berserkers can do this by "going berserk", disabling their shouts and losing control over them for increased stats and becoming a Heavy class.
• In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: The save data for the GCN version (possibly others as well) is labeled "Lucasarts [sic] Gladius" (normally only the game name is listed). This label is not used elsewhere.
• I Shall Taunt You: The side effects of failing an attack against a secutor or a satyr. Lowers your turn rate, probably due to shame, but the crowd goes wild.
• Inevitable Tournament: All of them and there's one in each city. The leagues are optional, but you need to conquer a certain amount to qualify for each city's tournament.
• Karma Houdini: With no sequel in sight, it appears that Ludo and Nephilia get away.
• Last Of Her Kind: Ursula, last of the Valkyrie.
• Leaked Experience
• Loads and Loads of Loading: Considered the game's main fault, varies by platform, but the Gamecube is hit the least. It's so bad you can exploit it with long loading spells to stretch out the time limit of king of the hill battles.
• A Load of Bull: The minotaurs. Heavy classes with ridiculous move-to-attack range, defense and damage. The only down side is that they can only be recruited by a quest, you can only recruit two, and whether or not they even join you is random.
• Luck-Based Mission: The final test to be able to recruit Yetis in Ursula's mode (which you should do, because it's the only way to recruit a heavy in the first chapter) is a Duel Boss with a boss that is level 5 (the current cap, so you can't outlevel him), you are forced to use Ursula (who the boss has a Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors advantage over) and can kill you in a single hit if he uses the right skill. Winning requires that 1) the foe starts as far away as possible (easy enough to control, just enter and exit the prep menu a few times), 2) you get to move first, and 3) he doesn't use that skill. Assuming all this works, Ursula can run over to a nearby rock and buff herself, survive one attack thanks to the buff and height advantage from the yeti and return with a combo attack, survive a second attack from the yeti, then finish him.
  • The first mission beyond the Point of No Return in which you face off against The Dragon and two ogres is likely to be this if your main characters are above level 18, since said ogres then are guaranteed to be wielding the above-mentioned Executioner's Sword and the fight can thus open with two of your four characters being instantly killed off. That One Level for many.
• Mega Neko: The greater plains cats.
• Mighty Glacier: All the Heavy classes except maybe the Cyclops.
• Miles Gloriosus: For all the flesh tearing and eating the Cyclops boast, what do they say when they actually get hit? A very meek and desperate "Help us!". Notable because this is actually a spoken line, which are uncommon (although not rare).
• The Mole: Screw you Gwazi.
• Money for Nothing: If you do all the leagues, you should reach the cap and lose interest for money by the end of the Steppes chapter.
  • You can also find random valuable equipment buried on Imperia's beaches if you search at the right time of day.
• Noble Bigot: Urlan starts as this. Ludo stays as this.
• Non Indicative Difficulty: Ursula's story starts harder than Valen's (despite being labeled the opposite) as there is a very limited number of good classes that can be recruited in Nordagh while Imperia has a much better variety. On the other hand, the requirements of the battles are very obviously built around the assumption that the player plays through Ursula's story first. Imperia has stricter requirements than Nordagh.
• The Obi-Wan: Usus.
• Obi-Wan Moment: Implied in Valens's campaign, where he tried to buy the party time to gain the favor of the affinity Gods. Not very clear in Ursula's where he still buys the party time, but it is implied he is protected by his Imperial connections.
• Obviously Evil: Mutuus and Nephila have absolutely no sense of subtlety.
• Oh My Gods
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Dark Dragon has eight dark knights attached to it and 4 summoner heads. Apparently dragons also don't stay dead and require wards to keep dead. You actually fight in the remains of a sort-of-dead dragon at one point.
• Out of Focus: Galverg. He's seen as a bad guy when your team enters Imperia. He is not fought there (unless provoked in Ursula's story). After you leave Nordagh he is never mentioned again until right after the Caltha Tournament, where he shows up as... The Dragon? A mind controlled puppet? It's not really clear.
• Panthera Awesome: You can recruit wild cats in the Steppes. Their actual species (mountain lion, tiger, panther) can be customisable.
• Point of No Return: The Caltha Tournament.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Most classes (there are a few female only ones and monsters have indeterminate sex) have possible recruits from both sexes and beyond a few cups that has restrictions on a unit's sex (such as one cup that requires 1 male and 1 female to be used and 2 cups, completing both is required to beat the game, allow only females be used) pointless.
• Rain of Arrows: Trope in play in about three matches. Thankfully, only one of them have the archers specifically targeting you.
• Race Lift: You can do this to anyone!
• Required Party Member: The Leagues have specific entry requirements, such as certain classes. Certain missions also necessitate the use of your main characters.
• Rhymes on a Dime: The Satyrs, which fits in their Musical Assassin shtick.

Satyr: "Into battle I run. Time to have a little fun!"

• Schrödinger's Player Character: Averted. You meet up with the other main character later on. The one you start with only happens to have Usus with you, which probably explains why their school is successful.
• Shield-Bash: The Murmillos are an entire class is dedicated to this trope, and they are easily one of the game's deadliest classes at short to medium range. The Samnites can also do it.
• Shout-Out: There's a Minotaur named "Tr'gdor".
• Sliding Scale of Undead Regeneration
• Sole Entertainment Option: YOU were the entertainment, being a school of gladiators and fighting in arenas throughout the game.
• So Long and Thanks For All the Gear: Played straight with anyone you expel. You can actually invert this trope for profit by hiring new gladiators, stripping them naked, and expelling them (temporary gladiator costs are dirt cheap compared to their armor and weapons). Subverted with Ludo and Gwazi who give you their stuff.
• Stealth Pun: Oddly enough quite a few for a game in this setting. For instance, there's a wolf named Phydeaux and the Wyrd league which seems innocent enough, until you see the name of the battles for it which include "peculiar pairs", "strange battles", etc.
• Stripperiffic: For both sexes, as would be expected when the game's setting is primarily based off a combination of Roman gladiators and barbarians.
• Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors: Medium warriors beat light warriors, which beat heavy warriors, which beat medium warriors.
  • That said, in the hands of skilled players heavy warriors will almost always beat light warriors, as their only real handicap is low accuracy, which is easily overridden by a mastery of the Swing Meter. Although Light characters can still have an advantage when it comes to number of turns.
• Taking You with Me: The Unalive units spew poison upon defeat. Sometimes the soldiers even self-destruct.
• Teaser Equipment: The town of Imperia displays high-level equipment meant for when you challenge the endgame tournament, with suitably high prices. Depending on which character you choose, it will either be the first or second region you visit.
• The Undead
• Theme Twin Naming: Ursula (little bear) and Urlan (Entomology unclear, 9/10 "Big bear"). They don't know they are twins though.
• Throwing Your Shield Always Works: The Murmillos can throw their shields like Captain America (comics). Higher-leveled versions of the skill go further and do more damage, to the point where you can reasonably kill most lights and even some mediums in one hit.
• Useless Useful Spell: Grim Reaper, a spell learned by undead summoners, kills the target in a set amount of turns. However, it uses up all affinity, takes quite a few turns to have effect and is negated by killing the caster. Somewhat subverted in that it's quite easy to use and only the final bosses are immune to it.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Each unit is individually named, so don't be surprised if, after years of forgetting about the game, you still remember the names of the units which served you well in battle. The Final Death trope in random battles can also cause a Tear Jerker or two if you're not careful.
• Visual Pun: Barrels are named after their contents (they don't actually spill, it's purely decorative). Example names are beans, rice, waste, monkeys, and laughs.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: A trademark of the Nordagh barbarians and gungnir.
• Waterfall Puke: Ogres, not known for their cleanliness, can use this to cure them of their negative statuses. Even through a helmet. Yeah...
• You Fight Like a Cow: Lots of characters banter during the battle, which range from encouragements to teammates and taunts.
• You Killed My Father: Mutuus kills Munio, Valens's father, although Valens was too young to remember it at the time. Also Galverg, who killed Ludo's father. The latter instance is brought up once and never mentioned again.