Gladius is an RPG/Strategy type game that was displayed in the Nintendo booth with all of the other third-party games. The first thing I noticed was that the Roman-esque arena looked great, then I looked at the character graphics and saw that they were ho-hum, which is to be expected from a game that says on its title screen that it is coming in the year 2003. The framerate was consistent, and the graphical effects looked alright.

The main thing shown with this game was the battle scheme. Gladius has a turn-based strategy system for taking out the enemies. One interesting thing about moving your character is that you will be able to move him during another character’s turn. As you tell your character where to move, you indicator arrow will be light green. When you have gone as far as you can in that turn, the arrow turns dark green and you can extend even farther. The dark green path you set with the arrow dictates the movement your character will do during the next character’s turn. That seems a little gimmicky, but it could work if tweaked.

The attack phase consists of a “golf-game“ style power gauge. Pressing the right buttons with good timing will result in many hit combos. Critical Hits are also possible. Gladius has a lot of potential, and LucasArts can likely shake their bad strategy game schtick with this game. Look for it in 2003.