"Unleash hell..." but wait till it's our turn.

Without football or a war to fight, the average Joe still must find a way to pass the time between shifts in the fields. Historically speaking, they usually turn to the gladiator pits. Gladius puts you in charge of a school of gladiators out to grow their ranks and prestige by competing in every tournament and league from sea to shining sea. The final battle between good and evil was fought some time ago so the pits are a talented warrior's best chance to earn a living doing what he or she does best.

If you want to start off on an easy difficulty setting, you can choose Ursula for your character. She and her brother are barbarians and are the starting roster for your school. But if you want to jump right into the big leagues, Valens (voiced by Michael Rosenbaum, who plays Lex Luthor on Smallville) is the way to go. He's from the neighboring nation of Imperia, which is modeled after the Roman empire, at least aesthetically. Whichever path you choose you'll get early exposure to that nation's character classes and culture. You'll eventually get to see the other nation, too, so it's just a matter of where you begin. The story starts with a detailed and nicely done narrative done in a documentary style. The typical zoom and scan camera methods use (mostly) still art to tell their story. The artwork is very nicely done in a medieval style that were it not for the magic being thrown about could be mistaken for the real deal. They look like paintings, and could be ranked right up there with any fantasy art since Dungeons and Dragons made it a relevant genre.

The meat and potatoes of Gladius are the gladiator pits in every town. There are different types of matches with varying rules and prizes, but the most basic sets your team against another, last one standing wins. Your opponents are placed first so you have the opportunity to place your team last, which is a huge advantage and one you'll need later in the game. Once everyone's on the board the match is ready to go.

Gladiator pits may appear chaotic from the stands but from the player's point of view Gladius is anything but a free-for-all. It's much closer to a mix between traditional tabletop role-playing games and miniature games. Each piece has a turn and a certain number of options. You can cast spells, move a certain distance, attack, use a special ability or mix it up a bit.

Each gladiator has several stats, among them are initiative (which determines who goes first), movement, power (how much damage you can deal), accuracy and defense (accuracy vs. defense determines a hit in many cases). They also have room for a weapon, armor, shield and accessory, which is the slot for magic items that you'll either win or be able to buy later in the game.

Characters also have skill points, earned with each level. You can spend these points on combo attacks (more on those later), affinity powers (elemental magic: earth, air, fire and water) or other abilities, like immunity from flanking penalties or ranged attacks. Your options are guided by character class of which there are 16. Most classes fit into the light, medium or heavy categories and these form a balanced triangle of strengths and weaknesses. Light has an advantage over heavy, heavy over medium and medium over light. They aren't so disparate that a light fighter could never beat a medium, but it would definitely be a feat.

When it's your turn, the character will be highlighted and your cursor, when moved, will show how far they can move, who can be targeted with attacks (depending on which attack you've selected), enemy conditions, your conditions and your available options. (Using the cursor is also a great way to get a view of the arena - there are no camera issues because if you can't see around an object, just move the camera.) Once you've chosen an attack you'll be presented with a swing meter that looks just like the ones found in golf games. For a standard attack (a "strike"), there will be a brief countdown followed by the cursor moving along a long yellow strip, a brief red zone and finally a blue area. If you hit the attack button while it's in the yellow area the attack will be resolved by comparing your accuracy against your target's defense. Get it in the red area and you'll score a critical - an unblockable hit for greater damage. If it goes past into the blue, you'll have a critical miss and leave yourself open to nasty counters.

The swing meter adds a welcome bit of reflexology. Combos are challenging to pull off, as they force you to make several hits in a row on the same meter, but there's a huge payoff if your fighter hits several times in one turn. If you'd rather leave the fight up to the numbers, the meter can be turned off completely. The computer doesn't use the meter, so their hits are left to the accuracy vs. defense numbers. That's the good news, the bad news for the player is that the A.I. of the cpu gladiators is very good. They play smartly, avoiding mismatches and ganging up whenever they can.

Not every battle is head to head, to the death. There are plenty that involve several teams and rules twists. King of the Hill awards the win to the team that can control a pile of crates in the middle of the pit. Others give points for scoring the most damage, regardless of who is alive at the end. There are also unique challenges for each league, like killing all the Centurions on one team.

Clearly, Gladius is a very complicated game. That complexity is part of what makes the game move so slowly, one of its only flaws. The fights themselves have several points that seem to drag, particularly the beginning and end when the introduction (unskippable) and exiting music and set up animations take place. It would have been nice to be able to skip the longer, oft-repeated animations during the battle, too. Things also move slowly between towns and screens, where it seems the presentation could have been a little clearer. There are leagues, which are basically a collection of different events, and each event has different rules and prizes. Once you've earned a certain number of points in a league, you receive that league's prizes. Once you've mastered enough leagues, you have the opportunity to compete in the town's tournament. There are several towns in each region, so there are even more tournaments, more leagues and many, many different events.

There are also a few side quests that have you fighting outside the pits - real fights. The fights in the pits have a crack medical team standing by so no one dies. There's lots of blood and characters sure do look dead, but everyone is back on their feet after even the worst beating in the pits. Not true when you get in a fight out in the real world. Dead is dead.

The depth of Gladius is clearly more a strength than a weakness. Each character is almost infinitely customizable. The options for equipment and point distribution when you level up are staggering. On top of that, consider that your school of gladiators has many slots, the number of which increases over time (to a total of 20), and each character is yours to control. No two games of Gladius will be alike and just trying different strategies and skills makes for a completely different game for each player.

And those characters look great in the battles. Animations are fluid and natural. When they get low on hit points, they'll slouch and stagger. Big hits that take out more damage than necessary result in a satisfying drop, sometimes the poor sucker even flips over as the blood spurts. Finishing blows that just barely get the job done show a stunned opponent, like he can't believe he's really going down, as his weapons drop from numb fingers and his body slumps one last time to the dirt. The only missing touch is in the silence of a weapon or shield when it's dropped.

The crowd pays attention to all of this. Your popularity is key to advancement, and certain actions in the pit make the crowd cheer. First hit kills are one example. There's nothing like watching an opponent rush up to your centurion only to get a beat down in one huge blow - and then watching the crowd go nuts. Magic attacks help, too, as does a higher level skill that exists solely to rile up the fans. Some characters can even perform taunts, and fans love a good taunt.

Load screens are plentiful but very brief, so it's not a problem. As usual, the Xbox and Gamecube versions look a lot alike, movements are smooth and textures detailed. The PS2 version doesn't look quite as sharp, but still very good. The only other significant difference is blood. Big hits on the Xbox version cause a nice spray and even a puddle. There are no puddles of blood on the other two versions, which may be important to some. It's amazing how a little pool of blood can raise the gore meter. Without it, the game isn't much more graphic than a chess match.

Multiplayer exists in two forms - co-op and versus. Up to four players (on Xbox and Gamecube, two on PS2) can play on the same team in co-op. Each will get a chance to pick some gladiators for a fight and then control those characters. But players can also load up their own schools from memory cards and go at it team against team in any number of different battle types.

Gladius is a great-looking, incredibly deep and satisfying combat role playing game. It's complicated and has a steep "getting started" curve, but the investment of patience pays off. It's a chess match more than anything, with an infinite amount of pieces and boards. The story gives you something to look toward beyond winning money and growing your characters (battles between good and evil are never really over), but the key is to enjoy the journey of building your school of gladiators into a fighting force. Anyone looking for a game that offers a real challenge by mixing the best elements of role playing and strategy games shouldn't pass up Gladius.