Game Review: Gladiator's Arena

By Teepu

Players: 1
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC

Gladiator’s Arena is a roguelite top-down shooter. This is a genre that is flooded with games lately, so the question is: does Gladiator’s Arena stand out enough to make it worth playing?

In short: no. Even with the low asking price, it does extraordinarily little to even try being different. It is as generic as it can get away with. The setting is fine, which is exactly what the title says. The issue is that there is absolutely no variety in the environment, it’s the one arena for the entire game. There is also no story to speak of, not even something simple at the start to give context. I will say that the monster sprites are animated well, even if most of them aren’t too unique. The music is grating, and the sound effects are not bad or good, they are just sort of there. Aesthetically, the game is quite the bore.

Let us be real though, you aren’t here to play a game like this for any of that, you want an engaging gameplay loop that keeps you wanting to play. You start the game being able to select from a couple weapons, with each weapon having its own distinct quirks that make it worth trying. As you play and complete certain milestones, you’ll unlock more weapons to use, which gives incentive to keep playing. You have a sword, which is short range and powerful, or a bow which is long range but weak, among others. There is a decent enough variety of weapons to choose from, and unlocking more by playing is a nice reward.

The actual gameplay is quite lame though. As you defeat enemies, you get currency which you can spend on upgrades. Naturally, the enemy’s HP and enemy variety increases as you get through more waves, so you need to be smart about how you build your loadout. After every wave, you are given a set of three random upgrades you can purchase, assuming you can afford them. As well as that, there is a shop you can access from the main menu that allows you to buy some permanent upgrades to give you a leg-up to last longer in your runs, all of which are quite helpful.

The game sounds like it has the makings of a solid entry in the genre even if it isn’t original, but things fall apart the more you play it. With some smart upgrade choices, it starts to become impossible to die quite early. There were times I started getting really bored and would just stand still waiting to die so I could quit playing, and I didn’t die until many waves later of not buying a single upgrade. If you consistently buy at least one upgrade every wave you can, you will be overpowered very quickly. I tried four different weapons, and I had the same problem with all of them. Once I bought about half of the permanent upgrades the game became too easy to be worth playing further. There is an extremely poor progression of challenge in the game, which makes it very boring.

To make matters worse, you hardly have control. Most games like this you have to aim what direction you are attacking as well as move your character, but you have no control over the attacks, it auto attacks and auto aims, all you need to do is move your character to avoid being hit by enemies and projectiles. I kept playing for a bit hoping for a bit of a challenge because the core ideas are not bad, but I never reached that point.

In the end, Gladiator’s Arena fails to keep the player’s attention to be enough of a distraction from far better games in the genre like Vampire Survivors. I had the platinum trophy within 10 minutes and felt like I had seen everything worth seeing by the time I got to Wave 50 within 15 minutes. Unless this game is on sale for unbelievably cheap or you want an easy platinum trophy, I would suggest you look elsewhere to fill your needs in rogue-lite top-down shooters.

Check Out Gladiator's Arena on PlayStation 5:
https://store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/10008853

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Story: D-
Gameplay: C-
Graphics:  C
Music/Sound: C
Value: D

Overall: D

Pros:
+ Decent variety of weapons to use.
+ Animations are smooth.
+ Upgrades allow for interesting builds.

Cons:
- Stale setting.
- Extremely easy.
- Too automated.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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