You and I have very different ideas of “one sitting”. I thought you were going to say you finished the game in less than hour.
If an 8 hour play session is one sitting, you have some highly developed sitting muscles! I guess as with everything else, practice makes perfect, eh? I’m building my sitting muscles right now.
Thanks for the review Tom, sounds good!
Sounds cool. The review reminds me of Warlock: Master of the Arcane. That too was a 4x game completely focused on war with the cities little more than bases for unit production.
And even though they resemble Civilization cities, they also feel like an RTS. Remember those? Gladius does.
This is what I love most about Gladius: it takes the essentials of an RTS and makes it turn-based.
I think the game could use a dash MoM. I like how you can acquire those “wargear” upgrades for units. But they’re awfully generic overall. It needs more of this, and more flavor. Both because it fits the background and because it will make for a better game. I wouldn’t mind more types of neutrals either.
It’s sort of amazing that it took us this long to get a post Civ IV Firaxis style 4x game that was worthwhile and it didn’t even come from Firaxis.
Dammit. I was really trying to avoid this one, but it looks like I may have to get it.
The game is basically Warlock, revamped, refined and improved, in a WH40K setting.
I’d like to emphasize one part of Tom’s review: the units. They did an excellent job of making the units distinct and interesting, and making each faction have a meaningful theme. The Space Marines are going to roll out a variety of Space Marine infantry for various purposes: Tactical Marines for cheap all-around effectiveness, Assault Marines for jump jets/melee, Devestator Marines to be the glass cannon, Apothecaries to heal, and Terminators to crush your enemies and rejoice in the wailing of their women and children. The Imperial Guard is going to roll out the big guns: artillery big guns (Basilisk), armored big guns with treads (Leman Russ Battle Tank) and big guns with wings and jet engines (Thunderbolt). The Orks are gonna ork it up with a wide variety of orks: orks with blades, orks with rockets, orks in crazy helicoptors, orcs in enormous armored plated station wagons with guns, orks in powered armored, orks in Mechs, etc. The Necros are gonna do their weird undead/cybenetic hybrid thing with a variety of weird units: skeleton warriors with lasers, skeleton warriors on jet bikes (yes) armored skeleton warriors, hovercraft with lightning-based Tesla weapons, powerful floating monoliths and obelisks, and the Transcendant C’Tun who are like the bastard child of The Hulk and a ghost.
Each faction is it’s own thing, asymmetrical but weirdly in balance with the others, and winning involves knowing how to best apply the units available to you.
Right now, this game is warring with Battletech in my mind for game of the year. I love TBS and this year is a very good year for it.
All right, I’m convinced. Whenever I’m not feeling Dead Cells, if that ever happens, I’m checking this out.
Even if it’ll never replace the excellent LucasArts Gladius in my heart.
That’s what I thought this was a review of. I started reading it, thinking someone had gotten Tom to review the old game through a Patreon request. I loved that game too. I’m really surprised they released another game with the same name and yet, they are completely unrelated. This one isn’t Roman-adjacent in any way.
Sounds like a great game though. Great review Tom.
Well the official name is, Warhammer 40000: Gladius – Relics of War, but no one can be bothered with saying/typing/copying that monstrosity more than once so we all just call it Gladius.
Yeah my initial reaction as well.
That said @Sharpe mentions Warlock, which I have but have not played. It costs me zero monies, so I’ll do that instead.
Sure, except that Gladius is better as far as polish, faction design, map generation, flavour text, and AI are concerned.
Every time people mention Warlock as a comparison it dashes cold water on my desire for this game. I did not like Warlock, and thought it was too stripped down to be interesting.
Warlock 1 is pretty good, but very striped down.
If you own Warlock 2, there is no reason to play Warlock 1. It’s the same game with a few new factions, and some interesting game modes (I love the concept of world hoping that Warlord 2 features).
Lots of good ideas in Warlock 2, but the balance and pacing are a trainwreck. In most cases you’ll run smack into a dremer world one or two hops from your own shard and spend the next 80 turns bottled up and unable to move forward as a result.
I love the idea of that game but the execution doesn’t ever seem to have seen play testing. It’s really baffling. The idea of something Warlock-style, but well made and with a license I enjoy, is really appealing.
I didn’t like Warlock at all. I’m liking this quite a bit thus far.
Liked both, but this is true.
My battle cry since these games will likely forever be “Best … archers … in … the world!!!”
Isnt Warlock 2 marred by some weird gods constantly attacking you and mini map games or somesuch? I have a vague recollection is was worse than Warlock 1 because of it. Did I imagine this?
I believe you can turn that off in Warlock 2. Why you would want to is beyond me, but you can.