"Gladiatus" is a browser MMO set in ancient Rome that allows players to take on the role of a Gladiator and battle with mythical creatures.

Reviewed by Mister Dragon
Gladiatus, released in May 2007 by GameForge is a widely popular browser based game set in Ancient Rome. Players take on the role of Gladiators and must train to become the top ranked figher in the Arena. PvP is the most important aspect of Gladiatus but there are plenty of quests to do and areas to explore alone. Account creation in Gladiatus can be a bit tricky, players have to take note of which of the 13 servers they create their account on. The account they create will only work on this server. New players start with basic gear and a mostly empty inventory. The inventory screen in Gladiatus is one of its best features. It works similarly to the inventory system in action RPGs such as Diablo. Players can easily drag and drop new equipment onto the appropriate slots and manage their inventory the same way. The primarly focus early on is to grow your character which is done in two ways. The first is by training your 6 attributes with the gold you've amassed. 
The cost of increasing an ability starts out cheap but will progressively increase. The 6 attributes are: * Strength - Determines how hard you hit. Every 10 strength deals an additional 1 damage. Strength is the most expensive stat to train. * Skill - Determines your accuracy. * Agility - Determines the damage you take when hit. High agility acts as additional armor. * Constitution - Determines max health. * Charisma - Determines chance of a double hit. * Intelligence - Determines how much you or your medic heals while on expeditions The second way to improve your character is by going on expeditions and defeating NPCs and monsters. There are several zones outside zones where players can go on expeditions but they're all basically the same. Gladiatus will always pit you against an opponent of similar level. Expeditions in each area come in three forms; those costing 2, 4, or 6 'expedition points.' The higher the expedition point cost, the longer the battle will take. 
Players start with a maximum of 12 expedition points and gain 1 every hour whether they are logged in or not. Once an expedition is started, there is no further involvement by the player. A timer will start counting down from either 10, 20 or 30 minutes and all the player can do is wait to see the outcome. This style of gameplay may be tedious to most gamers but allows the player to focus on other internet activities while playing. When the timer hits 0, the winner of the fight will be announced and experience will be rewarded. Gladiatus is mainly an interactive PvP game and it has several features to promote this style of gameplay. Players can attack each other freely to steal gold from one another and may fight in the arena for prizes and to gain higher rankings. Players can form guilds starting at level 5 and the official forums are constantly active. 
Gladiatus gives each player a special link in their overview page that they may distribute and for every person who clicks that link, the player is rewarded with gold. This is a great advertising scheme but will likely be considered spam by those who see it. Another crippling featuer is the overwhelming benefits paying members receive. Not only is the expedition point cap doubled to 24, but paying members only pay half the point cost for expeditions and complete them twice as fast as non paying members. Gladiatus is a simple game that can be enjoyed whiling browsing the web but to play competively one must be willing to cough up some cash.

Reviewed By: Mister Dragon