Gladiator Manager

Don't get if you have an ultrawide monitor, the game doesn't scale properly and will cut off necessary buttons from view so you'll be stuck at character creation. I found a bug report of this from 2022 that the dev responded to and acknowledged the issue, so I suspect they have no intention of fixing it at this point (almost 2024).

I have played through in all the difficulties and won and lost. 1st it is an $8 game not made by a million dollar company. So as long as you go into the game with the correct expectations you will love this game (and you like the genre). 1. There are no graphics, you will not see the combat. 2. The decision you make do matter, but if the other teams gladiator is a lot better then you, you will lose. You are not suppose to win all your battles. 3. If you like a challenge player a harder level. If you don't play on easy. 4. Some stats are more important than others, read about them. 5. There is some unknown when hiring gladiators, when it doubt get a young one with high work ethic so they can improve. Otherwise enjoy this well made game,for gladiator management.

there might be a good game here eventually, but 2 things work against it for me: 1) the game kinda immediately demands you understand what about 20 different stats do, so it's really hard to understand what's going on 2)early characters have low discipline, so they will often follow their own nature rather than doing what they're told to do, low bravery, so if they break discipline so they will usually defend when breaking discipline, low weapon skill, so they usually miss with attacks, and low strength, so they inflict very little damage. I spent like 15 minutes reading "your guy broke discipline and dodged in a panic" and "your guy hit, but his low strength reduced it to 2 damage" before I called it quits

I Like the RNG in this game because ITS FAIR. There is even a in game "detailed" report to show you exactly why your gladiators suck. I have said some very bad words in a row while playing only to end up winning some of the matches LOL. The game is VERY replayable, currently there is no items its all based on skill points that help towards the skill checks and these numbers may go up and mostly down because gladiators get injured and that makes sense! There is lots of text making each battle a pleasure and different from the last. The mechanics are simple to understand and the game as a whole in its current version is Awesome! Any updates would be FANTASTIC. This is exactly how i want to manage gladiators please dont delay buying this game because of the reviews (though most are positive) IDK why people hate RNG's thats like saying you hate Life, I personally LOVE random variables because thats what makes things interesting and realistic, its why fighters in MMA lose titles and are not the champions forever because over time they take accumlative damage or maybe its not their day that day. SAME applies here and i like that. The only thing i wish was different is the discipline skill as most fighters starting out will not listen to your commands EX: you press block and they attack. You want to attack and they block. They do the opposite of what you say because they have no discipline. You can raise the skill, though i find it easier to just press block if i want to attack and vice versa. This works very well. SO much so, that it seems like it doesnt really matter as loong as i do the opposite of what i want minus the occasional times where they actually listen but if you have discipline skill of 1 that will be far and wide my friend. If the odds of disobeying was less it would be a better balance because then it wouldnt be so predictable. The bkgd music is on point. One of my favorite games ever!

There's a lot of mechanics to keep track of and it kinda turns this game into a spreadsheet with wild RNG. There's options on how much RNG you like, but that somehow makes the game more tedious. You can start the game with no-star hero that will be pretty useless, or a three star one that'll carry the team. Feels like the game just encourages restarting and save scumming until you get the outcome you like.The combat mechanics are rather convoluted and not very fun, but you can press the button to let AI take over. Outside of battles, you get to recruit and fire people from a small pool. There's not much you can do otherwise. Would be cool to have some options to influence things outside of battle. Spend money on equipment, training, morale, promotion.A lot of information is also hard to get to. Some fighters get into fights and penalise each other in battle. You just have to keep paper notes because that info is not obvious when you select fighters to sent into battles. There's also minor frustrating bugs like not even being able to inspect the characters you want without going in and out of menus.

This is not an action packed game so if you want that sort of first person perspective, this is not your game. If you like more chill and management games like OOTP or Front Office Football then this is probably something of interest. The game features gathering a squad of fighters with various salary demands and methods. You can get free fighters that have a limited number of matches (win or lose) before they are set free (Criminals). You can buy Slaves for a one time fee - again once they win 10 matches, they are set free. There are potential diamonds in the rough called Citizens that you can hire and train. And if you do well, you can afford Veterans which are expensive but are generally ready to go and better than any of the other types. In addition, the fighters come in a variety of flavors. There is a bit of a rock/paper/scissors/lizard/spock advantage to the various fighter types. It is only an edge, however, better fighters generally will prevail. You climb the ranks and as you get more success, you are offered better prospective fighters. You manage the available funds (again related to your performance) and can get promoted to better leagues (or demoted to lower leagues). There is some option to the amount of RNG that comes to matches and fighter make up. I like RNG and trying to work around problems like hiring a new shiny veteran and seeing him lose his head in his first match after sinking in money and all my hopes and dreams into his success. I have not tried the lesser randomness settings, but they are available if you prefer some more sanity.

Can't give this a good rating. If you don't do a terrible job and manage to consistently win, you will eventually be put in a spot where you are forced to lose in unwinnable battles that you can't simply say no to or opt out of. Since nobody in Division 5 would ever willingly face anybody in Division 1 or 2 in an impossible match-up, this is a huge problem with the design. I mean you can't even scout to see who you are facing to give yourself an idea of what you will be up against. You're just stuck putting a squad through a slaughterhouse or throwing a team of scrubs out there and accepting an L. I do not accept Losses. -I- have to make the mistakes, get overconfident, choose the wrong tactics, etc etc etc. I do not get forced into it because of poor development. Until this gets addressed and fixed or cheats become available to fix it so you're not stuck in unwinnable positions, this goes on the shelf in the "Nope" category.

I really enjoy trying out indie titles and supporting small devs. The ideas that come from these people are sometime the most unique things in gaming. This game however falls flat for me. It's got nothing to do with the text base gameplay and very minimal, yet complex UI. It's the fact that I can't play the game. When I go to start a new game, it loads to 20% every time then freezes. No, I don't have an anti-virus stopping it. I have to close out the game to then its some how already a save file in my load games. I go to play the game and I'm in game. Ok that's not that bad I can play right? Well why is it that when I go into battles, I can only manually control the game until the start round button bugs out and the only thing I can do from that point is sim the match? I don't want to sim the match. That's absolutely boring and not why I want to play. I will just return this game it's not even worth the sale price with such game breaking bugs. you tried/10

Nice game. Good music and interesting mechanics. Lots of value for money here. Text-based combat system keeps you engaged with lots of strategic options for play. Replay value is high. 8/10