Gladius, Day 3: Hail, Imperia

After adding another hero and a minotaur to their motley crew, the Viking twins conquer the fighting pits of Imperia and set their sights windward.

I just spent an hour writing a shell script to take the PNG files that PCSX2 generates for screenshots into resized, blog-friendly JPG files. I do and do and do for you all 🙂 (…and now I just rewrote it in Python) (…and now I asked GitHub Copilot to rewrite it for me, which it did.) (and now I just rearranged my Github folders).

This post should probably be how I always get distracted on the way to write about things, and never actually get to writing the actual post.

After the wilds of our native Nordagh, I had little idea what to expect of neighboring Imperia, home to a culture similar to the Romans. They are also just as wild about arena combat as we in Nordagh are.

The world of Gladius is a world where fighting between nations, and in most cases between people in general, is shifted into the arena. An arena where you can’t die. If you’re defeated, you are simply dragged from the sands and then brought back to full health.

It’s a kind of utopia, really, where all the bad things are replaced by spectacles that you can cheer on, or participate in. Otherwise, the world is at peace.

Except that many times, when we rest, we have visions about a dark god of darkness who is looking for the one remaining Valkyrie who controls the elemental power of light.

Accosted on the road one night by mysterious assailants who wanted her for their own nefarious ends, Ursula was rescued by the wandering gladiator Valens, whom we know is the protagonist of the game’s other narrative arc. He initially rebuffs Ursula’s offer for him to join their school, since his own has failed, but at a later meeting, he joins up.

In Nordagh, I didn’t know enough about the game at the time to be able to figure out how to follow the quests. Oh, I was supposed to wander around in a specific area at a specific time and then wait for an encounter? I had no idea. In Imperia, though, I had a better idea of what to do.

When a storekeeper casually mentioned that every so often they do a historical reenactment of the time mythical beasts invaded, before they all became friends and decided to just fight in gladiatorial combat. One such reenactment is coming in just seven days, and wouldn’t it be fun to take part?

I am not one to ignore leading questions like that. I took notes and made sure I was in the area in a week.

The arena fights, once completed, randomly have a satyr or a minotaur offer to join your school. Thankfully, it was the minotaur who stepped up, which is great because otherwise I would have had to reload the last save and try again. My only heavy combatant was the Yeti Iaar, whom I picked up in Nordagh. Some leagues require you to have two heavies in order to take on their challenges, and I couldn’t compete in those leagues — until now.

I’ve been using Iaar and Langston ever since as my unbreakable wall of meat that allows my spear-throwing Gungnirs time to pick enemies off from a distance with their broken, OP “Cover Area” ability that destroys everything in a hail of withering crossfire.

My second squad is led by Goff, the Mongrel. I am not sure exactly what kind of creature a Mongrel might be, but he is a tanky bandit type. When he’s out, he is usually accompanied by bandit Iain, and sneaky Syprian, two other bandits. Syprian has a diagonal-attacking spear move that gets behind heavy armor and just tears heavies aparts, while Goff and Iain keep flipping the heavy to get phenomenal backstab damage.

I mostly just use Ulan and Valens when the league requires I use them. Ursula is more likely to be used, as she has a wide variety of attacks, good elemental affinities, and is after all the protagonist.

Some of the fights can be pretty challenging, so I have found it is really, really important to make sure the rock/paper/scissors team composition is on point. I haven’t seen any of the walkthroughs really talk much about the Gungnir Cover Area ability, which is odd, as I find it game changing when the arena allows the the formation of a killing field. Sometimes things are just too crowded, in which case maybe bring out Goff’s crew of assassins.

I haven’t really seen the Nordagh points battles, king of the hills and breaking barrels fights in Imperia. They do have a lot more battles which require specific types of units.

I early on got a set of Amazon armor, but although I could rent an Amazon, I could never recruit one, They are the archers of Imperia and I really, really wanted one, so I could have her wear that armor. It all became clear when I went to the Windward Steppes, and it turns out that me not having an archer on the team was a plot point, as I was given an archer almost immediately. Unfortunately, I can’t return to Imperia yet for that Amazon, but maybe one will show up eventually.

We were occasionally taunted by this guy in the picture above, and it seemed like something might come of it, but nothing did before I moved on. There were some leagues I didn’t finish before we left Imperia; three associated with dealing justice to criminals, and it could be he is associated with them somehow. I know we will get a chance to return to Imperia — the Caltha arena is located there — so I hope to get a second chance and then, perhaps, meet up with him in gladiatorial combat.

But I guess I have to kill a dark lord, first.