The Quick Champion - Gladiator Begins - Venus #01 (PSP/Android/PPSSPP)
Channel: mrnygren2
Date: 2022-10-11

I'm starting a let's play of the PSP (PlayStation Portable) title "Gladiator Begins" released on September 5th, 2010 - it's a game which takes heavy inspiration from the Spartacus TV-series which started to air earlier that same year - and I were a huge fan of that TV-show - especially the first season.

So in the game you get to pick your own Gladiator and there is no limit on how many characters you can create as each character is one save-file -which allows multiplayer battles against a friend or the AI between your own characters or a friends character. The Gladiator can be an adult male or female, and the options at the start of the game allows for a muscular female/male or a standard female/male - then when you have beaten the game at least once you can pick more options for males and females. Besides this there are the DLC (downloadable content) package availabe on the internet for download which adds additional skins and models such as the "Beast Woman", the "Japanese Samurai", the "Robot Gladiator" or a character that looks kinda anime-styled to be honest - unlike the other characters these characters cannot alter their clotes that they were and can only replace the helmet, the weapon and the shield - all the vanilla characters that weren't DLC can replace the clothes and armor for the legs and the arms as well.

The game has a really good fighting-system where you can truly enjoy the fights in the arena, and it's bloody and reminds you of the Spartacus TV-show immediately. You can pick different faces, different hairstyles, different skin-color and such - and pick a name of your chosing including the origins of the characters - be it Galia, Thrace, Dacia, Rome, Germania, Hispania, Britannia or Greece. 

The game has in-game cinematics between battles that look great. Unfortunately most of the dialogue with other characters is text and images only so no free movement outside of the arena sadly. In this the PS2-title did a better job, which was an earlier title by the same developers where you also fight as a Gladiator and unlike in this game has more of an environment where you can run around and speak to people - but sadly in that game you can only play as the pre-set main character - which is a male with a particular look and name. This game adds many options for the character but lacks the open environments of the earlier game.

I did have an earlier character like back in February when I played the game for a bit without recording, but sadly I replaced the save-file when importing the files of the DLC-package. That character had come further than the one I'm playing here and managed to defeat a boss in the arena that I failed to defeat in this video.