Ludus Magnatus: Gladiator Manager Simulator Early Access Preview – Shall We Begin?!

Spartacus: Blood and Sand is, simply put, a masterpiece. It's one of my favourite series, with Blood & Sand being one of the best seasons of TV ever put on screen. Gods of the Arena was a great prequel produced while Andy Whitfield was undergoing cancer treatment. Vengeance and War of the Damned may have dipped at times, but I still thoroughly enjoyed them. Since then, anything gladiatorial has caught my eye. I've…

That's the first and last time I'm typing the full title. Everything after the colon can go, in the interest of maintaining some momentum. Unfortunately, momentum is something Ludus Magnatus itself struggles with, though Danish developer Contec Games can't be accused of failing to maintain it with updates; more on that at the end.

What is Ludus Magnatus? Well, it's a simple one: you are the lanista - the owner - of a gladiator school. You want to buy slaves, improve their skills and equipment, and improve your ludus. The aim is to move from the seventh tier, Provinces League 2, right to the top of the Imperium Romanum Allstar League. There are 112 teams in total, including such legends as the Thermae Titans, Forum Hadriani and Capua Gladiators (Capua! Shall we begin?). You can also replace whichever team you take control of with one you've created yourself.

It's a decent setup, but I would argue that there are too many teams for the variety of gameplay on offer. It doesn't feel like I'm on a journey to the top of my own gladiatorial empire, but just on a long grind with little payoff. The general play-by-play of Ludus Magnatus is very simple, arguably to the game's detriment.

When I think of other management sim games, there is often something underlying that makes you feel like you've had an actual impact on the next victory or defeat. Here, your impact is to improve your gladiators' gear, possibly help with their training, and upgrade your ludus, with training being the more difficult one because it requires a doctore with higher attributes than the gladiators they're training. They can also pass on skills, if they have them, but with only four attributes, the depth is shallow.

Upgrading the ludus is equally simple. There are seven areas to improve, with the training ground, scout and antiquarian being the most useful. These improve your gladiators' training, the quality of recruits available on the market, and the equipment you can purchase, respectively. Other upgrades, like medical ones, have their place if your gladiators tend to get injured. Others, like the spy, are a complete and utter waste of time and money. Knowing your enemy should be useful, but it doesn't help at all in Ludus Magnatus, due to the combat system.

You're given five slots to create five different formations and tactics, letting you tell your gladiators whether to attack, defend, or hold formation. You can also give specific orders, such as targeting the weakest opponent or defending a teammate. The problem is that the AI seems to take all of this as an incredibly vague bit of advice rather than an actual instruction, so fights tend to turn into a mosh pit of swords, spears, shields, axes, and clubs.

This is where I see the biggest room for improvement. As it currently stands, the combat is rubbish. The AI doesn't just treat your tactical instructions as vague suggestions; it seems to treat attacking as one, too. I've had gladiators who should comfortably win a fight - they outgear and out-stat the opponent - and they're just standing there taking a bloody hammering, refusing to attack. So much of the game is about preparing for the fight, only for the fight to have zero excitement and be completely at the whims of an AI on meth.

Ludus Magnatus essentially becomes a game of starting a match, loading in, complaining about the AI being useless, loading out, and repeating until you've earned enough money to buy another upgrade. Then it's straight back on the wheel. The novelty wears thin very quickly. What it desperately needs is either a way to have more of a direct influence on your gladiators or a 'skip match' option, so you can just have the result and skip the anger and/or anxiety.

This has probably sounded more negative than I intended so far, but there are things I like beyond the general premise, particularly the consequences of combat. Gladiators can, and will, die. Overusing them will make that more likely; equally, leaving them on the sidelines will reduce their loyalty. Managing your roster matters, particularly with the cost of equipment. I ended up settling for a rolling roster of around 10 of the 15 available slots, giving me enough to rotate while not so many that others get annoyed.

I also need to give credit to Contec Games. Updates are frequent and address a gamut of issues and upgrades. While I wouldn't say the updates have fixed the biggest problems so far, I can see the potential, and these updates will extend beyond version 1.0, given Contec's admission that they didn't really plan the numbering of updates.

All in all, Ludus Magnatus is an interesting game, albeit flawed in its current form. The inspiration behind playing Football Manager and thinking "what if this but stabbing" is an interesting one, and one that I can get behind. Over thousands of hours in Football Manager, I've often wanted to stab some of my players. But do I recommend it? On this, I'm wobbly. I do enjoy it to an extent, and I imagine others will too, but I don't think it's worth the £20.99 asking price. So yes, I recommend it, but at a lower price or if you're really into it.

Code provided by the developer.

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