If I could give this game a Star rating, I'd give it 3 out of 5.

It's certainly not a bad game by any means, and especially for the price, you get a reasonable experience.

However, there are a few quibbles I have with it from various angles.

The animals' animation is super janky, and the enemies oftentimes Blade And Sorcery level stupid. Like, in some of the campaign levels they'll just stand there like an absolute stapler while you're shooting a ballista at them.

The physics are also super wonky, and I've encountered several collision-related bugs.

In addition, the weapons included in the game include some very, VERY anarchronistic weapons, if they're going for Roman-era gladiatorial combat. Poleaxes wouldn't be a thing until the late Middle Ages, and rapiers wouldn't be a thing till *the Renaissance*. Having rapiers in the game would be as anachronistic (assuming that this is roughly around the time of Augustus/early Empire) as having a US Army NGSW show up when the medieval period started. Longswords are similarly anachronistic by about a thousand years, and didn't exist in this time period because the Romans simply couldn't produce advanced spring steel blades that size with their level of technology.

We are just going to ignore all the fantasy elements in this because no and also because this is supposed to be the actual Rome we actually had.

Speaking of which, the whole gladiators-were-slaves thing the story has going on is a myth (with some asterisks). Most gladiators weren't actually slaves, most of them volunteered, much in the way we don't send prisoners to professional [insert sport here] teams in the modern day. They were the Michael Jordans of their day, not usually slaves.

The campaign is also stupid short. 7 missions is great, but this is the story mode and the 7th mission is grabbing an item. Anticlimactic, to say the least.

Also I don't like how most of the game is locked behind grinding in the same arena over and over again, with no crowd mechanics. It gets tiring and boring eventually. The entire experience I was able to get in about the same time as watching a movie.

That being said, if it's on sale, it can be decent for the price. Not amazing, but I would recommend it if it goes on sale again. You can do a LOT worse for VR-based melee combat games, but you can also do a LOT better (IE. Blade and Sorcery).