Colosseum: Road to Freedom Preview

"Welcome, dead man.”

Enslaved, forced to fight in the arenas, there is only one to secure your freedom … well, Ok, two ways, but death is hardly a welcomed option.

KOEI is behind Colosseum: Road to Freedom, a PlayStation 2 release slated to ship to retailers in mid-July. The game is a third-person perspective combat outing set in the era following the death of Caesar Marcus Aurellius (the same time period as the movie, Gladiator). Your avatar is enslaved and forced into the blood spectacle of the time

While graphically strong, the game has some other elements that may cause some minor frustration along the way. But more about that in a moment.

You begin by creating your avatar. First, there is the country of origin (nine answers to choose from), then you select your previous occupation (from five possible answers), the gladiatorial path you will follow (from three possible selections – Path of Destiny, Path of Survival, Path of the Unknown), and whatever Roman god you may believe in. Of course, you can be thoroughly obscure in your answers and let the processing slave master pick for you. After creating your character, you enter three combat battles, the first two with wooden swords. After the third battle, a Roman merchant who deals in gladiators buys you. That is when you are told you have the chance to win your freedom. You must pay back the trader with winnings in the arena.

It is a relatively simple proposition, you train, you skill up, you enter gladiatorial combat – which costs coin to enter – and if you win, you leave with more coins than you started with. Of course, you have to buy equipment, and upgrade along the way to earn the bigger paydays.

While this is all fine and dandy, the game has – at this stage in the design – a couple of major flaws that seriously undermines the whole combat element. When it comes to targeting, the game is very awkward. This is a three-dimensional fighting arena and yet your avatar has trouble turning and keeping the opposition in front of him. He seems to turn easily in the four major directions (up, down, right and left), but begins to have trouble at the four points in between, and any gradients of those is almost impossible. You will find that you have to run around and get your opponent in a certain position in order to target easier.

The game also allows you to pick up items dropped in the arena using a shoulder button. This applies to weapons, armor and skill tablets, which can be equipped to act as (not only a major drain on your stamina) a power-up or special attack. Unfortunately, you have to be in the perfect position to pick these items up. Simply standing beside them or on top of them is not good enough. When the scene is on a short leash, timer wise, picking these up can be a source of frustration. 

Graphically Colosseum does a fine job, and the gameplay differs little from the cutscenes. The story displayed in the aforementioned cutscenes can be a little cliché, which is driven along those lines by the voice acting, but the main star of this game is the combat. In that regard, with a bevy of skills at the gladiator’s disposal, the game fares well.

Colosseum: Road to Freedom is a simply done tale, mounted on strong graphics. There are a few flaws, though, that may hold this title back come its release date.