Gladiator Trainer is a management sim in which you force your slaves to fight in your name for both money and prestige. Being a lowborn yourself, there isn’t much glory to be had at first as you pit your fighters in illegal back alley fights where the payout will barely have you breaking even. Your slaves do make a bit of a cash profit from fighting, though most of your expenses come from the newly acquired estate you’ve gained that is a crumbling mess, and can be improved given you do well enough in this new business of yours. It is quite the task as the beginning of the game is brutal and an uphill battle with your limited income. You have to think carefully about how you spend in even the most basic of things. Should you build an infirmary & then hire a doctor or would it be better to build a new cell to purchase another slave in case of injuries or worse?
That choice and many others will have to be made as you take huge risks in the hopes of coming out ahead. You only have two slaves to begin with and the two cells necessary to house them. Sending them off to fight is the only way to gain money provided they actually win. On top of all that, your cash reserves are constantly draining as maintaining your estate isn’t cheap, nor is paying all of your staff such as a cook, scribe, or an actual trainer to keep reserve fighters up to snuff. This aspect of constant pressure I found to be particularly annoying. Not due to difficulty, just from the sheer fact that your steward has far too much control over decisions without any say on your part. She’ll hire new maids, build a useless garden, and increase everyone’s wages just to keep you from ever being able to gather the cash you could use elsewhere.
Without her poor management of things, one would be able to beat the game much faster by appropriating funds to better uses, so it feels just as much an attempt to pad the game as to keep the tension up. Every week is essentially a turn you can use to build/repair structures, send slaves to fight, and head over to a neighboring town to buy gear for them. Occasionally, a slaver ship will dock nearby where you can buy sex slaves to keep your fighters happier, or purchase another poor bloke to toss into your blood-sport matches. A small detail I absolutely loved was that each slave has their own little biographies to let you know how they ended up in that position in the first place. They can be captured bandits, murderers, or simply born into slavery as a few examples. It makes you care about them more than simply having a name and a face. Doesn’t make you any less of a terrible human being though.
Your world is contained to your estate and the nearby town, with an endless fog set over the lands to add to the grim tone. Even in such a moody atmosphere, seeing your home grow larger and larger fills you with a sense of pride despite how you make a living. Each week also carries the possibility of a random event occurring, like traveling warriors that can boost your fighter’s stats for a price or an illness befalling someone. There are far more interesting events that can occur as well. At one point I purchased a slave and found myself in finical trouble later on. To my luck, an older man requested an audience with me and begged me to allow his daughter to go free in exchange of 500 gold coins. It isn’t a lot all things considered, but it was still double what I had paid for his untrained level 1 daughter and I really needed the cash, so that unscripted event was a lifesaver.
There was a time when someone had stolen a decent chunk of gold from my treasury and a guard informed me that he suspected a certain slave. With no other leads, I promptly tortured him and I’ll leave it to your imagination as to whether I got my stuff back or if I got the wrong man. The random events happen rarely and I’ve never seen them occur twice outside of the traveling trainers. They are a great addition to bring life into the world and as stated, happen rarely enough that you are excited when they occur. As much as I like this unforgiving setting they created, the UI design nearly ruins it. Navigation on the overworld with a mouse is perfectly fine, however, once you click on a house or town to enter the actual menus it becomes a train wreck. What you’ll find is your typical RPGMaker layout that does not function well at all with a mouse, and contains even more things that will drive you insane, such as needing to select the dialogue option to exit your house instead of simply pressing the escape key.
Vice versa the overworld does not function well using your keyboard, and good luck trying to write your team name or anything else. There is no way to delete text with a mouse and the default X key for RPGMaker games is completely random as to whether it wants to work or not. You have access to no option menus of any kind and forcing it into fullscreen the usual way will result in an odd aspect ratio. To enter fullscreen using the correct 4:3 ration press F5 or to instead change window sizes use F6. While we are talking about its negative elements, I just need to mention that skimpy anime thumbnail they use for this title. This may sound harsh, but that is quite simply shameless click-bait. There are no anime characters whatsoever. At most, you have a roaming trainer wielding a hilariously over-sized sword and the katana being an actually decent weapon here, other than that it is all more or less grounded in reality.
The art-style is a bizarre blend of what I assume be real locations with an oil filter applied over them, and low-quality 3D models. Picked apart they would be subpar, but combined they really enhance the uncanny vibe of this unforgiving world. Better yet, all the characters ranging from lowly slave fighters to people of stature have their own unique models. It makes it easy to identify the fighter you’ll be facing alongside further adding to your immersion as no two people you meet are the same. That does not apply to your slaves however, while they do have biographies to bring some life into them, they will simply be shown via quite hideous portraits. This also means that your fighters can actually die, unlike those of your foes. You won’t have to worry about them dying on you if you hire a doctor, however. I’m not a fan that doctors completely remove the chance of an unexpected death entirely as you know that at most they’ll receive an injury lasting a few weeks which removes some of the excitement.
So it’s finally time to talk about the fights themselves. They are displayed in your typical RPGMaker fashion with the big difference being you have absolutely no control over the outcome once in battle. The AI will decide when to attack and use their special moves until someone dies or is injured. It makes some god awful decisions at times, though are still quite a joy to watch. You can send your slave in with nothing but sandals and a wooden club if you want & still have a chance of winning if he is experienced enough, has luck on his side, or makes a sudden comeback. Another major factor in his success is which of the six classes he belongs to and whether it is effective against that of his opponents. Minus the most unevenly mismatched battles imaginable, there is always a risk of losing and watching it unfold is always nail-biting. You really do not want your fighters to lose, one loss and you are out of the entire event. As you can imagine when you are typically on the edge of losing everything, making no or little money for the week is less than wanted.
All of the fights will be one against one and you will get paid for each you manage to win. Whether a classy tournament or a shady alleyway slugfest, there will always be three fights. The amount your slave recovers from match to match depends on if you have a doctor and the food you are putting in him. Depending too much on a single fighter is a bad idea as if he ever gets injured the other slaves you’ve “neglected” to use up until then will be of little use. Moreover, due to the law of the land, he is entitled to 10 gold for each battle and will eventually be able to buy his freedom. That is something to always keep in mind as you naturally want to use your champion for every encounter, even simple ones. I keep referring to them as male, but there are females and people of color as well. As long as you can hold a sword, the arena doesn’t discriminate. Leading them to victory after victory will increase their morale, causing them to go from a meek slave just happy to have survived, to someone that learns to love the spectacle and hypes up the crowd who will then throw extra gold your way.
You always have the option to withdraw from that week’s tournament if you see your fighters are tired and you don’t want to risk injuring them. The people that paid to watch bloodshed certainly won’t be happy though and it will cause a serious decrease in your reputation. Since it is always three fights and you can have up to four people, it is a good idea to always have someone not valuable you can throw to the lions so to speak. Or if you really want to cheese your way through the game, simply right-click on any fighter. This will cause all of them to leap in against one guy and even the withdrawal flag gets in on the action, counting as another character. You can even control each of their actions. Yes, this is a massive unintended glitch, but the sheer irony of a withdrawal flag knocking the daylights out of someone is amazing.
Less amazing is that you can’t see how much health a character has between matches due to terrible UI design. The fact that a single lost battle will boot you from the tournament makes the limit of having only four fighters pointless. There are six classes and unless you want to sell off a slave, you are stuck with what you get. Yes, characters leave, but it takes a very long time. The first time a slave finally got enough cash to leave my services was essentially at the end of the game. I used him a ton throughout the game as well. And they do thankfully leave whatever you equip them with, so no worries about them strolling off with a fortune’s worth of high tier equipment. The possibility of them dying in battle would have done wonders to alleviate this issue and give us the chance to try new classes. As it is currently designed, you’ll have to go out of your way to try them all.
Level scaling also becomes an issue later on. If there is a fighter lagging behind, it is far simpler and cheaper to buy a new one. You can buy a high-tier level 20 fighter right off the boat as if skilled warriors were a dime a dozen, cheapening the experience of building someone up. Since each class will always have the same moves, there is no reason not to do so. Sending them off to a special war college that is unlocked later on will cost 2k for five days and may take multiple times to level up even once. Buying someone else that is level 20 is only 5k on the other hand. This issue leads back to the steward, who is already stress itself manifested in a womanly form. She is the one that tells you what tournament is available and there is never more than one per week. Tough luck if none of your fighters are up to scratch or you are trying to level someone up, you either go and most likely lose, or accept your fate and pay the stewardess her weekly fees regardless if you made anything.
This title sadly runs out of stuff to take care of on the management side of things by mid-game. By that point, all you can do is go into town to buy gear, other than that you may as well head directly to the next fight. You can also go into your library to read up on the lore of the world if you wish. While not great, it is good enough to get you interested in its happenings. Far later into the game, you can buy horses who will randomly be chosen to race. If you win you get a good chunk of change, but by that point, you’ll practically be carelessly throwing money around in a way you would have never dreamed of upon starting your career. It is introduced too late to be useful, though collecting horses and naming them is still fun. That is if the backspace button decides to work as you can not change their name afterward tragically enough. I still to this day have a horse named “Name Horse <cc” and it kills me a bit inside every-time I see it.
Surprisingly enough, it does feature a story. There is some intrigue happening across the lands against the queen’s life. Being an entertainer of sorts yourself, you can get close to people many others can’t due to even the barbarian tribes in the Dune desert loving themselves some blood-sports. Or you can choose to become part of the problem and double cross the monarchy. You’ll have a few rather interesting decisions to make throughout. Once your power and influence grows enough, you can even get married to one of several ladies, each carrying their own benefits. Gladiator Trainer is just filled to the brim with a ton of good ideas, which makes it such a shame that it is so poorly put together. It is functional enough to be very addicting should you choose to give it a chance, and at the price point of two dollars, it is much easier to recommend. If it sounded interesting in any way and are willing to look past its roughness, you are more likely than not going to find it to be a guilty pleasure.
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