Warriors: Rise to Glory is an Israeli indie game, developed by Gavra Games. It is a turn-based fighting game with RPG elements, in which you play as a brave warrior at the beginning of his path to becoming the greatest gladiator there ever was.
Creating the Ultimate Fighter
Your fearsome gladiator starts with nothing but a loincloth and slowly upgrades his armor and weapons arsenal. But before you strap on your first breastplate, you can customize your character as you see fit. Right now, you can only change your skin color (so you can finally create the ultimate ninja turtle gladiator), haircut, beard, tattoos, and scars
In addition to your looks, you can customize the fighter’s initial attributes, which determine what kind of warrior you’re going to be. Finally, there is an impressive skill tree that makes battles a lot more interesting.
Once you finish building your character, naming it, and selecting a title and a banner that will follow him throughout his career, it’s time to step into the ring. But before we start talking gameplay proper, let’s cover one question that’s plagued the human race from the very beginning: What happens when you die? Well, in Warriors: Rise to Glory, the death of one warrior is the birth of another’s career (a sort of light permadeath you see in Rogue-lite games like Dead Cells). Each time your character dies, the next one will inherit part of the money and a few random pieces of his predecessor’s equipment.
You don’t start from stretch every time you die. Apart from money and fame, your warrior will gather Soul Shards. Souls Shards accumulate until you have enough to level up and gain more attribute points for the next character in the dynasty.
When Fighting Clashes with Strategy
Now that you know what to expect for your dynasty of warriors let’s get into the fighting system. As mentioned, this is a turn-based fighting game, where you get one action a turn, and each one costs your character a different amount of energy. You can perform light, medium or heavy attacks, sprint attack, rest to gather some energy, Spartan-kick the enemy, switch to a long-range weapon or excite the crowd.
Keeping the crowd entertained is vital. Before each battle, you can see what kind of rewards to expect from the audience if they like you. Different actions provide a different excitement bonus, and resting will lower it – nobody came to see you snooze in the middle of a fight to the death.
Your goal is obviously to defeat the other gladiator in single-combat. The equipment you gathered determines how much initial defense rating you will have, defense points protect your life points, and when some one’s life points reach zero, the battle is over. But defeat isn’t always the end; when the fight is over, you can choose whether to kill your opponent for Soul Shards, or spare his life and get more money. Either way, if you win a battle, your character will earn some XP.
But you might end up being the one begging for his life if you lose. If you’ve spent all your cash on a shiny new battleax, your warrior will die, and you’ll move on to the next one in the dynasty.
Enter the Arena
Warriors: Rise to Glory features three game modes. The first and the most simple one is Dual Mode. It’s a one-on-one battle with a random enemy to the death (or utter humiliation), with enemies becomes stronger in each fight.
Next, we have Tournament Mode, where you begin a journey to either becoming the new champion of the ring or die trying. The enemies are much stronger and smarter, so your strategy skills and the character you build will be put to the test.
The third and final game mode in Warriors: Rise to Glory is Survival Mode. In this mode, you are going to fight one battle after the other, but your armor and life points don’t regenerate after each one. Every round puts you in front of a stronger opponent and the more you survive, the bigger your rewards. There’s also a leaderboard you can strive to conquer if you’re the competitive type (and let’s face it, if you’re playing a game about gladiators, you probably are). As opposed to other game modes your character doesn’t die when you lose, but there is an entry fee.
Furthermore, there is a mini-game mode to help you relax between one deadly battle and the next. It’s a dice game where you gamble with your hard-earned in-game money. You and your opponent each have 10 points, and your goal is to make sure the other player loses all their points before you do.
Both players have a pool of 20 dice, and every turn roll and discard five of them. Rolling a die can earn you an additional roll, shield your HP, attack the enemy for one point of damage, or poison yourself for one point of damage. The match is over once both players spend all their dice, or one player reaches zero HP. It is a nice change of pace from all the brutal arena fights, and a good way to earn more coin.
Winning on Good Looks Alone
Even tough Warriors: Rise to Glory is an indie game developed by a small group of people, the graphics don’t disappoint. It doesn’t look like a AAA game, but the Gavra Games decided not to jump on the pixel art bandwagon, and work with proper 3D models and environments. The result is quite impressive. The visuals give a nostalgic feeling and remind you of the old arcade fighting games.
The game is quite violent and gory, so if you are uncomfortable with blood and stabbing, I’d advise you to turn off the “gore” option.
I don’t usually play indie games, but I really enjoyed Warriors: Rise to Glory, and even wanted to continue my dynasty to see what happens when you win a tournament. There are many funny references to movies and shows scattered around the game, and it’s clear the developers really care about it. They are happy to listen to any feedback players might have during the Early Access stages.
The game can run on almost any modern PC and isn’t very demanding which is always an advantage. Anyone can come and create their own gladiator dynasty and enjoy fighting to the dead as I did.
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