Completion time: 21:20

All these hours after I completed Star Gladiator, I just can’t help but to continue to think about how damn weird it is. It’s a3D brawler, but you have 2D fighter inputs sometimes, but then you don’t. You can’t input attacks like Tekken, but then you can. The characters look like Star Wars rejects, but there’s a reason for it.

It’s a highly unusual game. I don’t think I’ve ever played a fighter quite like it, and that ain’t no compliment. It was difficult to make heads or tales out of combat, and that translated into a very average at best experience as a whole. Like Rival Schools, I feel like if I took the time to learn about all that goes into the combat engine, I may actually derive some sort of joy from playing it.

As it is though, Star Gladiator is a hard pass. It functions as a game, but then sometimes it doesn’t. It’s the kind of fighting game that Capcom should have never brought to the US. It introduced gamers to Hayato, who became a playable fighter in Marvel vs Capcom 2, but he was some mid tier no name anyway. Don’t bother trying to track this one down.

Rating: 5