Jotun Colosseum

Jotun Colloseum is exactly what it says on the tin - you battle hordes and hordes of monsters until you have enough money to train yourself, gear yourself up and defeat stronger monster.
And overall it is decent, but I find it hard to recommend. I would recommend it to casual gamers wanting to play it every now and then to slowly progress. Playing too much at once is going to exhaust you.

There is no story, dialogue or any change in environment - I would have loved to see at least a new all-nice looking battle arena for the higher ranks.
There are three three - bronze, silver and gold. Which then have a 4 different difficulty level. You gain a set amount of gold per fight, and a bonus for clearing the last "challenge" fight alongside it for the first time.
You can pause once between battles to jug potions and use healspells, and you can turn back between fights - you will lose all gold you earned if you take the chance and die. The only odd thing is that you are supposed to be the gladiator owner .. given that you only ever play and move the gladiators, this seems odd.

I will say I did not play through gold yet, but it seems to continue in the same vein without any additions, looking at sacredlobo's let's play, so it should be safe to review.


You scared me! For a second I thought there'd be a story!

The game revolves completely around trying out different paths to gain as much as strength as quickly as possible, and adjusting to the new difficulty spikes. This sadly all comes down to grinding, grinding, and grinding more.
Status upgrades become increasingly more expensive (but also stronger in their status boost), so does equipment, only potions stay their price, altho higher-tiered ones are definitely only available to your wallet later on (it is all tied to percentage, the usual potions heal 30% of your max health).
You can buy more party members, up to 4 in total, which you then have to boost up again, or you can boost the ones you have further. I advise to at least get two - and in fact, was forced to, as the first boss continued to stun me into oblivion, and having a meat shield solved that problem.

With which we come to the weak points of this game - they are namely
- luck-based difficulty spikes which you can still build around, but are hindering you for no good reason
- defensive stats being inferior to offensive ones
- a few skills not working
- skills being too expensive to use early on, and not necessary to use at all

All planning is done outside of battle if you will, and tied to how much money you have to spend at once. There are only few instances where you can influence what is going on inside the battle, normal-hits aside. And that was a rare instance of drinking one health potion after another in a race against chain-spells (more later)

I could not yet try out the mage-build, as that will be my third character, however, the manacosts are very high and while they offer you a little bit of healing during break early on (and thus saving potion costs), they will be useless unless you invest a lot of money into it. As often the case, they are inferior in the way that you will need to invest into new spells when possible, and will exhaust your mp fairly quickly. However, manapotions are available (again, tied to mana percentage, so useless for anyone not focused on magic) and should make it okay, if also expensive to use.
For convenience, auto-hitting is always best, as it is the fastest way to attack, can be used infinitely and also does not delay your battle-bar.

Now, there are a few bumps in the battle planning.
For one, some bosses' magic attacks (namely the hydra) are incredibly strong - we are talking 10x the normal attack. And 30-40 vs. 300-400 does make a difference. It may chain this attack (I did hold out with 7 or so in a row but then ran out of potions), or use it very sparingly, making it really more a matter of luck - and potion-hoarding. And grinding.
To even hold out in that situation does not require you to buff defenses - magic ability does not seem to affect magic defense - and my general defense does not seem to affect it, either. I was completely neglecting one character's armor, and even with less than half the defense, the damage taken was the same.
It requires you to boost your max HP so your potions can heal the damage done. That is your defensive measure, and the only effective one which can be counter-intuitive.


Now that I am all prepared and beefed up you are barely even casting anymore..

Equipment is also a very bad bet starting out, as base-stats are much worthwhile, even if growing more expensive - it is also very frustrating that weapon descriptions are not detailed at all. Some armor decreases your speed, which you do not want. Nevermind early on.
You may want to pick up some cheap equipment before you go .. don't.
There are one-handed weapons like swords which are really weak (you can get shields I suppose, but who wants defense?), and stuff like bows and axes with axes being the strongest to choose from without any noticeable set-backs.

This made my early introduction to the game a trial and error experience, and resulted into needless grinding. The first boss-monster can use a stun-ability which renders you useless for 5-6 turns, or in simpler terms, means instant-death early on. It may be used frequently or not at all. I tried taking the boss out first ignoring the additional goblins, but I ended up unlucky. So I grinded for a partner - and yes, he did get stunned. What can you do.

Now this is both good and bad - it is good as it encourages trial and error, trying things out until it works, but it is also bad as there are too few clues to make a proper investment early on, and it results in needless grinding.
There are also spikes - specifically the hydra - where you need to grind a lot, but then can procceed easily through the next few waves.
The good thing about this tho is that the people to talk to are all very intuitive and easy to find. Itemshop, weapon/armor shop, fighting guy, mage guy, go outside guy, save guy.

All that said. You can always procceed if you power up more, but it is frustrating as there is only so much worth investing into, and since it all comes down to but one thing - grinding.

It is a battle-fest RTP collosseum. It does what it is supposed to do. There is a lot of room to tweak, add and improve, but it works for what it is. Just .. don't try to rush through it all at once.