Jotun Colosseum

Jotun Colosseum is a grind-to-win “battle arena” type of RPG where you play as a gladiator who fights for gold, gets stronger and rises through the ranks. In my opinion, however, a better suited title for this game is “Jotun Gauntlet.” After all, a colosseum is an amphitheater where all sorts of events and fights happen for the sake of public entertainment, a gauntlet is a trial where one endures frequent pain. The latter so befittingly describes the experience of playing this game.

With game progression at the speed of a tortoise and gameplay that’s as luck-driven and disappointing as a trip to a Vegas casino, Jotun Colosseum is not a game that tests your strength or wit, but your patience and temperament.



STORY:
You play as some gladiator from a preset group of four characters. Your goal, like any aspiring warrior, is to get strong and get rich by participating in the famous Jotun Gauntlet I mean Colosseum. A blonde, a monk, a cool rogue and some elf compete against “challenging” battles against monsters to rise through the ranks to fulfill whatever ambiguous goal each character holds.

… That’s at least what I got out of it. The game is fairly light on story, in favor of putting focus more on its gameplay. This isn’t a bad thing in a game, mind you, but what happens when the gameplay doesn’t carry itself enough to make up for the lack of an engaging story?

GAMEPLAY:
Buckle up, we’re going for a rough ride.

To this game’s credit, it at least starts out okay. The lousy mapping of the “colosseum” outdoors might strain your eyes a little, but that’s not as big as a problem, and it’s something I’ll cover in another topic. Jotun Colosseum pumps you up with a driving introduction that you’re about to enter one of the best arenas in the game’s fantasy world… then it doesn’t really give you much explanation to anything after that.

As mentioned in the “story” section, you get to choose from four different characters to start your playthrough. Unfortunately, none of these characters have any descriptions as far as how they differ in stats, what stats even do in this game, how the overall mechanics work, etc. etc. Once you make your selection, you get a set amount of gold to customize your starting options, from stat increases to items to prepare for the first fight, but you are left in the dark a little bit as there are no tutorials or any explanation as to what you are supposed to do during this time. You can’t even save your progress in the menu, you have to talk to an NPC. Considering this is meant to be the "resting area" of the game, where the player has control over their movement, what's the point? You can at least figure out the ropes of the game by replaying it, if you are honestly insane or remarkably patient enough to do so after your first experience.

The game is broken up into a series of “leagues”, and each league has a series of “ranks,” and each rank consists of battles that go for a certain amount of “rounds.” A lot is presented to you before you even have a chance to actually warm up to the game, and even the “explanation” open is long-winded. Trust me, just start with the lowest Bronze rank. I’m sure if that mode is as agonizing to play as it is, the others would be worse.

The moment you enter your first intended battle, against two Goddamned Bats, you’ll notice something immediately wrong. Jotun Colosseum uses an Active Timer Battle system, where you have to wait for a bar to increase before your character can attack, and that ATB bar moves at a total crawl, an infamous feature with the default battle system of RPG Maker 2003. Your opponents at this stage of the game can get two hits on your character before your turn, to which your character can only get one, and the damage values these bats can dish out are pretty sizable. On your first try, you’ll likely to get out of the first battle with less than half your health.

Next round, you’re up against a new opponent in addition to the killer bats: a Goblin. These guys will dish out even more damage than the bats per turn, and at this point you’ll notice another problem. The game is ridiculously varied with the damage you dish out to enemies and the there is a chance your attacks won't hit at all. Those bats only take one hit to kill, yet that chance can easily be spoiled by a “miss” that pops up as the mighty RNG god decrees, leaving you forced to wait for that ATB bar to fill once more.

Goblins can die in one it, too, but only if you deal around 16 or so damage to them in that turn, yet chances are you’ll hardly reach that amount with your first smack, and from there, the entire troop is free to slog you to death, and you'll most certainly die if you haven’t bothered to purchase any healing items at this point.

Fortunately, there are no “Game Overs” in Joton Colosseum. Upon dying, you are simply sent back to the lobby to regroup… wait. My bad. You CAN’T regroup after death.

See, the main objective of the game is to gather gold to buy items, equipment, stat increases and spells to get stronger. You earn gold for every troop of monsters you beat in a round, but you can only keep that gold if you’re alive and you “withdraw” from a rank or beat it. If you lose, no reward will be given, so all of the gold you earned will be lost, but since that gold is needed to even buy healing potions to keep you alive, you essentially stagnate upon death, leaving you with no better chance against your foes than the last time! In fact, if you've chosen to spend your money on potions, use them between battles and still manage to die, you're technically left worse off than you were before. Potions cost the same amount you earn from every battle, 50 gold. Give me a break!

The key to playing this game is to play it as safe as possible, withdrawing after every 2-3 fights to power up and retry, listening to the same, long-winded opening speech again and again as you grind to progress.

That is what’s wrong with Jotun Colosseum as a whole. If the slow ATB was any indicator, everything is padded, slowed down, repetitive and above all tedious. Much like paying off your monthly bills, the game isn’t even remotely fun or rewarding enough for its repetition to be desirable. At least I was able to grind my way to the first boss in my playthrough, but good lord… the game truly shows its lack of mercy at this point.

The boss in question was the Goblin King, who looks as exciting as any other generic hue change of a common RPG Maker enemy. Don’t let that look fool you, though, because this bastard has a skill which has a chance of stunning your character, and at this point you are more likely to just be stuck with one party member, since the additional characters you can purchase are expensive and probably not worth it. Stun, as a status effect, leaves you completely immobile for a long period of turns, and meanwhile the entire enemy troop can freely slog you down all the way from around full health to zero without a damn thing the player can do about it.

If that was any indication to you, yet another defining flaw with Jotun Colosseum is that there is no actual strategy going on. You just attack and hope it lands or you do enough damage. You pray to God that your next round doesn’t overwhelm you, and you bet on the planets aligning to make sure your opponents don’t pull off a status effect that renders you helpless.

It was the point with the goblin boss that made me realize that absolutely no thought or care was put in to make the game engaging. You don’t create challenging battles by making the player’s life miserable; you create it by designing work-around to presented problems through battles. Think of designing a battle the way you would design a puzzle to be solved.

One last note I’ll leave with is directed towards the player. By all means go to your menu and change “Active” to “Wait.” The former, left to default, will allow enemies to hit you even as you are trying to make a decision through the command menu in battle, while the latter will allow you the needed breathing room in a game that’s focused on careful planning. You’ll thank me later.

GRAPHICS/AUDIO:
The game’s visuals don’t really stand out much. They’re the default RTP that we’ve seen time and time again. Some areas, however, use the tiles completely wrong, making the visuals even uglier. There are some cool effects, however, like a screen transition that focuses in on shop keepers, and the animation that occurs when a giant door opens in the colosseum is nice.

The sound is RTP as well. It's notorious for being kind of loud, but otherwise, it’s not offensive by any means.



OVERALL:
A colosseum, back in ancient times, was a place where people would go to experience thrills and somewhat sadistic fun, but Jotun Colosseum offers neither. It’s arduous, repetitive, and overall a painful chore to play, hence I prefer to call it “Jotun Gauntlet”. If not for some of the slightly charming features this game has (props to that door animation), I would have ranked this game lower than what I am about to give it now.

SCORE:
1.5/5
Awful