Ancient Rome is historically known for many things. More specifically, I would argue that one of the largest, most well-known aspects of the Romans’ way of life was the widespread societal admiration of gladiatorial blood sport. It seems I’m not the only one who would argue that case, as I discovered a couple of years ago when I stumbled upon a game on Steam by the name of Domina, developed and published by DolphinBarn.

When reduced to its most basic gameplay components, I would say that Domina is most aptly described by the phrase “gladiator management simulator.” Within the game, you’re directly responsible for the equipping, training, and battling of gladiators who are legally beholden to you. As you might expect given those circumstances, you’re also expected to maintain the physical well-being of your gladiators so as to ensure they remain in fighting shape.

Although I just described Domina as a “gladiator management simulator,” however, I absolutely don’t mean to suggest that the entirety of its gameplay revolves around the potentially more boring aspects of micromanaging your gladiators. The game is quick to demonstrate the fact that it offers copious amounts of intense, fast-paced violence. If you’re anything like me, that could very well prove to be what you find most interesting and/or entertaining about Domina.

The general premise the game provides a rationale behind why you begin training and battling your gladiators in a simple, short, and rather direct way. The Roman Emperor senses that the empire is beginning to crumble around him, which prompts him to declare that a year of gladiatorial games will be held in an attempt to raise public morale. You fully intend to be the ultimate victor of these games so that you may revel in the riches and glory such a triumph would entail.

One of the main roadblocks stopping you from immediately making a beeline for the national games held at the Emperor’s palace is the fact that you don’t know the first thing about training your gladiators. Fortunately for you, upon beginning a campaign, you’ll almost immediately meet a man who’s willing and able to help you with this dilemma.

This fellow calls himself a doctore, and he once worked to train gladiators for your character’s dying father. He claims that without him, your gladiators will prove to be nothing more than “slow and stupid lambs to the slaughter,”and I’ve come to learn throughout my time with Domina that he definitely has a point. In light of this, you quickly take him up on his offer to ready your men for battle.

I’ll explain exactly how the doctore can help you in much more detail shortly. However, there are two more fairly important men to whom the game introduces you soon after you meet the doctore. I feel I should discuss who they are and what roles they play before I move on to any of the game’s more detailed mechanics.

The men in question introduce themselves as the Magistrate, who claims to be a “high-placed government official” of some description, and the Legate, a decorated soldier who commands a nearby military detachment.

The primary reason I consider these men important is the fact that they host gladiatorial games every few in-game days. You’re always invited (though not explicitly forced) to participate in these games, and doing so can be considered preparation for your ultimate goal of winning the national games that are directly held by the Emperor.

Winning these games will both provide you with certain rewards (usually money and/or more gladiators), and serve as valuable combat experience for any gladiators you send to fight in their games. Another considerable reason these two men play important roles is because you can purchase more gladiators from them whenever you’ve got the necessary funds.

If you’re unlucky enough to lose some or all of your gladiators due to a string of defeats in any of the Legate’s or Magistrate’s games, you may well find yourself having to take advantage of this fairly often. Of course, you can always purchase new gladiators from either man merely to bolster your ranks in an attempt to avoid losing your best-trained men.

There’s a significant difference between buying gladiators from the Magistrate and buying them from the Legate, however. To elaborate, the Magistrate sells slaves who are often in poor health and lack any form of combat experience; alternatively, the Legate offers trained soldiers who, in his words, “at least know how to wield a sword.”

You’ll find that because of this, purchasing gladiators from the Magistrate is often significantly cheaper than acquiring them from the Legate. As I mentioned, however, the Magistrate’s slaves are often in need of medical attention before they can be considered anywhere near fit for battle; you’ll have to contend with that after purchasing them.

There are two final notes about the Magistrate and the Legate that I want to mention before moving on. Firstly, you can improve your reputation with both men through such means as random events which give you the opportunity to provide favors to them in some way, or more directly by bribing them with wine. If either of them like you enough, they may skew future games they host so that their outcomes are more likely to be in your favor.

Secondly, if you happen to learn something scandalous and/or embarrassing about either man via the aforementioned random events, you have the ability to sell those secrets to either the Magistrate or Legate, or use your knowledge of their secrets against them as blackmail. This mechanic is always entertaining in my experience, but bear in mind that these tactics could potentially be quite dangerous for your character.

As I mentioned a moment ago, the majority of purchasable gladiators often need at least some healing before they’re sent into a fight if you want them to have any chance of winning. That concept leads me to another important gameplay aspect, namely the marketplace.

From the marketplace, you can purchase food, water, and wine in order to ensure that your gladiators have their most basic needs met. You can also sell portions of any of these commodities if you feel you have too much of them or find yourself low on funds. Arguably more importantly, though, the marketplace allows you to hire employees who have special skills that can greatly benefit you and your men.

For example, you can hire a medicus who can expedite the process of healing any of your gladiators when they’re inevitably injured in battle, as well as a faber who can significantly lessen the cost of purchasing equipment for your men (among various other things). As far as I’m aware, you can hire a maximum of three employees at once, and they’ll remain in your employ indefinitely unless you directly fire them.

Personally, I’ve always hired the same three employees in every campaign I begin; specifically, the medicus, the faber, and the architect. I choose these three simply because I think the services they provide are the most practical and useful to me. I’ve considered hiring, say, the bard in an effort to keep morale up among my gladiators, but I’ve found that simply rewarding my gladiators with wine after a victory accomplishes that just as effectively.

All three of the aforementioned employees, as well as the doctore, have their own unique “technology trees,” for lack of a more descriptive phrase. You can instruct each of them to research technologies that will benefit your gladiators somehow, at a small cost to you.

For instance, everything the medicus can research simply allows him to heal your gladiators more quickly, while the faber can research techs that allow him to automatically repair and upgrade gladiators’ equipment at little (if any) cost. These two employees can also be ordered to automatically heal gladiators and repair and/or upgrade their gear, respectively.

This “technology tree” concept allows me to elaborate upon my earlier point regarding how the doctore can assist you. I would argue that the doctore‘s technology tree is the most significant of all because the tech he can research directly improves (or directly affects in various other ways) your gladiators’ combat prowess, rather than only benefiting them outside of battle.

For example, the doctore can research quite a few things such as, say, blade and shield control. These techs allow your gladiators to use their weapons and shields more efficiently. I think a good rule of thumb to keep in mind, especially in the early stages of a campaign, is that just because a gladiator is equipped with a shield that’s as tall as he is doesn’t necessarily mean he knows how to use it effectively.

Because of that, I strongly suggest devoting as much of your doctore’s time to research as possible. You can also instruct the doctore to automatically train your gladiators during any post-combat downtime; this will ensure that your gladiators remain fighting fit rather than just standing around waiting for the next games to start.

The doctore can also research and unlock two more “classes” of gladiator. These “classes” are differentiated by the types of weapons they prefer to use, though they can all use the same types of armor.

The classes are known as the Thraex, which constitutes a standard “sword and shield” fighting style; the Murmillo, which dual-wields two weapons in lieu of a shield; and the Retiarius, which wields a pole-style weapon (such as a trident), a shield, and a net that can be thrown to ensnare opponents.

Of these three, you begin each campaign with only the Thraex unlocked (at least in my experience). As I said earlier, the other two can be unlocked once your doctore has researched a certain number of techs in his technology tree. Whenever you acquire a gladiator who doesn’t yet have an assigned class, you can assign him any class you’ve unlocked and arm him accordingly.

Additionally, the doctore has the noteworthy ability to research a specific technology which, should you choose to unlock and use it, will significantly alter the normal flow of combat because it allows you to directly control one of your gladiators in battle. This tech is aptly referred to in-game as “mind control,” and considering the scope of the abilities it grants you, you can research it very early on if you so desire.

I’ve made it a point to research and employ this technology on two separate occasions in separate campaigns; although I know that’s a very small sample size, I’ve found that I dislike using this tech. That’s primarily because I don’t exactly excel at controlling my gladiators, and because I honestly don’t particularly care to rectify that.

My lack of skill often translated to my chosen gladiator being slain in combat rather easily, even in fights that he could probably have won if I had let the game’s AI duke it out in my stead. Considering that a gladiator’s combat potency while he’s controlled by AI can actually be improved by training with the doctore, I’ve henceforth decided to let RNG decide the outcome of each battle in which I elect to participate.

I’ve neglected to mention up to this point exactly how you go about progressing toward your ultimate goal of winning the Emperor’s national games. You see, although games hosted by the Magistrate and the Legate are a serviceable way to ready your gladiators for the more important fights, the act of winning those games doesn’t actually get you closer to your goal as far as I can tell.

Instead, you must essentially prove your worth and earn an invitation to the Emperor’s games. You do this by winning what the game refers to as “regional championships.” In my experience, there are nine such championships, and you must defeat at least three champions in order to be considered for an invitation to the national games.

These championship fights function identically to the comparatively smaller games hosted by the Magistrate and the Legate, with the notable exception that all championship fights I’ve experienced thus far have consisted of a team composed of up to three of my gladiators battling a single, unusually-powerful enemy.

If that’s the case, you might reasonably theorize that the odds would be in my favor against these regional champions. After all, even if the champion has, say, 600 health points and impressive equipment, my intuition suggests that my men would be able to overwhelm him eventually despite their comparatively smaller health pools and possibly less-sufficient gear and combat prowess.

However, I’ve sent my most-prepared men into a championship fight with that line of thinking several times since I began working on this review, and my intuition has been proven very, very wrong on a handful of occasions.

I consequently advise against relying on the “strength in numbers” strategy in favor of instead striving to make sure any men you send to such fights are as prepared as possible. Even then, no matter how battle-ready you believe your men to be, I also suggest being prepared to lose them in the blink of an eye if any fight doesn’t turn out in your favor.

To conclude, the main reason I enjoy Domina as much as I do is its’ main attraction; good, old-fashioned, brutal combat. I mentioned near the beginning of this review that the game is quick to demonstrate its’ fast-paced blood sport, and I most assuredly meant that.

While it’s often exhilarating to see your men manage a victory in a particularly tough and/or important battle, it’s equally disheartening to lose any of your better-trained gladiators because a fight didn’t go your way. As I alluded to earlier, your hopes of winning the national games can be dashed in the blink of an eye.

Even so, I’ve actually never minded losing all my men because of a streak of bad luck. I’ve never objected to having to essentially start my campaign over by purchasing slaves from the Magistrate with what little money I had left. I think the possibility of events like these occurring merely serves to add to the challenge presented by Domina’s campaign.

In my experience, a particularly brutal losing streak has ultimately only stoked the fires of my desire to win the Emperor’s national games and cement my name in the annals of in-game ancient Roman history. If what I’ve said throughout this review has convinced you to give Domina a try, I hope it instills within you the same drive and desire to win as it does within me.

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Domina

$9.99

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Easy to Pick Up and Play in Short Bursts
• No Designated Failure States

Cons

• Contains Copious Amounts of Graphic Violence and Profanity
• Random Generation and AI Can Prove Frustrating