Domina - solid core, needs more

"That's my boy," I said, with both excitement and relief, as my Thraex gladiator raised his sword in victory. Cheers from the crowd boosted his ego. Pixelated blood was all over the arena like paint. On the middle were four dead gladiators that he slaughtered in under 10 seconds. Back at the Ludus, I rewarded him some coins and wine, before upgrading his gears significantly. I grew fond of him, and changed his name to "Spartacus". Big mistake. If permadeath strategy games ever taught me anything, it's that getting attached to your characters in a big no-no, and Domina is no different.

The gladiator was rather annoyed by his name change, but it was nothing that some coins couldn't fix. Once he was healed, it was time to put him back in there for more coins and glory. The next match was a three-against-one. Three well-armed gladiators were waiting for whoever I chose to send in. I hesitated, but the reward was huge, and I was confident in my champion's abilities, so I accepted the match. "Don't die, I need you for business," I quoted Marcus Kincaid of Borderlands as the countdown began. Ten seconds later, my best gladiator laid dead as I covered my face in horror.

Domina is a gladiator-management strategy game reminiscent of the 8-bit era. You are the owner of a ludus, a Roman gladiator training school. Your goal is simple; to train gladiators and groom them to become the most savage killing machines they can be, and then to win the annual championship to solidify your name as the best gladiator trainer in the Empire. Domina employs permadeath. That means if your gladiators fall in battle, they're gone for good. If your ludus goes bankrupt, it's gone for good. There's no previous save to load up or revert to. The heart of your ludus is the gladiators. They win battles for you, and your ludus gets the money they risked their lives for. You train them and make them stronger, so that they'll win more battles for you.

Things aren't looking so good with this gladiator.

Gladiators are typically obtained by either purchase or reward. Their classes are set, and they are already equipped with their own gear, which you can upgrade if you wish. Thraex gladiators are armed with a gladius and a shield, closely resembling a typical roman footsoldier. Murmillos can either dual-wield two gladii, or two-hand a longsword. Retiarius gladiators are equipped with a spear and a smaller shield. Interestingly in addition to those two, they also carry a net to trap and slow down opponents. Then there are slaves. They usually have lower starting skill points than "ready-made" gladiators, but you are free to set their classes to whichever three you see fit. They are cheap, but it takes longer to develop them into badasses due to their lower starting skill points.

In addition to the skill points, there is another set of stats, which consists of "aggro" for aggresiveness, "turtle" for shielding tendency, "evasive" for evasiveness and "stamina". These are predetermined. Training does not increase or decrease the former three stats, but "stamina" can be increased using blessing cards. These stats matter, especially when you want to groom a mere slave into a gladiator. For instance, characters with high "turtle" tend to be good Thraex, since they can make good use of their shield. On the other hand, you would want your Murmillos to have high "evasive" points, and to be agile and quick. This is because they do not carry a shield to absorb blows, instead relying on evasive rolling to save themselves.

Games are usually held every few days. They are either run by the Legate or the Magistrate. These two characters are your friends of sort. That said, you have to kiss their asses to make them like you. The more favorable you are in their eyes, the better rewards they give you for winning matches. They can also patron your gladiators, one for each. This isn't much but it certainly helps when two of your gladiators' daily expenses are paid by those two influental people. The Legate's and Magistrate's liking of you can also be decreased by various other means, such as rejecting their games or by events that occur now and then.

Earn extra money by sending your chariots to races... or your men to brutal and unpredictable pit fights.

Those aforementioned events occur now and then, in the form of a pop-up narrative. For instance, and upon hearing that your cousin gifts you an exotic wine, both the Magistrate and Legate would show up, and it is up to you whether you want to give it to either man, or keep it to yourself. Your decisions can satisfy either or both of them, or not at all. Other events have nothing to do with the Legate or Magistrate. There are events that affect your gladiators morale, and there are even that reward you with things, or take things away from you. Take note that there used to be an event that was notorious in which a snake's poison kills your best guy. This has seen been fixed.

While it's certainly interesting, this event mechanic needs more variety to it. For now, they are simply one-time events. Your choices have no future consenquences, and their results are immediate. Of course, this allows you to focus on training your gladiators as the clock ticks and time passes by, which is the focus of the game. But eventually, once you get accustomed to the chores and have everything upgraded, it starts to feel like a bore. At that point, you just do a few clicks after a match, and then wait for the next one. Other than upgrading gladiators' equipments, healing them and setting their training priorities, most other duties are performed automatically by your ludus staff.

Upgrading is straightforward, and before long, your top guys all look the same, and their opponents also look like them. This is especially a problem in Endless mode. Fully upgraded heroes, equipment-wise and skill-wise, all look the same. Once their skills have reached their limits, training them becomes pointless, and it's just a matter of sending them to the next battle. Freeing them is certainly an option. You can sell them, or put them to death, but there's really no point to do those other than "because there's nothing else to do".

This veteran's skills have reached their peak.

That said, Domina is already standing on a solid foundation. All of the most basic mechanics and components are already there. At the beginning stages, Domina was a single-run game. That means you had to finish it in one sitting because it had no saving mechanics. If you quit before finishing it, you'd lose your progress. But it did work, and it worked very well. Because the game already has a solid foundation, finishing it in one sitting was and still is entirely possible. As a matter of fact, it was satisfying. Towards the end of the game, it didn't feel like anything was missing, and if won, the experience felt complete.

Whether this was how the game was intended to be or not, it's unclear. But that's also the problem with Domina. It is merely enough for just that. Anything beyond, the experience starts to feel like a chore, because you've literally experienced everything Domina has to offer. The new Endless mode sounds like a lot of fun. It's basically the campaign mode that never ends. But once you've won your first main championship, there's really nothing else to experienced. It's just recycling the same campaign over and over again, except it's much more easier due to having overpowered gladiators you've had since the beginning. There is no more struggle for money, and any dead gladiator can easily be replaced by buying another overpowered gladiator. There's no more struggle to keep the ludus afloat, no more sense of accomplishments from grooming a gladiator from nothing. It's just endless chore.

Domina has a solid core and is super fun while it lasts. It's a game that will completely satisfy you with two or three runs. Any more than that, it'll start to wear itself out. You've basically done and seen everything. Is this a bad thing? Not really. If Domina was intended as a single-run game, then it's an extremely well made game for that purpose. And personally, I think that's the best and intended way it should be played.