Run your team of fantasy gladiators to absolute dominance in Mortal Glory 2

Mortal Glory 2 released this past week, a tactical battle game about fantasy gladiator teams battling to the death on an arena circuit in pursuit of fortune and fame. It's a vicious game all about making your best attempt, getting further than you thought, dying, unlocking cool new stuff, and then making another go of it.

The most appealing part of Mortal Glory 2 is that the combat is fairly simple: Movement rules, abilities, debuffs, terrain, and attacks are pretty straightforward and easy to understand. The AI itself is pretty good at what it does, too: It knows how to fight and optimize its moves to get results.

...but there's a ton of variety of weird fantasy species to recruit then mix-and-match with equipment and weapons and potent relics to fight with. There are wizards, vampires, trolls, minotaurs, halflings, dwarfs, dryads—all kinds of weirdo fantasy things to play as are unlocked the further you get into a campaign. There's even a spell called "Detonate Blood" which is obviously metal as hell.

It's also roguelike in structure, so you'll inevitably die and come back at it. The tournament circuit is a randomized tree of fights, events, money, and shops each time. (A big upgrade if you played the first game, which looks similar to but is very different from the first in its deeper particulars.)

You can find Mortal Glory 2 on Steam. It's made by solo-developer studio Redbeak Games.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.