Although Gladius features some common battle tactics, such as increased damage when attacking an opponent from behind or from higher ground, it also hosts a creative twist to the typical RPG input command: instead of simply ordering a character to attack, a swing meter will pop up on the bottom of the screen which will determine your chance of successful, even critical damage or catastrophic failure. This leaves much more of the action in the hands of the player, which adds significant tension to an encounter, especially if your timing is off. The swing meter isn’t the only modifier to combat; some attacks will have players mashing buttons to fill gauges or even inputting strings of commands to trigger combos.