Arena fighting games come few and far between, and since Ryse: Son of Rome gave me an appetite for Roman and earlier arena combat, with its awesome gameplay mechanics, I was quite interested in how Five: Champions of Canaan would play out. The story takes place in the Kingdom of David, whom after years of war have finally united under his rule. However, several smaller clans have defied the King and have continued on their own path. King David, who does not want any more war, sends his best gladiator to fight and gain honor in the arenas of the Ammonites.
Five: Champions of Canaan is basically a hack-and-slash Diablo-inspired game. You take control of your own personalized warrior and are thrown into the arena to slay several waves of enemies, and after each round, you’re met with a prominent Ammonite legendary fighter that you have to defeat. The game offers the player several ways to defeat each wave, with it giving you the option to change and mold your fighting style within the game. The usual inventory is there, and after each battle, you get loot drops of items and coin that you can use to up your abilities. It also gives you a rudimentary skill page that lets you customize a bit more, like increasing your vitality and zeal amongst others.
However, beyond the standard arena battles, it doesn’t offer you much else. There are town areas where you can purchase upgrades and get more exposition about what is actually happening in the story. And this is where the Diablo comparison plays into quite well. In the first Diablo, you fought wave after wave of devil spawn and every now and again you got to go outside and buy some stuff. Even though the story premise is quite easy to get into, it feels quite empty in this day and age. I went on thinking that after the initial arena fight you would be sent into epic battles, yet were met with more arena fights against the same boss regardless of how many times I defeated them.
The game itself feels and looks like something you played in 2001, but it doesn’t detract from the experience overall. However, it would help if they added a bit more detail to the game instead of opting for the Arcanum style ‘Armor that is different but looks the same’ vibe. The music and sound quality, however, is quite good for a game like this. Five: Champions of Canaan also offers the player a VR experience, but since I do not have a VR headset like everyone else, I didn’t experience that part of the game. However, based on what I have seen, I do wonder what it actually offers.
Five: Champions of Canaan is quite an enjoyable experience if we were to travel back to 2001, but unfortunately this is the current year and games need to be a bit more fleshed out. The foundation is quite solid, however, the low-quality graphics and boring and unintuitive AI and gameplay can get you down. No amount of special abilities will make a boring game better.
Since the game can offer something special for some gamers, I would recommend it if you were looking for an arena fighting game that takes place in and around Israel. The game offers the player several interesting twists and customizability, but do not go in expecting Skyrim. This game is purely for the person who loves grinding for a legendary loot drop.
Dreyer was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 139 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @dreyer_smit.