Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms

I fell off this game years ago, I just couldn't keep up with it, I wanted to support it, but the new champions coming out every other week or so on rotation with events made it impossible to just focus on the Evergreen characters or the main campaign. I eventually lost all interest trying to keep on top of that, and getting codes for unlocks via email, it was just, like how some people had mentioned, doing another job. I've learned from one other game after this, that if a game doesn't respect your time and focuses almost entirely on FOMO, it's not worth your time (and especially your money), so play it for free until you get to a point that it no longer feels fun to play, and move on to the next game.

Flop: Even with all graphical features turned off, this relatively simple 2D idle game can become surprisingly resource-hungry and increasingly unstable. Over longer sessions, it seems to consume more and more resources and can eventually crash. Top: The game has a huge cast of well-known Dungeons & Dragons characters, and because of that, it feels like a very complete and well-developed game. There are, however, a lot of minor inconveniences and irritating design choices that add up over time. It feels bloated. I am very aware that my PC is far from a gaming machine, but even so, a relatively simple 2D game with all the graphical extras disabled should run smoothly. The fact that it can become sluggish and resource-hungry feels excessive. Too many things interrupt the gameplay. Some game mechanics require you to click directly on the game screen. If a window or notification happens to pop up, however, you are blocked from interacting with the game until you close it. This becomes particularly annoying when you are trying to perform a specific action and the game itself gets in the way. Some pop-ups exist primarily to sell something. There are windows that the game forces you to deal with which essentially just present another opportunity to spend money. It makes the game feel less like it is trying to enhance the gameplay and more like it is trying to find another moment to make a sale. The monetization feels excessive. There are an enormous number of ways to spend money on very small additions or conveniences. Perhaps this is simply my inexperience with modern "microtransactions", but when some tiny feature costs as much as a complete, fully functional video game, the term microtransaction starts to feel rather misleading. Maybe gigantic microtransactions are simply the norm in free-to-play games nowadays. But if a free-to-play game is essentially a fully decorated Christmas tree of things to spend money on, with a game somewhere hidden inside it, then this is probably not the game for you — nor for me. And unfortunately, I feel this aspect has become worse over time. A significant portion of my playtime comes from earlier periods, when the game felt less dominated by this. The enormous character roster is somewhat misleading. There are a huge number of characters, but only a relatively small selection are really effective when trying to progress deep into the game. This becomes especially problematic because the game frequently creates challenges that prevent certain characters from participating. In principle, this could create interesting puzzles. In practice, it often leaves you with a large number of characters who simply cannot be combined effectively enough to make the challenge playable. Having hundreds of characters is not particularly useful if the game repeatedly prevents you from using the ones that actually work well together. Hard blocks are less interesting than puzzles. I understand that balancing a game with such a large roster must be extremely difficult. However, I think the progression system could benefit from replacing some of these hard mechanical blocks with actual puzzles. In my opinion, one of the best things a free-to-play game can do is give the player a difficult problem to solve rather than simply telling them, "You can't do this with the characters you have." If the challenge requires experimentation, clever combinations and finding an unexpected solution, that is interesting. If the solution is simply unavailable because the useful characters are blocked, it feels frustrating rather than challenging. And perhaps there is even a monetization opportunity here: let players spend money to temporarily unlock their most effective characters for challenges in which they would normally be prohibited. That would at least make spending money feel like a choice that directly solves a gameplay problem, rather than constantly presenting the player with a stream of unrelated things to buy. Overall, Idle Champions has a lot going for it. The Forgotten Realms setting, the enormous character roster and the amount of content make it feel like a very complete game. But the increasing resource usage, interruptions, excessive monetization and mechanics that sometimes create hard blocks rather than interesting puzzles make the experience considerably less enjoyable than it could be.

Money extraction machine with pay-to-win mechanics, you'll get oh so close to the goal line, but you can't quite get there without little boosts.

Cannot be played "Idle" despite the name. Difficulty creep over time isn't fun or engaging. Huge pain for 100% achievement hunters. Consistently has bugs and at times the core strategy for beating difficult missions is to use bugs/exploits. Not fun to play.

纯粹的脚填数值、巨量的关卡内容、巨量的剧情文本、持续多年的运营 [h1] 玩法与数值体验 [/h1] 这个游戏的AFK机制采用的是每关独立养成，每个关卡的阵容和养成等级在通关后会清零 到了新关卡就要重新放置重新升级、重新用金币解锁角色，相当于一个新的开始 玩法循环整体为： 关卡挂机 - 获得金币与宝石 - 金币用于局内养成 / 宝石用于局外养成 - 通关金币转换章节货币 - 用于局外养成 宝石还能开启特殊NPC用来获取周常日常任务、特殊商店、新货币与额外的局外养成体系 关卡的数值极其跳跃，上一秒还是简单难度，下一关就变成困难或者是地狱 短时间根本打不过，即使离线挂机，隔了好几个月也只能推个个位数的波次 数值跨度极其的不合理，且需要用极大量的时间去堆叠养成体系 这个时间最长我离线挂了2个多月还没过一关 [spoiler] 直到我知道了这游戏居然能用xgq说是[/spoiler] [spoiler] 我只能说开了xgq之后这个游戏才是正常的游戏体验[/spoiler] [spoiler] 不开xgq，氪的再多这辈子也打不完这游戏[/spoiler] [h1] 关卡与剧情体验 [/h1] 故事全是关于龙与地下城，剧情内容特别的丰富 但是AFK游戏和剧情文本的描述是冲突的，游玩的时候完全没有办法去阅读剧情 大多数时间都是挂载后台挂机，等切回去的时候剧情都不知道跳到那了 这游戏的关卡量巨多（关卡数量 = 成就数量）每通关一关关卡就会跳一个成就 虽然平时看不到剧情文本，但是社区有人将文本提炼出来做成纯阅读文本 可以进行一个剧情阅读纯享版 [h1] 游戏更新与运营 [/h1] 更新很稳定，每年的活动也很多，邮箱定期会送免费CDK用于兑换宝箱，包含：角色、装备、道具这类物品 几乎每个季度都会有一个新的角色上线，同时伴随多个复刻角色。可以通过完成对应关卡来免费获取 活动设计虽然模板，但是整体体系完善，每个活动都能免费的获取角色，与对应角色的高品质装备 奖励都是以通关关卡为条件进行奖励的，关卡的波次越多奖励的阶级就越高，缺点依旧是数值难度巨高 运营也是不间断的提供，算是一款常青树游戏。 这游戏主要的氪金点都在于皮肤与同捆包上，大多用于获取高品质装备 氪金货币可以通过每日登录签到累计获得，只要玩的久都能免费获取 [h1] 总结 [/h1] 虽然不推荐这款游戏，但是它免费，想品鉴可以尝试下 作为一款AFK类型的游戏，局内养成每次都要重新升级角色，负反馈还挺重的 养成的模式较为单一，但是养成存在叠甲，一层盖一层 这游戏的模式特别单一就是升级挂机升级，关卡还特别多，多到爆炸 优点是更新稳定，奖励基础获取门槛低，只要时间堆的久都能获得

Too Much Microtransactions!!!!!!!!! *farts*

this review is not very helpful