▼ Not recommended
2638 hrs
TL;DR: Addictive as hell, not really fun. Get out while you still can. Read summary at the bottom.
Is it fun? I guess. Is smoking/pot/worse drugs fun? In Steam reviews, addictive is often equated to fun. It is not.
Firstly, it's not really a clicker. Your first crusader levels by clicking, but unless you're an even bigger zombie than me, spend your time playing actual games and leave this on in the background. After your first "reset" you will find there is a "auto progress to next area" button, meaning you only have to come back once an hour to spend your money.
And it is this resetting which is the backbone of your gradual enstrongerment. Resetting gives you the titular Idols, each increasing DPS by 3% and gold found by 1%. Linearly. So while the first reset gets you a ~20% increase, this gets worse every reset. But the amount of idols is dependant on you crusader levels at time of reset, so you get more every time. Linearly. Eventually, you have to wait longer and longer for a satisfying shot of "progress", which takes an exponential amount of time.
These Idols can be further used (but not expended) on talents, which do things like "increase your DPS by X% for every critical % chance you have." Ultimately, they are another linear increasing buff to keep you hooked.
The game lures you in by there being "quests", so there must be interesting stuff to do right? The quests appear as that area's flavor text at the top of the screen. They are either downright "kill X creatures", or "get X items", which is just "kill X" in disguise. There's not even a drop chance. Every "quest item" has a value Y so that it drops every Yth monster kill. So it's just "Kill X times Y".
Well, at least you kill them quicker every reset, right? After a few resets, you find that the monsters in the first areas die the same frame they are targetable. Which makes the next one spawn faster! But whether you can kill it in one frame or in one tenth of a frame doesn't matter. Eventually after a reset, you don't need to bother with making the correct formation, your lvl 1 lumberjack can clear everything up to area 50.
Other than quests, there are Campaign Objectives. Every reset, you pick one, which defines the formation layout, which crusaders you may use, what enemies spawn, or other various limitations. Every layout has 11 different objectives, and a "free play" mode. The free play mode gives you Idols, but not rubies, as the other objectives give. Completing objectives is the only real progress you can feel, but some are simply "hard as nails", like "get to area 650".
Every setup(being area + whatever modifiers that mission may have), I decide in five minutes what the optimal formation would be, and then don't deviate from that ever. Subsequent runs aren't influenced at all. All crusaders have the ability "For every 25 levels over and including 200, <Name>'s DPS is multiplied by 4x. This multiplier stacks." Multiplicatively! At level 300, the multiplier is 1K!
Crusader costs are also exponential though, and every 25 levels costs about 5 times as much as the 25 levels before it. And monster keep getting harder (though their gold dropped seems to be linearly dependant on their health). So there is a "limit area" where you're stuck, the monsters beat your ass.
For this there are XP points! For every 5 hours a crusader is in formation, it gets an XP point, increasing its damage by 100%, linearly. XP points are lost on reset. So if you wait 5 hours, you can get a few areas further! You can theoretically get any objective by waiting long enough! You know, just really, really, really long. We're talking months. The optimal way is thus to simply reset as soon as you reach this limit area. But then you won't beat the objective :'(
Because now we get to what every game needs, money. There's an ingame shop where you can buy gold chests. These reward random drops, hopefully a gear upgrade for your crusaders. But if the gear is equal or worse it gets disenchanted, giving enchantment points to the crusader the gear was for. Which give a 20% dps buff. Linearly.
Other things in chests are Buffs, such as "increase crusader DPS by 100% for 150 seconds". If your limit area is 200 while you want to reach 300, it is nearly useless. You progress a few areas with the Buff, then lose it, and monsters beat you back to the previous area. The only thing to do is keeping yourself buffed all the way to the target area. And if you run out of Buffs halfway? Well, that's what the shop is for! So that you can abuse the Gambler's Fallacy of not having "wasted" those 100 Buffs, you buy 200 more! Ah, but just that one buff isn't enough, a DPS increase simply increases your limit area by about 10 areas. Activating multiple of the same buff lengthens its duration, but doesn't increase its effect. Though you will probably need that anyway, as you can't beat those 10 areas in 150 seconds. So you also use the common 200% buff, the rare 400% buff, and the epic 800% buff. And then your limit area is still below the target area. Too bad. Clicking with the Clicker crusader in formation might get you what you need, but there are simply a lot of objectives always out of reach.
The game 'gates' the objectives for this reason, to not overwhelm new players. Objectives have "must have 15k+ idols" in their unlocking requirements. But then you check the forums. And see that you need at least four million idols to reasonably do this. Imagine all the people with 15k idols futilly trying this objective.
But at least there's a goal post, right? Eventually, you must have finished everything, right? Don't count on it. There are 8 campaigns and counting, and there is an event campaign up about every month for two weeks. Also, most campaign objectives have a level 2, and even level 3 version, unlocked by talents. The idea is mostly always pretty simple, raise the numbers! Did you have to reach level 400 in the level 2 objective? Reach level 600 in the level 3 one! And have a few extra debuffs as well.
In an event campaign, you can unlock new crusaders that can switch places with existing ones, picked so that there aren't overly OP combo's. The event campaigns have level 2 objectives as well. Event objectives require a resource which you get automatically during the event. As such, you can usually finish a campaign level and about 6 free plays. Getting you X golden and Y silver chests. Which contained only crap gear for the event crusaders. Bummer. But you can buy these Event chests during the event in the shop too! Just buy an arbitrary number and hope you get the gear you wanted! Available only in this limited time! Buy now!
There are more timed offers, giving unique items that are not otherwise attainable. These bring a 40% buff to that specific crusader compared to the best possible non-paid item. Such "golden epic" items are also given when purchasing any number of gold chests with real money. But again, a linear buff can only get you so far. Like 2 areas further. Woop woop.
Also, there are Daily Quests and Missions. Daily quests are either "kill X monsters/bosses/progress X areas/Level up X times" which you do automatically, or "click X times". They reward rubies. Usefulness is thus not so big.
Missions let you send off up to half of your crusaders. They all have a bunch of flags, and mission succes chance is dependant on which crusaders you send. Seldom gives you gear upgrades, but you have no control over what missions you get. You just go with the flow.
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Stuff being addictive isn't bad per se, if fun. (South Park ho!) It has a buttload of mechanics, way more than other games in the genre "incremental games", but they all offer linear increases in the onslaught of exponentialness. The ever increasing amount of content is rife with mechanics made to either addict you or pressure you into spending money.
And it's Always Online. Downloads lots.
inb4 "so much time spent how not recommend?!?!?"
