Monetization has become more and more agressive.
Dont expect to make much progress as F2P Player.

Well I did it; I passed 1,000 hours and I feel extremely confident in saying: I do not recommend this game.

"To who, me?" Yes, you and everyone else. "Don't you think it's a little ridiculous that you've invested that much time and don't feel it's deserving of my time?" Not even a little. "Fine. Explain why you don't recommend it then." I will provide a background and explanation, because everyone deserves to know.

I am an incremental game player. I have many hours in many clickers, idlers, auto-battlers, rogue-likes and -lites. My pedigree alone speaks for itself regarding my proficiency at 1) finding and exploiting the proper mechanics to expedite progress and 2) the persistence to do so, over and over, until the game is complete. Or as complete as it can be without feeling like I've wasted my time.

This game (and honestly, it's the most generous use of the term possible) has no potential for gaining advantages. You spend hours grinding campaign currency, which boosts your gold gain, which allows you to gain further campaign currency, which allows you to further boost your gold gain, until you begin completing missions. You do this, over and over, until you complete a campaign, then you unlock patrons and grind THEIR currencies, until you once again gain enough gold and campaign currency. But you will hit a wall where you've purchased all of the upgrades for your heroes. Then you have to grind more and more difficult patron missions, spending weeks and months unlocking champions which can help you further your goals and unlocking multiple parties via the Modron Core system.

Could you, maybe, potentially, speed it up by spending money? Yes, but the kicker is that you're still going to be spending hundreds of hours running these missions. They have auto-clickers in the form of pets, however you'd rather have your pets on your Modron Core group, which gains levels by clearing floors because a higher level Modron Core is more beneficial in the long run.

There is no rewarding feeling, no sense of accomplishment when you complete a mission or achieve campaign completion. There is only the knowledge that I must now move on to something more difficult, slower and with a harsher damage requirement to gain any purchase whatsoever. I will continue playing because I am a sicko. Do not become like me.

This game is a decent idle game but it quickly hits what seems to be a paywall and it has WAY too much advertising for using the in game currency. Seems like a cash grab, where you will definitely hit pay wall. There's other idle games that don't do this and if you want to pay money its mostly to support the dev. This one feels much more cash graby

The addition of the new in game currency (platinum) is pretty underhanded. Codename Entertainment have taken a proven psychological manipulation tool to try and disguise the fact you are spending real money with a made up token. The sole purpose of this is to try to subconsciously detached you from the real monetary cost of their very overpriced in game purchases.

Did they realise exactly what they were doing? Of course they did, and it's pretty disgusting.

I can no longer recommend a game that I have put thousands of hours into because I hate this. The sooner the EU bans this kind of predatory practice, the better.

Prior to the addition of 'platinum' I would have recommended this game.

However, The addition of the new in game currency (platinum) is pretty underhanded and manipulative. Codename Entertainment are using a faux 'in-game' currency to disguise the fact you are spending real money with a made up token. The sole purpose of this is to try to subconsciously detached you from the real monetary cost of their in game purchases. It also has the further effect of them upping the cost of items and it not being noticable to players of the game.

Even worse, they did it claiming it helps allow them to have 'daily log in rewards/ However, you get 20 platinum a day. The cheapest platinum item is 840 platinum, or 42 days of logging in to buy, and that is for a gold chest or one of three familiars.

There is a reason the EU is looking at banning use of faux currencies in video games and for companies to be requiered to show the real world currency values.

This is such a waste of a concept. Aggressive advertising, mind-numbing grind, poor UI design. Just awful.

That Port Nyanzaru quest, the second quest of the first real campaign, was some of the most boring gaming I've done this year. It's no wonder only 8% of players got as far as finishing that mission. God knows why anyone kept playing after that slog.

Focuses on FoMO and all of us who are D&D nostalgics of old. Idle in describing the game mechanics is a misnomer. Excellent example of using fuzzy math to trick people into thinking spending a little money will get you to the perceived goals. Greed simulator in the more recent iterations. Any game dev that brings Psychologists onto their dev streams, turn around and run away as fast as possible. Best use of the game is to help heat my basement by eating endless CPU cycles over the winter months. (I should have farmed bitcoin instead)

To summarize:

Fuzzy Math Simulator at best.

Mental Gymnastics Simulator at worst.

YMMV

Before I would recommend this game to others. Now with the unneeded addition of platinum that needs to be brought with money just adds a extra step and is confusing . before I could just by stuff with strait cash if I wanted something. I will not buy any platinum and I wont buy anymore of the cash things while there is platinum in the game.

I leave for two months and come back to platinum. I go to the store for some familiars. even the cheapest is about 1000 or so platinum. Platinum, no monetary option in sign beyond buying platinum. Of which ftp players get ten of. I'm DIRT BROKE. Which is why I'm playing this game, but I had money to buy one or two familiars when they were a dollar or even three every month or so in my tight budget. I could use my steam wallet to purchase these things before, in exact amounts. Your cheapest bundle of crap currency is six dollars for 1680 platinum and that can get me perhaps 1 and 1/2 things that I want, and don't you dare bring up that the first purchase of any bundle is doubled plus whatever percentage because that's a band aid on a decapitation. Save your platinum for purchasing small bonuses like items and put your money option back.

Personally, this idle game feels too cash grab-y for me. I love seeing different characters from Baulder's Gate, but that doesn't change the fact that progress is so slow that it would take months if not years to earn the characters rather than out right buying them, which always seems pushed with all the "deals" that pop up while in battle. The mechanics are fine, other than a couple minor annoyances about placement of things on the screen blocking clickable objects that give bonus currency and the way one character seems wayyy more powerful than any of the others making them seem obsolete and making you question why you'd continue unlocking new characters to add to the run if the 4th character is always going to be so over powered (dealing 99.5% of the total damage most of the time), except for the level bonuses that add like 100% team power or things like that. The first day I played, I was so excited to see the characters and explore the game mechanics. I spent 8 hours straight on it. The next day, less excited, the fights are so repeatative, it already felt like a choreographed chore rather than a fun, exciting game. Spent like 2 hours on it, doing the harder event quests to see if they were any different. Nope, just slower progress on building up the idle fighting damage. I didn't come back on day 3. On day 4, I was avoiding doing homework, so I played for 4 hours. And today, day 5, I've realized I'd rather have the space for something fun, so I'm uninstalling it.