This game is a little bit of a hidden gem. I say "hidden" because the name Dragon Cliff doesn't say anything about the game, and unless you either search by tags or just get lucky, you will probably never see it or click on it if you do. It is an adventure management type game, but you wouldn't know from the title. Although the premise of adventurer simulation seems like solid gold, previous attempts I played ranged from fair to garbage quality. So, I was pleasantly surprised Dragon Cliff was actually good. If you are a fan of light simulation or idlers, $10 is fair. If you can get it on sale definitely try it out.

Pros:
+Interesting, original classes.
+Surprisingly deep tactical options.
+Respeccing characters is easy and makes it fun to try different builds.
+Lots free updates.
+No crashes.
+NO MICROTRANSACTIONS!!!
+Many unlocks as you progress to keep the game interesting.
+Reasonable to 100%, with a little research and a lot of idling (Hint: Click your amulets to upgrade!)
+Excellent searching and sorting of your many items. Real effort went into this.
+Story actually showed some self respect in a genre known for throwaway joke plots.

Cons:
-Tactical options become much more limited very late in the secret dungeon.
-Some of the classes and abilities are pure noob-bait. I go straight for noob-bait.
-A little bit hard to get good strategies and data (unless you read Chinese).
-Story kind of left hanging. Is this supposed to be a series or something?

SUPER SHORT REVIEW

To those who have played Soda Dungeon: This is Soda Dungeon but better in nearly every way.

To those who haven't played Soda Dungeon: Download Soda Dungeon. Its Free. If you like it, you will like this.

First mobile games imitated real video games, except with terrible microtransactions, and now this video game imitates mobile games, except without terrible microtransactions.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. I think I just saved myself a lot of future cash by spending $10 on this game.

TL;DR: its a great game and i wholeheartedly recommend it.

the game has been on development since release but its not an unfinished game, its a game that cant be finished. the game started as an 6/10 and over months and months of work it stands now at a 8.5/10.

this is not a game where you win, its a game you get a bit bored of and leave, only to come back some time later after an update. so, if you get it and put 50+hrs in it and get bored, don't slam the door on the way out, you'll be back for more.

the game does show some of its design flaws later on, but at that point you got 300+hrs of entertainment of a very cheap purchase and complaining about it makes you look like an ass.

keep reading if you want to see me do exactly that.




btw, the game has multiple "systems" that unlock as you progress, there's no real story, but the following review can be considered a "gameplay spoiler"





Fun game, but it suffers from a common problem with games of this kind, devs add too many systems to the game and most end up feeling pointless, or once setup, they become moot.

for example, you can send your "b" team adventurers on exploration missions on boats, takes maybe 4 tries before you figure out whats the best destination and the best team comp, then you never revisit it again. the rewards are passive and the only reason to do them are the scrolls, you can try as hard as you can to exhaust the rewards, but you simply cant, the influx of gold and scrolls will always end up outdoing your usage on crafting.
the system might as well be removed and replaced with a daily allocation of resources kinda like the SEED system on FFIIX, the end result would be the same, and it will force you to make good teams that don't die, lose members, or are always used with the same comp, otherwise you would lose "SEED Rank"... (just an idea)

this happens with the repeatable quests too, only good to get some rings, then they are pointless once you break past the 2k endless dungeon level, since you get better returns for your time turning in the currency for the mats you need instead of running the quests.

don't get me wrong, making a setup and then moving on is the whole point of games like this, but usually you can upgrade it later, or you can make some adjustments. i've set up my boats on my 100hr point and now 300hrs later i still see no reason to go though the hassle of making any modification to it. same with residents, town events, etc. even crafting is just spam x to get star ancients, batch combine, delete all the useless modifiers. do over every 20hrs or so. would be nice to get rare boss spawns requiring specific teams, or something to break the monotony of endless spamming.

the other problem, if you put in as many hours as i have, is that the devs are playing catchup with the players. for weeks now i have reached the peak, i cant get better items than the ones i have and the only upgrades left for me are rerolling stats a few hundred times to change my 9.8% rage efficiency for a 10% flat. pretty underwhelming. and trying to get a better item with stats outside of what can be "fixed" rerolling is a real long shot, and since the UI can be a huge obstacle to sorting though the hundreds of items you just get fed up and go back to using a sword with 2kSTR less that what could theoretically be your new max STR, because, why bother? the upgrade is minimal when +2kSTR represents less than a hundredth of a single % increase in the damage of 1/5 team members.


updates do happen, and when they do it takes me a week or so of constant grinding to reach the new plateau. if you are a new player it will take a good 200 hrs to get to a similar point, and if you go full idle and don't min/max you can get a good 400+ hrs before you get to the "end-game". the last update added star heroes, they add a VERY long term objective, but tbh the impact is fairly minor.

is it if fair for me to ♥♥♥♥♥ about this? ofc no. i know its a bit entitled of me to expect a game to go on forever. and i said at the start of this review, i was going to make an ass of myself and i did.

Its still fun enough, even after progress slows down, since once you do get a perfect team, you can start working on other teams, just to experiment other builds and make teams dedicated to specific activities. the game has a very active playerbase with lots of theorycrafters, but imho if you are a new player, just enjoy the game and only worry about builds once you make it past your first 50hrs.

it is a good game and i recommend it, the best idle game i have ever played.

you can pick it up, play it till you get to the plateau and come back in a month to see if a new update is out. by that point something new ought to be added and before long this will become one of your most /played games in your library.

--Update--

Well I've been playing some more and after about 10 hours recently (started over) I still haven't unlocked the exploration feature or some of the other things. Not saying this is a bad thing and grinding in this game is easier than most since you can just toggle automated tactics and adventuring and go do something else, but it still feels a little on the long side. Also, while you could just set it and walk away, I wouldn't advise it unless you're grinding easy levels - you need to earn money by crafting, increasing your productivity (via population), buy health potions, etc.

I will note that once you get past a certain point the complexities become apparent as various thiings begin to open up, so not as simple as it seems initially. Once this starts happening you want to see what comes next, but again, the pacing of the reveals is stretched out a bit.

The game is still stable (not one crash or bug), but the English still needs work...

--End Update--

Sort of a simple game - a cross between a light management game and almost a clicker to an extent. You don't really have any control over building out your town, you don't really have any control over things like prices/taxes, and the crafting early on is simply click on this recipe (you get as random drops) to make this - later you can combine things. There are some language issues (minor), you can only control one party at a time even though you can create three different party 'mixes' to experiment with, and there are several things not explained well.

This leads to the largest complaint I have - since you can turn on automatic adventuring, you should be able to send out multiple parties. I can see this leading to people blowing through things rather quickly, but only if the levels aren't appropriately tweaked to counter that. I have no problems with the lack of town customization, party customization, or other things however.

Outside of the above, the game is actually fun - one of those types of games where you can sit down and burn an hour on it just to get a quick gaming fix. Even a couple of hours will go by rather quickly if you like this type of game.

I'll add that someone else compared this to Soda Dungeon stating it was a rip-off, but having played the mobile game (not the Steam version), I'd say that while the base gameplay is quite similar, Dragon Cliff is more in depth with more customization options and other gameplay elements.

All that said, I want to give it a neutral rating (if that were possible) as it does need some polishing, but it's fairly cheap and entertaining so I'll recommend for now...

Review after a few hours played: This is a great resource-farming game with semi-automated combat. You could play this game idly in the background, but I enjoy playing it actively. It delivered exactly what I expected and wanted from it. I also quite enjoy the art style, personally. Much fun! I look forward to grinding out many more hours in this game.

Edited review now with 300+ hours: The game is great to play actively for the first 10-15 hours, but then it needs to run AFK to get the exp and resources you need to progress. Having difficulty getting my team strong enough to survive difficult mode. If I let it run for two days, I can then log in for about 10 minutes or so to switch around some gear and whatnot, then let it run again while I wait. Continuing on mostly because I feel I've committed to it at this point. The most frustrating thing is that it unlocks things to do like reforge equipment, but doesn't tell you how it works so you have to figure it out on your own. Would be nice to have a brief tutorial for each unlocked thing.

This game, for early access actually has quite a bit of "meat" in it, so to speak. I've played probably, almost 60 hours into it and I still am learning what characters do what and what works together.

I've noticed patches being released in (what I feel) is a timely enough manner.

You get a few starter characters to test and learn the basic functions of the game. You can earn more characters as you play, invitations drop from different zones. You can also create weapons (with recipes) and chest armor. You advance your characters levels through practice points. As you put gear on your character, it can do various things to help boost you a little more. If you hover over the stats it gives a detailed description.

Would I recommend this: Yes. As long as you don't mind grinding a bit, there is an auto-adventure mode. You can pick a lower mode you KNOW you can "farm" and set them up. I do not know if they use their abilities besides their main attack, but it's there. It helps a lot in getting practice points. I do not know if auto-adventure continues offline or only when playing the game.

With it being an early access game, take any review with a grain of salt, though I have found this incredibly fun. I am looking forward to seeing the direction the developer wants to take the game. Will update if anything changes! -With more detail too, probably.

I have never had any experience with "idle games" previously and wanted to give it a try with this case, because there was a sale and graphics looked appealing.

Very soon did I realize that graphics have little effect with these types of games, but by the time of realizing the fact it was already too late: the addictive gameplay trap has sprung. As I see it, Dragon Cliff plays around addiction for big numbers, meaning the biggest satisfaction is reached by observing the growth a player reaches. This is very similar to min/maxing in RPGs, for example - some players may be encouraged to "break" the games by entering "god tier" of character progression. In my opinion, this is what Dragon Cliff does best - provides a basis for this type of satisfaction.
In order to reach the new heights in this game, you will require to occasionally halt the game for character and equipment management - this is, in a nutshell, the core of gameplay. There is a big number of playable character combination and a lot of equipment management options. These two building blocks synergize to produce a single mechanic of coming up with the best gameplay tactic. Since this is an "idle game", where you launch the process and leave it running to observe results, you will find yourself doing a lot of thinking and experimenting with character and equipment combinations. If a certain tactic is successful, the numbers will grow and so will your appreciation with the progress. But be prepared to spend considerable amount of time micromanaging your team!

Overall, it was a nice experiment for myself and considering the price - you may also be tempted to try this game genre, if you had not already. If micromanaging and progression growth appreciation is what satisfies you, then I recommend giving Dragon Cliff a try.

I would recommand this game. It's fun and kills time, but I don't think I can get anymore game time out of the game, unless there's patches that improves quality of life for end game.

Pro:
- Detailed and easy tutorial and introduction
- Versatile DPS caster selections
- Can auto-farm while afk (could be a con for some people)
- Fun game mechanics (sockets/enchant/reforge/scroll etc)
- Caster skill customizations

Con:
- No (low) replayability
- Could use graphic improvement (I know pix is intentional but I would prefer something along the line of Evoland)
- No (limited) selection for healer/tank
- End game is more frustrating then fun
- Too much micro-management needed
- Zero (low) auto-skill customization during combat
- RNG for caster hiring

End game dislikes:
What annoys me the most is the end game mechanics. Everytime you want to upgrade armor/weapon you need to socket the new equipments/remove old gem/socket gem/transfer item skill to new equipment. Imagine doing that for 5 casters (15 pcs) of equipment everytime from level 7 item to max item level (15 currently).

It's really a quality of life thing, and that's what made me quit the game at item level 10. I could proceed further into the end-game dungeon if I upgrade to level 11, but the thought of going through the process made me quit the game. I hope they come up with a patch for easier upgrade of items, where I can simply destroy the current equiped item and transfer all properties (excluding enchant and reforge) to the upgrade equipment of my choice.

Auto-battle/Auto-cast dislikes:
Additionally, another issue I have with the auto-battle is the auto-cast option. It's a really good mechanic except there is no AI customization allowed. The selected caster will keep casting his/her rage skill after every cool-down or untill you run out of rage, which is not very smart. I hope the developer will patch the game to allow simple selections such as "cast once during start of every battle", "cast when full rage", "cast only during boss fight", "cast only if skill cost no rage".

Summary:
I do like the game and I am recommanding it. But end-game is more of a hassel then fun for me due to manually upgrading gears and limited AI auto-cast options.

Pretty cool semi-idle game, lots of min/maxing to be had and good visuals. It isn't worth full price though, I would only pay ~$5 for it.

What makes a good idle game is what you work toward, and this game does a good job of giving you a lot to work towards. It is essentially a loot-based JRPG that plays itself, you are the one fitting out your party with skills, equipment, and such.

For the price of $10 I would have liked to have seen an engaging story given the JRPG aesthetic. I also think the ability to run multiple adventures at once would be awesome but so far, it doesn't seem like you can do that even though you can have three parties.

The socket system is neat but it isn't anything you haven't seen before if you've played pretty much any ARPG. I like the furnace that allows you to change stat bonuses on gear, recycle trash items, and etc. it adds more engagement for the player which you don't get a lot in idle games.

Anyway, I can't recommend at full price, but considering it's on sale and is less than $4, I think it is worth the price easily, it may seem like the amount of hours I have is definitely worth full price but remember, it is an idle game so leaving it on overnight is part of the fun and grind to see how much ♥♥♥♥ you accumulate over time.