Crusaders of the Lost Idols Reviews

Crusaders of the Lost Idols is my favorite idle/incremental game. It has such a depth of concept and ever growing content. It just not get boring. I probably played it everyday since I discovered it on Steam.

This is a weirdly compelling idle game, at least in part due to the various "new game" goals you get when you acheive objectives and reset the world, and the fact that there's more things to do when you're feeling more like actually playing the game. (Triggering buffs and skills at the right time can definitely affect the difficulty of clearing a map or beating a boss.) The game is fairly generous with premium currency (rubies), and while they'll always encourage you to spend real money to acquire chests for loot (along with dangling a chance at epic gear), it's definitely not a necessity, which is nice. The variety of formations and character placement within them gives a welcome depth to the game, as placement becomes crucial for certain characters' long-term viability. Gear can be a game changer, as an epic piece of gear, or a new piece (of any tier) in a previously-empty slot can suddenly change a warrior from an afterthought into a major piece of your strategy. On top of that, any duplicate gear you find gets consumed and applied as a permanent buff to your character in all playthroughs, which again feeds into their overall viability on playthroughs. No loot is ever really "junk". To top it all off, the devs regularly (roughly every 1-2 weeks) run some sort of special event (many of which are more for people who've reached total end game, though not always) or a multi-day buff to a handful of specific warriors, which again makes things worth changing up for people who enjoy the strategy of tinkering with their formations. This is definitely an idle/clicker game though, and so you'll find yourself actively playing it in short bursts, then either leaving it to run in the background, or closing it entirely (and you'll still gain XP and gold for your game when you do) and coming back to it the next day to optimize your party, then leaving it alone again for awhile. That's not a bad thing. The fact I'm not bored with this one after a few hours/one completion of the world is pretty amazing to me, and I find myself regularly checking in on my current run. If you've never tried an idle/clicker style game, this one is really the pinnacle of the entire genre, and worth trying, if you're curious. I can't recommend this one highly enough.

Fun but pointless. Work hard, get better troops, move on to harder enemies. Work hard, get better troops, move on to harder enemies. Forever.

For a clicker game this is one of the better ones. However it does have that same store mechanic like every other game where they're selling you stuff for hundreds of dollars. Why would you try to get people pay tons of money for a game like this? A game that barely even has content or gameplay? That's just preying on people who can't control their spending.

Good game to play in the background. Gets pretty interesting and challenging. Totally different from all the clicker games I played so far.

The game is pay to win. There is no end game, and only endless chests or hours of mindless grinding will get you real progress. The problem is the loot system which works on a 5 tier system: common, uncommon, rare, epic and golden epic. The loot is progressive so uncommon is a better version of common, rare is a better version of uncommon, and so on. There is no choice of equipment - they simply keep the highest tier available and disenchant the rest. Common, uncommon and rare drop from silver chests, the game's currency which each contain 3 items. VERY rarely a silver chest will be upgraded for free (about one in a hundred?) from a silver chest to a 'Jewelled' chest. These jewelled chests contain 5 items one of which will be rare or above. EPIC gear can only be had from these chests. These chests are sold 3 for $4.99. Buying chests is the difference between 'I might get the achievements this week' and 'See you in 2025'. Chest purchases also grant you a 24 hour 100% damage increase. Cheap, eh? What's worse is the Golden Epics. They come with 'flash sales' which appear periodically to try and pressure you into buying them within a 8-10 hour window. They are ridiculously powerful. Many grant 150% bonuses when common items might be 5%. There are ALOT of these golden epics. You'd have to spend hundreds of dollars just to get those that exist right now, and more to get those they add with each update. Power creep is inherent here - they bring out new characters and gear to outdate the stuff you paid for so you'll buy more stuff. It's a hamster wheel of pay to win crap. What's worse is the dev's have had bugs with the Golden Epic system awarding the wrong things - and refusing to correct all of it even though it's their fault. Even if you give them REAL MONEY for a in-game digital benefit which costs them nothing, they'll still give you the short end of the stick if their crap system glitches. This is nothing but a mobile phone quality java game that rewards continuous spending and excessive playtime over any semblence of logic, skill, or ability. This isn't a game, it's a money pit.

Crusaders of the Lost Idols is a clever game that is far too hard core and far too grindy to really be enjoyable. The premise is simple, use a group of characters, in a certain ‘formation’ to complete a goal, say level 350. Each ‘crusader’ has slot with equipment as well as powers. By placing certain ones next to other ones you might gain more damage or more gold. Each level has a goal, when it’s met you move on to the next one. Then you ‘reset’ the game which gives you idols. The idols in turn, permanently give you more dps and gold. The problem is that game is so complex, there are so many different talent and builds, that people have tried to make spreadsheet to figure it out. Those are so complex you need an MBA just to figure out where to spend your idols. You can try just any combination, but you will hit a wall and accomplish nothing. The devs have certain bases campaigns that are available all the time, and then 2 weeks a month, a special event. The difficult with the game comes with the grindy nature of the game. To finish the last mission of the first world you realistically need about 100k idols. Idols are earned at best at around 100-300 / hour. That means doing over 300 hours of mission just to be able to win it. You will notice a lot of people have thousands of hours in it. Don’t be fooled. They just let it run, probably with an auto-clicker to farm idols. Unlike AdCap you can’t just turn it off for months and get a haul of idols. Turn efficiently grind, you have to babysit the game, and is the most time intensive idle/clicker game I’ve played. The last mission I did I let it run for four days straight, to reap a stunning 280 idols. Bottom Line: Nice game if you have 20,000 hours to spare

[h1]This review is primarily for those in the same region (South Africa) as myself![/h1] [b]TL;DR for South Africans:[/b] Don't play this! Currently, the game is online only, and the server is located far enough away that not all sprites load when you play. It used to be able to be fixed by dropping to low quality and restarting the game, but recently there are just far too many assets needed to be loaded. As such, you cannot drag the Crusaders around to make use of their formation bonuses. Hopefully this gets fixed in the future, but the devs are seemingly focused on creating new content for the game rather than fixing these issues...ironically, that new content aggravates the problem, making it even more unplayable for us! [b]Gameplay[/b] Don't let the tag of "clicker" fool you - this is a great idle game that quite easily beats games such as Clicker Heroes and Adventure Capitalist. The formation strategies and swappable heroes add a dimension of thought and difficulty that feels far more rewarding than other idle games. Often, I've found myself having to abandon an objective simply because I hadn't thought out my strategy and I wasn't quite ready for that challenge yet; the time sink would not have been worth the rewards essentially. Crusaders are seen as Supports, Tanks, DPSes, Healers, Gold finders etc etc - managing your formation is vital! As an example: some supports may offer a buff to all male crusaders but that will be reduced for any non-Royal Crusader. You'd need to assess whether the buff offered by a female, non-Royal Crusader would counter-act that. There are also Events where you can "win" event specific Crusaders. There are also special buffs that only occur for those few days - this adds a level of excitement and freshness to the game fairly frequently. The biggest drawcard for me is the idler nature - I can leave this running in the background while I work, or play other games. [b]Artwork and feel[/b] Quite a big drawcard for me here! The artwork is good, the characters feel different and fairly fleshed out compared to the Heroes from Clicker Heroes. In particular, the Event Crusaders and objectives come across as having thought put into them. This game possibly wins the Most Monty Python References in a Game award...which is awesome. [b]Community and Devs[/b] Great community and devs that actually get involved! Great stuff! [b]Microtransactions...[/b] There is a store which provides players willing to drop some cash with a huge advantage in terms of how quickly they can progress through the game. However, I feel that the base level of the game is not that punishing to new players - there is a large roster of Crusaders to keep you busy and interested. [b]Server issues[/b] As mentioned, the game is online only - this is fantastic as it means that there is no way for the game to be hacked or cheated. It does, as in my opening paragraph, create a severe issue for us South Africans; a problem that will no doubt be experienced by other players across the globe as well.

I wanted to see what was up with all this Clicker game retardation. Well, I saw and it was just what I thought it was: a pleasure pill dispenser on rapid auto-fire. No substance, barely any "strategy" and I'm stretching to use the word, so don't expect any thinking needed. This is a Facebook game for those that want RPG flavor without the hassle of RPG playing. If you're a fan of clicker games, yes, this is probably better than others. If you're not, no this is not something so totally different than others that it is worthy of being called good entertainment.

I mainly play on browsers, which doesn't matter in the context of this game since they're all the same, except on mobile. But yeah, if you want an idle game this is an amazing one. One of the key things you're gonna have to get used to is optimising formations for specific purposes, be it purely for power for freeplay, or adjusting your formation based on an objective's specific gimmick. Only real downside is it's pure RNG when it comes to unboxing Epics for your crusaders. For the vanilla 20 (or 21-26 depending on whether you reach that far) crusaders that's not that hard, but for event crusaders it's pushing you to burning your warps to get event currency for more map runs, or eventually succumbing to spending steam wallet money (or the site's appropriate alternative like Kreds where I mainly play it).