Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms

Genre: Idle Game

Players: 1

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS AND LOOTBOXES

Idle Champions is a Free-To-Play Idle Game set in the Dungeons and Dragons universe. It was originally released on mobile devices in 2018 and ported to Switch in 2020.

While idle Games are a genre that’s been growing in popularity over the years on PC and mobile devices, they don’t yet have a huge presence on consoles. This game is one of very few games in the genre on the Nintendo Switch, and to my knowledge it is the only one on the Switch that is Free-To-Play.

For those not aware, the idea behind an Idle Game is that it is a game designed so that you don’t have to actively play it – simply having it running gives the player steady game progression, although they can interact with the game to guide that progression or help speed it along. I can definitely say that when I first heard this described, I recoiled at the notion – the very idea of a game designed to not be played sounded absurd to me, but at the same time I can understand the appeal of this sort of thing – it’s something that players can turn on while they have their attention elsewhere, and still get the same “feeling of pride and accomplishment” of progressing in the game without having to devote their full attention to it.

See what I did there? Yeah, with that “pride and accomplishment” of course comes a lootbox system, enticing players to spend real-world money to get random bonuses that promise to speed up progress within the game. Players can of course have this game plugging away in the background without spending a single penny, but of course we know that these sorts of games aren’t a charity, and the progression is designed to eventually slow to a crawl unless you plunk down some cash. It’s part and parcel with the territory, of course, but since these sorts of games specifically try to appeal to more casual players, it seems important to emphasize it here.

Okay, but the question then becomes, how well does it actually deliver on its formula, giving players some feeling of agency in the game, working well as a casual game you can set down and leave for a bit, and giving that “sens of pride and accomplishment”? And the answer is… mixed.

There is definitely a good amount of depth here, with multiple options for players to pursue, should they decide to do so. There are multiple recruitable champions, each which can be independently upgraded, and players can make choices regarding what sort of upgrades to focus on and where to place their party, although each individual party member has an upgrade path that’s mostly set with little in the way of options.

Having said that, it’s not always clear what options players have in this game or how to go about them. This complexity is explained quickly in the game’s opening tutorials, but it quickly goes away before you can read much of it, and parts of it are dismissed automatically by the same button you use to interact with the battlefield, meaning you could possibly dismiss a useful bit of instruction unintentionally.

There’s also quite a lot of information here, and it’s not organized particularly well, making players hunt through multiple tedious menus to compare upgrades and decide which option is best. This is exacerbated by the tiny font size the game uses (difficult to read in docked mode, even more difficult in handheld mode). I don’t know how this game even worked on smaller mobile devices when the text is so tiny on the Switch.

Graphically, this game uses a hand-drawn art style that’s fairly typical of mobile fantasy games. It’s okay, and doesn’t generally detract from the game heavily, although there are problems on a technical level – when the screen fills up with enemies and/or loot drops, this game chugs pretty heavily, to the point where even the game’s controls can lag. The game’s visuals are paired with pretty typical videogamey sword and sorcery type noises and typical fantasy music that gets repetitive way too quickly. I found myself reaching for the mute button before long.

Oh, one other complaint while I’m at it – in portable mode, this game does support touchscreen, but the touchscreen controls are too inaccurate and at times fail to detect where you’re pressing at all. You’ll soon fall back on the reliability of the standard button controls.

As much as Idle Games may not be a genre that has me as their target audience, I’m willing to give anything a chance if it’s done well, and Idle Champions does present potential to be an engaging passive experience. However, that experience is crippled by terrible performance issues, microscopic text, and menus that make it difficult to engage with what agency this game does allow the player. If you’re looking for an idle game to play on the Switch, you don’t have many options, but even so this is a disappointing experience.

tl;dr – Idle Champions is an Idle Game that’s a rare example of the genre on the Switch. Unfortunately, the game has pretty severe performance issues, is poorly optimized for the Switch, and features confusing menus that make it difficult to make informed decisions. Even fans of the genre may find this game to be more trouble than it’s worth.

Grade: C-

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