Dive into the Pits of Hell
Mobirix comes back with yet another idle-action RPG, Devil Slayer. This time, you’ll battle devils in the depths of the underworld. Similar to Immortal Rising, another Mobirix title, your sole focus will be leveling up. Unlike Immortal Rising, it won’t be as entertaining.
Frankly, when I started with Devil Slayer, I wasn’t aware it was by the same company behind Immortal Rising. When I found out, I was disappointed. Immortal Rising was one of my favorite idle RPGs last year. Devil Slayer doesn’t even compare.
Even though it has similar mechanics as Immortal Rising, the progression in Devil Slayer is way slower. Despite the constant leveling up, it doesn’t feel like advancing. It’s not an unsurmountable mountain per se, but more like a never-ending hill. It’s like we’re Sisyphus, never getting the satisfaction of cresting the summit.
When I Say Idle, I Mean It
After the first day, I felt stuck. You can do the dungeons five runs at a time, but you’ll either clear them quickly or you won’t clear them at all. Some of these dungeons become difficult from one level to the next, meaning you can’t get the materials to level the equipment to become stronger. And without dungeons and materials to level up, all there is to do is watch Miss Girly (your character) fight. But it’s not satisfying.
More than leveling up or farming for stats, what you’ll do the most is invoking. Besides giving you equipment, invoking will unlock skills, stats and upgrades. And you’ll need a lot of equipment. You can summon these in batches of up to 1000. However, you’ll need to put in the number you want to summon each time you invoke.
The good thing is that both the weapon and the armor leveling systems are general and not specific to an item. This means that you won’t waste resources leveling up inferior weapons.
The Light Among the Shadows
I did like the way missions are structured. You have a journal with small missions, like killing a certain number of enemies or invoking equipment. When you complete them, you can choose when to start the next one which helps to dim the feeling of never-ending missions.
Of course, as a free game, there will be ads. They tend to be somewhat long, but you won’t see them that often unless you want to. Once a day you can do 50 free invocations by watching an ad. There’s also an ad each time you want to reset the bingo. Besides that, you can watch them if you want some extras but that’s up to you. In my playthrough, I did watch some ads just to do something.
Honestly, the most exciting part was returning to the game after being away for an entire day. It was the only way I felt like I leveled up. You get up to 20 hours of rewards offline, which you can double by watching an ad.
Alas, it’s not a bad game, it’s just that after playing Immortal Rising or Boori’s Spooky Tales, Devil Slayer feels mid. It lacks the most important aspect of idle games, the rewarding sensation of leveling up. Otherwise, it’s an okay game in every sense of the word.
Hardcore?
Not really.
It stands in the middle. Not great, not terrible.
