Idle Arena: Evolution Legends Review

Do you get bored with idle games because there’s nothing to do while farming for loot? Idle Arena: Evolution Legends solves that by combining amazing hero visuals and multiplayer battles with a dungeon-crawler mini game. This idler will keep you entertained and playing for hours.

Guiding Prophet

At the beginning of Idle Arena there’s a bit of in-game lore dropped in your lap by an NPC referred to as the Prophet. But, don’t worry about it. Remembering all the details, or forgetting them, doesn’t affect gameplay at all. Some games don’t need a detailed storyline in order to enjoy and this is one of them. 

Even if you don’t give the guided tutorial your full attention, the game itself is pretty intuitive. If you’ve played idle RPGs before, or not, you’re set up for success from the get go. 

The key point of Idle Arena is to build a team by summoning heroes and progressing through the campaign. You’re given opportunities to farm resources in three different ways. Farming can happen through idle RPG mechanics or you can actively collect resources by completing quests and running through battles in Idle’s mini-games.

Don’t be scared off by the different modes you’ll find within the game, they’ve all been setup in a way to help you progress. You won’t be stuck against an unbeatable boss or thrown into fights that you and your heroes won’t be able to handle. While this is typical for most idler games, it isn’t always the case. Farming for days in order to gather the necessary resources to level your heroes so you can get past a boss is common and the mini-games aren’t always entertaining.

There’s a few mini-games available for passing the time while you’re gathering resources to level up. You have the option of testing your hero lineup against that of other players in the arena or running through the mini dungeon-crawler set up in the ruins of a Dwarven kingdom.

Mini-Game

Idle Arena’s mini-games are classic examples of idler games. Fighting in multiplayer battles and climbing your way up through monster fights isn’t all too different from other idlers. The difference lies in the set-up of the mini dungeon-crawler. Usually, it’s just hack and slashing your way through enemies that can be avoided. Idle Arena works differently in that you have to actually evade enemies in order to reach the treasure chests. There is the option of just fighting every single enemy that blocks your path, but every enemy you fight decreases your stamina. This leads to the danger of running out of stamina before you’re able to collect all the treasure in the dungeon.

The mini dungeon-crawler resets every day and keeps adjusting to the strength of your heroes, the value of the loot dropped continually rises and is the best area to hit in order to equip your team with the best equipment.

Hero Classes in Idle Arena

While there’s no in-game lore attached to the heroes, there’s over a hundred heroes to collect and three stages of evolution for the higher ranking heroes. For hero evolution, their design actually changes when you evolve them. It’s not just a change of armor or flipping their color scheme. Some of the heroes design does a complete shift. A seemingly insignificant glob of slime evolves into a terrifying tentacle monster and a small bat turns into a gorgeous vampire queen. This happens when you level up their original forms using farmed loot and merging them with duplicate heroes.

The Prophet walks you through the lineup of your team. Six different heroes can be selected to help you fight your way through the campaign and mini-games that can be found in Idle Arena. For the first five chapters, the Prophet provides hints in case you run into any trouble with the monsters coming your way. 

There are three classes on offer here, instantly recognizable to most gamers: DPS, Defense, and Support.

Per usual, DPS are your attackers, their function is dealing an immense amount of damage. The tank class soaks damage from enemies so your team can defeat the opposing team. Supporting class heroes provide support to the rest of the heroes in your team by a variety of means.

Idle Arena Factions

After the classes, the heroes are divided even further into different factions that influence their different abilities. Factions is one of the factors that are pre-determined for the heroes. This is where it would have been interesting to have in-game lore attached to the heroes. The different factions are Polis, Wastes, Dungeon, Abyss, Element and Relic.

Polis and Relic are closest to Light aligned heroes you’d see in other games. Their designs follow the theme of holy heroes and the stereotypical “good” characters you can find in most media. These heroes can be anything from holy knights and dragons to unicorns. 

Element and Wastes heroes are more anthropomorphic in comparison to the light aligned Polis and Relic heroes. Here you can see a variety of mythos influenced the game designers, from the Greek centaur to the Egyptian jackals. There’s a clear blending of European and Egyptian mythology with the design of the Waste heroes. The most evident being the Medusa and Wind Rider heroes. 

Dungeon and Abyss are comparable to Dark aligned heroes. It’s possible to have a whole team comprised of nothing but skeletons and demons. There are hellhounds to dwarf guards and succubi to skeletons and even a lich available as heroes. There’s no shortage of visually interesting designs. It’s worth taking the time to build up and evolve your heroes, even if they aren’t used for your main team. Seemingly base designs change into gorgeous visuals that wouldn’t be out of place in MMORGs. 

A Win for Idlers

Idle Arena is a brilliant example of an idler that will keep you entertained. There’s no lack of eye candy both inside of the mini-games and within the campaign. This is the type of idler you can easily spend hours on without reaching a stalemate or falling prey to boredom.