Devil Hunter Idle Review

What makes a devil hunter?

Is it the sword, cutting through hordes of monsters with power and grace?

Could it be the gun, bullets of justice piercing the dark hearts of evil?

Or is it the skills, earned and honed through years of diligent training?

In truth, it is all of the above, yet none of the above. For what makes a devil hunter is the piles and piles of gems sacrificed at the altar of weapon summoning. Indeed, true devil hunters are like Batman—rich and bored with a disdain for bad guys.

Idle Hands

Developed by Korean mobile game dev company Mobirix, Devil Hunter Idle is, as the name would suggest, an idle RPG. Take on hordes of devils and other monsters and use the riches you acquire to improve your character over time. These types of mobile games are very widespread nowadays—there are countless titles populating the genre. Many factors decide the quality of such games: the presentation, the gameplay, and most importantly, how aggressive and predatory the monetization is. Devil Hunter Idle excels in some of those aspects, while stumbles in others.

Twice As Pretty

Starting with what the title excels at: the presentation. Devil Hunter Idle is one of the best-looking idle games I’ve seen. The animations are fluid, the special effects are extravagant. The designs of both the hero and the bosses are unique and interesting. What’s a little less impressive is the sound design. For the longest time I had no idea the game had music. The constant strikes, shots, skills and spells fill most of the sound space and they’re not very interesting to listen to. There is an option to turn them off though so you can enjoy the epic fantasy orchestra instead that’d otherwise be barely audible. It’s either that or sound effects—it’s hard to enjoy both at the same time.

Numbers of the Beast

Devil Hunter Idle begins with a title screen featuring the hero pointing their gun at you, surrounded by the top 21 players of the week. During my time playing, I’ve seen no special dungeons or seasonal gameplay, so this prestigious top list is what you’re working towards for most of your time spent playing.

The gameplay of Devil Hunter Idle consists mostly of menu management, trying to make your character as powerful as possible. This is done through upgrading the hero in countless different ways: increasing stats, acquiring equipment, training skills and much more. I immediately noticed that these aspects of the game are entirely self-contained. Materials, keys and currency used to upgrade your equipment will only ever be used for that one purpose. They will never affect any other part of the game. Each aspect of your character has its own dungeon that rewards treasure used only to upgrade that one aspect and nothing else. This means two things.

First, the gameplay feels disjointed. It’s as if you were playing many smaller games that just so happen to be stacked on top of each other wearing a trench coat, pretending to be one big game. Granted, they all serve the same purpose in the grand scheme of things. Increase your character’s Combat Power so you can beat dungeons of higher difficulties.

Second, even before considering any sort of monetization, the game boasts over 30 different currencies that you’re expected to keep track of. While you can get used to being mindful of all of them, it’s hard to care about any individual currency but the most important ones.

The Devil’s Casino

So which currencies are the most important? There are two: crystals and royal crystals.  Royal crystals serve as the premium currency of Devil Hunter Idle. While the game hands out a modest amount of them through gameplay, the main way to acquire them is, of course, from the cash shop. They can then be spent on any other currency, suddenly explaining the different aspects of character progression being so self-contained.

The other important currency, crystal, is used for the gacha element of the game. We can’t have an idle game without that. Devil Hunter Idle is both creative and insidious about its gacha mechanics. The title is surprisingly generous with its crystal handouts, so even without dumping money, you can still scratch your gambler’s itch a little.

Once you have enough hard-earned crystals, you can spend them on the summoning page to acquire equipment: melee weapons, ranged weapons, necklaces and rings. They come in many different rarities, but the only one you will care about is SS. This is the highest rarity you can obtain from the gacha, though not the highest rarity in the game overall. Get enough of a single type of SS equipment, and you can promote it into an SSS item, which is superior in every way. Since the equipment you summon and promote into are all random, you will have to sink quite a few crystals if you want as much power as possible.

Dealing with the Devil

It’s not a question of whether a gacha game is monetized, but how well or badly it’s done. Generally speaking, while spending money in the extensive cash shop definitely speeds up your progress, it isn’t necessarily mandatory. It’s an idle game after all—you wouldn’t be playing it if you weren’t willing to wait.

The pricing in the cash shop is as predatory as mobile games get. If you choose to spend money, you must buy royal crystals which you can then spend on other resources. But no matter what you’re intending to buy, the bundles are always way too little or way too big. You will always have crystals left. This is intentional design to push you to buy the bigger packs, and then buy some more. You might as well do something with the leftovers, right?

However, all of this can be ignored by just being a patient free-to-play individual. The point where I draw the line at is the ads.

I actually tried to count the ad viewings required to complete all the daily tasks on offer, and the number I ended up with was 54. At 30 seconds per ad, you’re looking at quite some time spent watching ads every single day. This number doesn’t include other sources of ads like three of them every half hour to keep your blessings running or the ones that come with weekly rewards.

Not to worry, however, Devil Hunter Idle has the solution for you. At the cost of a mere seven dollars you can purchase the Hunter License, at least the first version of it, which among other things, removes all advertisements from the game. If you want to be a serious player, you will need this, there is no way around it. At the same time, free-to-play game enthusiasts will have a miserable time spending half an hour each day watching the same ads over and over again.

I guess that’s just the price a devil hunter has to pay.