Idle Devils Review – Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned

Those who know me personally will know that I’m something of a nut for mythology, and put a great deal of time into both studying and teaching the subject. From Greek to Japanese and Egyptian to Norse, there isn’t much I don’t know about the old religions of the central and eastern world. There’s a reason that these epic stories transcend time.

The same can also be said of the many intertwined variations of Christianity, one of very few ancient religions still very much alive. Now I’m not going to dive into the belief aspect of biblical texts; that’s not why I’m here. What I do want to look at, however, is the stories; epic tales of order versus chaos, with enough superpowered creatures and antiheroes to give Marvel a run for their money.

Hell would be the focus of our attention today, and it’s a place that’s far more complex than what we’re casually taught in school. For a place of sin and anarchy, there’s a certain etiquette regarding justice, punishment and rules. There’s an ever-growing hierarchy of devils, overlords, archfiends and other demons, proving even those once considered avatars of evil can still respect order. It’s from this order that our tale begins.

Introduction: The Name Says It All

Idle Devils is an ‘idle RPG’, a subgenre of Strategy RPGs usually restricted to mobile devices due to their minimalist design and hands-off approach to gameplay. If you’re unfamiliar with this subsection of the genre, maybe think of a more casual JRPG where your party members attack and use skills automatically without player input, not unlike Final Fantasy XII, albeit with simpler 2D visuals.

Idle RPGs allow the player to take a step back from the action to focus on other areas, such as getting absorbed into the narrative, watching the action unfold, and micromanaging stats and equipment. The simplified nature of Idle Devils gives the game a certain ‘indie’ appeal, and when combined with a set of beautiful, busty, gender-swapped Devils, make the game ideal for fans of both genres. Idle Devils was developed by Gocore and published by HappyPlayer on PS5 on 21st November, 2024.

Story: Chaos Descends Upon The Realm

When the world was still in chaos, there was no concept of a ‘Demon World’. At that time, all kinds of civilisations were in the stage of rapid growth. Humans and demons fought and killed for survival, which resulted in the destruction of the land and the depletion of natural resources, forcing God to finally intervene. Human beings and demons would exist within separate boundaries, unable to invade each others territories again, and so, the Demon Realm was born.

Two hundred years ago, the Demon Realm was infected by a raging miasma, plunging the peacefully evolved settlements into chaos again. The Demon King used the power of the Stellar Scepter to seal away those corrupted by the miasma in their respective lands, splitting the Demon Realm into a scattered series of pocket dimensions. Now, the miasma has begun to spread again and the Demon King has been defeated, further weakening the previous seals put in place.

Chaos descends upon the realm once again, though order must be maintained; whoever manages to reseal the remaining seven hells will be crowned the new Demon King. The player has a choice of one of three possible protagonists known as “anomalies”, half-human, half-demon girls in the employ of the former Demon King with varying powers and abilities; Emily is a sultry fire witch, Sylvia is an amnesiac knight, and Sarah is a promiscuous succubus. Each are guided through the realm from the Village of the Dark Night by Molly, a mysterious demon-girl deacon.

Idle Devils’s Turn-Based Gameplay

The game features a turn-based combat mode. At the commencement of battle, both sides’ action bars start automatically filling. Once a character’s action bar is fully charged, they will automatically launch a regular attack towards the target enemy/enemies. After their action is concluded, the action bars resume filling. The filling speed of action bars is directly proportional to the character’s movement speed.

Victory in combat will award all active party members with experience points. With enough experience points, each party member will ‘level up’, gaining a boost to their stats. Characters will also gain one skill point for every five levels they advance; these skill points can be used to learn new skills or enhance existing ones.

There are three different categories of skills: Active skills, which need to be manually equipped and activated, Passive skills, which activate immediately, and Aura skills which are equippable but activate automatically. Activating as many attacks as soon as possible is key in maximising your damage output and clearing waves of enemies as quickly as possible.

There is no base ‘defense’ stat in the game, however there are multiple ‘resistance’ stats which reduce the effectiveness of specific types of enemy attacks. These follow more traditional ‘elemental’ archetypes, featuring resistance to physical, flame, lightning, frost, shadow, and holy attacks. In addition to resistance, skills utilising damage reduction, blocking, and dodging can also be used as a means of defense.

The Beautiful HD Graphics

For a game created on a minimal budget with little variety in the 2D backgrounds, the character models are beautifully detailed HD sprites created with enough care that each maintains some degree of canonical accuracy (if you overlook the gender-swapping) while also displaying suitably monstrous features and moderate fan service in equal measures.

Your special attacks grow in both style and substance as your characters level up, becoming colourful barrages of magical slaughter by the end of the game. There’s a high-quality orchestral soundtrack maintained throughout which is reminiscent of the Disgaea series, only without that scary choir. It does its job yet such demonic carnage on-screen would be much better suiting of a heavy metal soundtrack.

Aside from the occasional monster groaning, the characters aren’t voiced at all and so we’re back to old-school text boxes for dialogue, which is absolutely fine for a lower budget title, however this highlights the game’s biggest problem, the translation of the text is absolutely horrendous. Even the gender pronouns are all over the place.

I don’t think there is a single line of dialogue in the game that doesn’t feature some form of grammatical or punctuation error, and most are glaringly obvious too, such as the town ‘elders’ being referred to as ‘adults’ which was very confusing. Also confusing is your Devil allies being referred to by multiple different names, such as your first ally, Beelzebub, being referred to as Ba’alzebul, Baphomet, Beatrix, and Lord of the Flies, all in the first hour.

Conclusion

There’s something brilliantly rewarding about Idle Devils. This isn’t a fresh, new RPG story of rising from zero to hero; Rather, this is a biblical epic set thousands of years after the texts. Our cast aren’t simply struggling to survive, but adapting to recent changes in lives already filled with violence and slaughter. Regardless of their literal ‘levels’, we start this chapter already immensely powerful, and continue to grow into a party of beings with god-tier powers.

The game really hammers home that feeling of a constant bloody struggle. The battles never end, and you’ll be participating in them thousands of times during your playthrough, yet the game gifts you with regular speed multipliers to breeze through the slaughter with ease, and rewards your patience with a regular flow of impressive loot for you to play around with.

A decent equipment haul can grant significant boosts to your party’s stats, not only making them all the more deadly, but allowing them to survive more stages consecutively before you need to take a breather to tweak your skills and equipment again. It’s a very simple yet immensely satisfying system.

An easy battle system is all the more incentive to focus on the story, and sadly it’s here where we need to address the elephant in the room: the script. With so many grammatical errors constantly bombarding the player and some oddly misplaced punctuation, such as exclamation marks seemingly placed randomly throughout the text, the writing screams out something resembling a painfully bad translation.

With some knowledge of demonic entities and some outside-the-box thinking, you’ll be able to struggle through the text, or at least most of it. It’s a shame to see such a critical error break the immersion in what is otherwise a fascinating tale. With a polished script, the game would certainly justify some very high scores, yet even without, it’s still an entertaining experience.