Great Idle Game With a CRIPPLING Bug!

09/29/2016

Crusaders of the Lost Idols is a great game. I am not sure if the game is Anime styled or not, but the heads are bigger than their bodies.

Graphical quirks aside, it's a lovely game, plenty to watch while you're idling. (Idol/Idle, get it?)
You recruit a motley team of Crusaders that tromp on the screen, left to right, endlessly. The monsters come right to left. Hopefully, your team--or your clicking--does enough damage to kill them before the monsters collide with, and slowly kill, your Crusaders.
The game is divided up into Objectives, which are divided further into Areas. Each Area has a given Quest. Usually to kill a certain number of monsters. Sometimes for a change, the Area Quest will be to find a certain number of Quest Items--which come from dead monsters, so you have to kill monsters anyways! Every fifth Area is a Boss Area, with several waves of normal monsters followed by a much larger, tougher Boss enemy. Beat him, and you might get a Chest, but you HAVE to beat the Boss to move on.

The Objectives vary similarly, from reaching a certain Area to reaching a certain Level with your Crusaders. There is also Freeplay Objective, where you can reset the world anytime you want. (More on this later.).

Chests contain Gear, which gives a permanent boost to some aspect of the Crusader it attaches to. Gear is Crusader-specific and random to boot. Gear has a color-coded power variance, just like Diablo, from whitename Gear that barely enhances the hero at all on up to purple which gives an Epic boost to your Crusader's abilities, which is why it's called that. There's also Golden Epic, which is reserved for those who pay. I.e., cheating with wallet, rather than brains.
When you get Gear for a given Crusader, and there's already Gear in that slot, the weaker Gear is "Disenchanted", and you gain Enchantment Points based on the power of the Disenchanted Gear. Whitename Gear gives 1 EP, and Epic Gear gives 4 EP.

The scenery moves, the monsters move, but the Crusaders don't move. This is the Leveling Treadmill, given physical form!
In a weird twist on the formula, your characters gain EXP Points every 5 hours (Less if you have the Fast Learners Talent). This gives them a large boost in power, but is lost when you reset the world.
When monsters fail to survive your Crusaders, they drop Gold. You use this Gold to Level up whichever Crusaders you want. At certain Level Milestones, the Crusaders have optional Skills you can buy. Some of these are straight damage boosts, some boost the damage for your whole team, others have subtler effects, like boosting Gold income, or making monsters either avoid that character, or drawing them toward that character (Mostly used for Tank characters, like Thalia the Thunder King).

You even have a few active skills a la Clicker Heroes. Activate, and watch the fireworks--in one case, literally!

One of the Crusaders has the special Skill to reset the world. You lose all Experience Points and Gold, but keep Gear and Enchantment Points. Resetting is necessary to have your success or failure of an Objective "counted" and to get Idols based on the sum of the Levels of your Crusaders. And if you have Deep Idol Scavenging, you get bonus Idols based on what Area you managed to reach.
Idols give you 3% bonus DPS and 1% bonus Gold each--STACKING MULTIPLICATIVELY with themselves!
Replaying is therefore a must. You grind for Gear and Idols. Each time, more powerful and more Gold to hire and Level your Crusaders, or at least to hire and Level them sooner!

To help break up the monotony, there are Missions, where you send the Crusaders you're NOT using off to get Gold, Rubies, Buffs...even new Crusaders or Gear!
Your Crusaders have certain Tags that make them suited or not to a given Mission, and the more suited Crusaders you send on a Mission, the higher % chance of success for that Mission. BUT BE WARNED: You cannot use those Crusaders for the duration, sometimes they get Injured, which takes them out of play even longer, and you can even fail 100% Missions!
Think of it like the Garrison Missions from World of Warcraft. In fact, EXACTLY like the Garrison Missions from World of Warcraft!

The reason I don't give it full marks is because it has a crippling bug that kicks you out of the game and KEEPS you out of the game, with the unhelpful message, "Uh oh! Something went wrong! Try refreshing your game.". You refresh...and get the same window!
http://prntscr.com/cnyxr4
CNE's tech support STILL haven't gotten back to me about this.
So it's a great game--until it isn't. So to speak.

Now for the cheat part. The first three cheats in the Ultra Trainer no longer work. Losing Instant Kill is particularly bad, BUT you can simulate the effects by using an autoclicker set to half a second and have it keep clicking the Princess's Rain of Fire power. Ability Cooldown cheat makes it keep firing off that fast!
I didn't get much use out of "Lag Reduction 1" or "glitchy speedhax".
But the best cheat for this game is plain old unadorned Cheat Engine. Take your best DPSer and hack him up to Level 5000, 4b*1!
AND Remember that Idols are based on the sum of your Crusaders' Levels? This technique even gives you more Idols per reset!

This game is a lot of fun, and will consume your days whether you enjoy idle games in general or SRPGs, until that bug strikes and makes you unable to play the game at all!

Physical Qualities
Gameplay
Replayability
Hack Power
Overall Rating