An Idle Clicker That is More of the Same, Yet Somehow Less as a Result.
I’ve spent an unholy amount of time on DPS IDLE, the first in this series of idle clicker games. Explaining why is difficult. For me, it’s not so much about watching numbers going up: it’s about the thrill of prestiging. I get a real kick out of starting the game over and over again. It’s about comparing this run to the previous run, and watching as I kill things many magnitudes faster than before.
Knowing that I clicked away a couple of weeks of my life on DPS IDLE, I was half-worried that I would do the same on DPS IDLE 2. Between this and Slay the Spire 2 on PC, there was a real danger I would become a gaming hermit.
When it came down to it, I needn’t have worried. DPS IDLE 2 is not one of those sequels that tosses the original out and starts again. It’s very much ‘more of the same’, but with a lick of paint on the graphics and interfaces. It’s so familiar, in fact, that my appetite for it disappeared after a few days.
A Clicking Time Bomb
For newbies, DPS IDLE 2 is a reasonably typical clicker game. Your first run will be spent clicking on enemies till they pop into coins, and then spending those coins on treasure chests. The chests open and cards fly out. You don’t have a choice of which cards: they are picked randomly, like CCG cards from a booster pack. They fly into your card album, and you hope that you get something good.
Those cards tend to multiply a few different things. Some will increase the amount of gold you get per monster, while others will snag you resources, which further upgrade the cards. A greater proportion of the cards will increase your damage-per-second (explaining the title), but the type of damage is often varied. There’s click-damage, which is self-evident, but there is also Earth, Ice, Sun and more elemental damage. Cards will pick one or two of them and hoick them up.
As your card album fills up, the next objective is to complete the album. Slot a card into every space and you will gain the opportunity to reset them all but turn one of them Silver, then Gold and so on. Doing so gives you a massive boost, so completing albums becomes the meta.
Eventually, though, the progression slows down to a crawl, which is when you start thinking about prestiging. As with DPS IDLE, there’s a lovely interpretation of this, as you can join Guilds who have a specialism. Join the Earth Guild and, once you prestige, you will get a permanent multiplier to your Earth Damage. This is locked in forever, so it’s worth spreading yourself around the various guilds like the local bike. We bounded from Earth to Ice to Gold in the early game.
In it for the Prestige
All of this is the core of DPS IDLE 2, but there’s a lot frillery that makes the progression even crunchier. You can buy and activate Magical Spheres, which give you a temporary DPS boost in specific damage types. You can forge items to gain passive boosts, and then sell them on to forge yet more items in an ever-lasting forgey loop. Heroes can be hired and socketed into limited slots; bosses can have their health nibbled away with purchasable anti-upgrades; and a Factory can churn out passive benefits if you have the cash. There’s a lot of supporting stuff here.
There is also an undeniable increase in polish over DPS IDLE. DPS IDLE 2 actually looks like it was made for console, rather than someone pinch-and-zooming on an iPhone app. The monsters are an odd mish-mash of the ugly and adorable, while the interfaces are a little hit and miss (tabs like the Exchange take a long while to work out) but are at least the right resolution this time.
None of it really grabbed me, though. DPS IDLE 2 didn’t burrow under my skin like DPS IDLE did. A large part of that is down to familiarity: this is not a massive deviation from the original. There are new touches, like the Forge where you make new items, but they don’t alter the core which is entirely the same. Buy cards, finish albums, upgrade cards and move through the various chests and card-colours. And, of course, prestige prestige prestige.
The Whiff of the Overly Familiar
If you haven’t played DPS IDLE but fancy it, then I would say that this is the wiser starting point. There’s not much between DPS IDLE and DPS IDLE 2, but this is at least presented well. And some of the new systems – the Forge in particular – gently nudge it ahead in terms of quality.
But if you have played DPS IDLE, I wonder if you will feel short-changed, as I did. And it’s not just down to familiarity. There’s a slight lack of strategy that feels like a constant missed opportunity.
Take the cards themselves. Their effects are all extremely vanilla. Sure, some will multiply resources or gold, but most cards just pick a damage type and multiply it. It might be worded differently to offer at least a smidgeon of interest – maybe one card multiplies a second card – but they are all much of a muchness. Which means choosing which card to turn Silver or Gold is less interesting than it really should be.
Better Looking, but That’s About All
I think about Clicker Heroes or Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, and how the micro-choices, the paths of progression, are at least interesting to choose from. Here, the cards let the side down. It’s only when you prestige in DPS IDLE 2, choosing which Guild to align yourself with, that decision-making really plays a part. And that’s not enough for me.
There are many idle games to click on the Xbox, almost all of them free (with microtransactions). That’s a challenge for DPS IDLE 2 to overcome: how to entice players to play, and do so for a lengthy period of time. DPS IDLE 2 opts for better presentation and usability – turning one of the ugliest idle games into one of the prettiest – but that’s all it really has to offer. It’s ‘number goes up’ but with a surprising lack of player-choice.
Important Links
DPS IDLE 2 Arrives On Xbox – But Can This Free Sequel Fix The Grind? – https://www.thexboxhub.com/dps-idle-2-arrives-on-xbox/
Download from the Xbox Store, for free – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/dps-idle-2/9PLMG9MSBR88/0010
There’s an Xbox One version too – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/dps-idle-2-xbox-one/9MWVT5S6SVC6/0010
