The Seven Deadly Sins: Idle Hands-On Preview – Meliodas Thinks the Game is Simplistic Fun, But… 

Idle games are no doubt a popular genre in the mobile gaming space and various franchises have been dipping their toes into these types of titles – The Seven Deadly Sins will be following with their own.

The Seven Deadly Sins: Idle is Netmarble’s upcoming mobile title, one that is based on the popular franchise of the same name by manga author Nakaba Suzuki – sometimes known by its Japanese title Nanatsu no Taizai. We got a chance to try out The Seven Deadly Sins: Idle and here are our impressions so far.

Presentation

This title follows the story beats of the anime adaptation by A-1 Pictures extremely closely, and the chapters are divided into hundreds of stages for players to complete and progress. While visually, the art is based more closely on the anime series rather than the manga, the story is presented like comic books with slides of images and dialogue text. Disappointingly, there is no voice acting – so no hearing of Tomokazu Sugita’s amazing performance as Escanor.

Characters are presented in chibi forms during combat and gameplay, and the artwork is certainly adorable. There is a positive note about the user interface I would love to highlight, which is how cleanly arranged the menus are – allowing you to explore the different functions without being confused as to where to find them. Idle games are infamous for overloaded menu options, which tend to get cluttered and confusing, but Netmarble did an amazing job in UI design for The Seven Deadly Sins: Idle.

Gameplay

Onto the gameplay, yes – this is an idle game through and through. Characters will move on their own to fight enemies from one stage to another. Every time you defeat 5 enemies, an elite mob will spawn. Once 5 elites have been beaten, then you will face a boss. This loop repeats itself for hundreds of stages, and I have already reached more than 500 stages.

Despite its simple gameplay, the existence of such a high number of stages helps maintain some level of freshness, and clearing stage after stage does exude a sense of reward and satisfaction, creating that addictive feel of wanting more. Neatly, every hundred stages, the battlefield theme will also change.

Unlike other free-to-play mobile games that utilize a stamina system to limit playtime, the stamina system in The Seven Deadly Sins: Idle is to have you draw cards like you are in a casino. If you can manage to get 3 of the same picture; for example, 3 gacha cards, then you will be rewarded with a door prize of 5 gacha cards at once. If you get 3 pictures of coins, then you gain a lot of gold. Basically, the stamina system is used for character progression, instead of stage progression. If that makes sense.

Progression

As previously mentioned, there are hundreds or even thousands of stages to clear through. To do so, there are also various ways to strengthen yourself to progress smoothly. The most crucial one is probably the Tavern, which serves a variety of purposes, whether it’s strengthening your team or speeding up progress – making it a high priority to upgrade them as quickly as possible.

The Tavern can increase the number of characters that can be used in battle – going from a limit of 3 members in the early stages to 7 characters running around on the battlefield after several upgrades. The number could even go higher as you upgrade. Furthermore, the Tavern also increases the rewards obtained while you draw cards, making it crucial for daily basis rewards.

Besides that, in addition to the main content, there is also additional content for players to grind. For example, the Daily Dungeon allows you to earn God and Mana, and the Tower of Trial allows you to test the endurance of the team and how far they have grown. There is, of course, PvP content as well. 

Characters

The character progression in this game is rather simple, but also probably the most resource-intensive at the same time. Each character will have a level and rarity in the form of stars. Of course, the higher the rarity, the higher the level that can be maximized. But, it’s not that easy.

You might need dozens or even hundreds to even able to perform an Awaken, the game’s version of limit break, for a character. For characters with low rarity, it’s easy. However, if we are talking about characters with higher rarity, like Legendary for example, it will take quite a while. You need thousands of gacha pulls just to maximize one character

Besides levels, there is also a Potential system, where if a character is “Awaken” twice – you can unlock traits for the characters. The more you Awaken a character, the more Potential slots you can have for that character. These traits are also tied to a gacha system and use Mana, which is also a resource used for leveling characters. If unlucky, you might only get a Critical Rate +1%, but if you repeatedly roll the dice, you might get Legendary Traits such as Critical Rate +2 % and others. Annoyingly, if you already have one good Potential slot and you unlock a new one, you will have to roll for all slots instead of rolling one for one slot at a time – overwriting your results.

Gacha & Microtransaction 

For a game as simple as The Seven Deadly Sins: Idle, it is disgustingly loaded with microtransactions. Every single time when you advance to a certain level, acquire a rare character, or run out of energy – a pop-up promo will appear in an attempt to sell you packages. It is frustratingly much as the pop-up keeps pestering you to shell out cash.

On the topic of gacha, it has become quite a notable characteristic of Netmarble idle games where there will be a Gacha Level System. If you are a free-to-play (F2P) player, you will not be able to obtain the character with the highest rarity directly. You can go through a process of thousands of pulls first. At least The Seven Deadly Sins: Idle provides an abundance of rewards, which opens up more pull opportunities. After 2-3 days of playing, we managed to hit thousands of pulls even before reaching Level 6. Note that this might change when the game is released.

Moving on to limited characters, you are locked to either use a Rate Up Hero Summon Ticket or Diamond – there are no other options. The rate to get Legendary characters, the highest rarity in the game is only 0.15%, which is laughably low. As mentioned, at least you earn pull currencies quickly enough to keep rolling on your desired banners. 

Verdict 

If you are a fan of the anime or manga series, seeing Meliodas, Merlin, Diane, or any of your favorite characters stomping through hundreds of stages can be satisfyingly addictive, making The Seven Deadly Sins: Idle a fun alternate way to enjoy The Sevenly Deadly Sins franchise. The user interface, again, deserves praise for how neatly arranged they are, making the experience smooth.

That said, the game is flooded with microtransactions and they stay on the line of being too much. Despite that, it was quite impressive to see rewards being distributed quite abundantly, making the initial early game quite a comfortable journey to progress.

The Seven Deadly Sins: Idle is expected to launch in October 2024 for Android and iOS.

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