Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms

A free to play idler, and sometimes a clicker, that I can only recommend to people who might enjoy this genre. It is because for those interested it's the journey and difficulty of the challenge, not the destination, that matters. That is where this game shines since it has many uniquely powered characters and gear to unlock, hundreds of adventures to complete, patron perks and campaign blessings to max out, and modrons to upgrade. The current end game consists of pseudo-multiplayer adventures that open up forging of stronger gear. Updates come very frequently with many in-game events which is a blessing for some and a curse for completionists. Fortunately, there are many community created guides on Steam, 3rd party websites (Kleho, ByteGlow) that delve into stats and configurations, and scripting guides to help you gem farm. The developers have also created a friendly and helpful discord group that also happens to post free chest codes daily. All in all, it's a great idler with a great community.

One of the best "idler" games out there IMO. Idle Champions isn't a true idler either. What I mean by that is you need to micro-manage -- at least until you unlock a Modron Core. That's what I love about it, along side the RPG elements. Having to micro-manage instead of just leaving the game alone, return back the next day, do two things and rinse & repeat.
Yes, there's a huge grind factor but what idler/clicker isn't? The content is entertaining and not boring whatsoever. People who say otherwise probably didn't play very long at all. Biggest downside in my opinion is how important familiars are, but to purchase how many you need to be half sustainable for farming gems, etc., they cost way too many gems and there's not too many you can buy with gems.
There's also some stuff going around where people are saying it's Pay to Win. I have actually seen people complete the entire game without spending any money. It's doable, but a grind. There's also so many events in this game that give you FREE champions, chests, and other items. I've received hundreds of dollars worth of event rewards FOR FREE. It's pretty nutty.
The community is very awesome on Twitch AND Reddit. You can get multiple free chests a day. Majority of them are Electrum chests, but hey, a chest is a chest, right? The more you dive into this game and its community, the more you will have more fun within the game! Playing and not understanding shouldn't keep you from continuing! Learn and conquer!
Overall, highly recommend.

It's fine, I'll just do one more stage and quit for the day.

Fun free-to-play game for many hours, but can get tedious and slower to progress after a few missions and unlocks. I like it because It's very relaxing to play and you can jump in and out of the game quick. The grind to progress right now is a little bit boring, but I had a decent time with this game up until this point and it didn't cost me a cent. If you enjoy other idle clicker games like adventure capitalist this is probably something to consider trying, this game has a more developed concept with a story, different abilities, nice playlist of music and more things to interact with.

ICotFR is probably the most polished idle/clicker-type game out there, with a jukebox full of catchy D&D-inspired songs that's worth downloading the game just to listen to once. If there's one negative about this game, it's that the free-to-play-but-you-really-want-to-burn-money dopamine trigger is all too real here.

Do you like lists? I like lists. Even if I format them incorrectly and put periods at the end of each list item. Let's make a list.
An idle hero and clicker game (e.g. a marathon) with story.
There is some game pad support.
The characters are from Dungeons and Dragons-related (DnD) content and you might see a few stats that look like it, but when you're dealing several quadrillion damage a second, you'll know this is not a table top rule set
You may learn about numbers you didn't know existed like... novemdecillion. You think I'm making this up? Check wikipedia for the names of big numbers... but wait until I can edit the article first so it looks like I'm telling the truth.
You deploy and level up your champions with gold and place them in a formation to fight enemies. Formations vary between regions, so you might have three front liners getting boosted by a party member behind them in one formation or a single tank protecting everyone in the truncated peg game formation.
Champion levels reset when leaving a quest, BUT
You can permanently upgrade your champions with gear from chests (playing/replaying a quest, giveaway codes from streams, real world currency, etc.) and level up that gear for minor statistical benefits AND
You earn favor for that region that can be spent for permanent upgrades for the region, unlock a limited number of permanent upgrades across the game, and if unspent, increase the amount of gold you find during the campaign so that you level up faster and progress further.
Regions and quest variants have different formations, requiring you to either think differently about what champions you recruit that particular quest or what upgrade branch you might choose for a champion.
Where does the clicking come in? Early on or when you have massive amounts of favor, you can actually defeat enemies with it. Somewhere in between, you just slow down enemies from attacking your party. Or you have clickitis and click on every bird, beetle, snake, and goblin head minding their own business to squeeze out additional gold. Click faster Barry!
There are familiars in-game that will auto-click for you. You can gradually obtain them with in-game currency from repeated runs or acquire them sooner with real world currency. Have you seen a 10-foot tall gnoll grit its teeth at you and fling its head back 5+ times a second? I have. I don't know how it doesn't bite its tongue or get whiplash with all that clicking.
Do I have to pay money to progress?
No.
Wait, that wasn't in a list. You won't believe me unless it's in a list. I like lists. Hold on.
No.
Whoops. It's a good thing I'm not getting paid for this review. ... Wait, I can get paid for reviewing stuff? Anyway, let's try this again.
You don't have to pay to progress.
Paying will reduce the time you spend not spending time.
If you tune into the streams (or keep an eye out on the sub-reddit), you'll get codes to unlock roughly $20 worth of chests a week (not 100% comparable since its electrum chest (item any hero you have) vs. gold chest (item for original 12 heroes)).
You might overhear that a streamer is eating a zombie's arm and barking like a dog while one of the streamers looks like they want to barf in the amount of time it takes to type in "!code" and trying to copy the chest unlock code "IHAZ-CHAM-PION" (this was not the actual code, but it feels close enough). You can't unhear it and you start to wonder as you go back to the game before doing something that isn't the game.
You can unlock additional champions with real world currency, by assembling six rare slices of pizza to form a time gate and recruit a champion, or waiting for a monthly-ish time gate / events to appear and decide which of the heroes presented you'll try to unlock.
The heroes offer different approaches and some increase your odds in performing specific quests. e.g. your default first hero gets an upgrade that helps him fight better when there are dwarves in your formation, but I ain't got no other dwarves. So another dwarf hero could offer something to boost him while perhaps bringing something else to the table.
You aren't meant to rush through an idle game or complete all the content there is in a single week. There is some content (e.g. patrons) that are much further out if you're starting and do not plan to pay for champions.
CON
This bear tank has 15 CON, so he isn't getting that +3 modifier bonus. Wait, that wasn't in a list.
If you're not paying money and you do want to be efficient, you'll have to check in on the game a bit more often to spend your gold, decide if you want to reset a quest, etc.
I may be completely imagining things, but the game seems to generate more gold and favor while you leave it open and you have your familiars clicking and doing things, than when you're completely offline.
You may occasionally lose progress if you quit out without using the Save & Quit option - take your time to close out.
If you were expecting a free electronic Dungeons and Dragons gameplay experience, this is not that game.
Bruenor has a really bad sense of direction, probably responsible for making the adventures 50% longer, but... we don't talk about Bruenor.
One of champions has a really bad trophy collecting habit and that extends things out too. And one champion (probably that drow pirate fella) has an endless, weightless bag of holding, because that's a LOT of gold coins. So many questions. Not enough answers.
I'm sure there's more and it's all subjective. In the time it took for me to write this review, I mostly auto'd (more or less) from area 1 to area 85+ on freeplay. But I did check in to spam upgrades on a few champions.
...
Is it just me or did these lists start getting indented. You know what, I'm not even gonna worry about. You have a nice day internet reader.

I would recommend this for a very specific use, which is as background content for when you're working. If you're going in with low expectations, just wanting a dungeons and dragons flavored clicker while you work on other stuff, it's pretty decent, although annoying with its F2P system.
I'll probably keep putting it on in the background because I like dnd and I enjoy having several things going on as background noise when I'm focusing. If you plan on using this for actual, proper gameplay and entertainment then you should just ignore it.
Basically, for an idle game, it's okay, the monetization is annoying but you can ignore it. If you were not specifically looking for an idle game and where attracted by the DnD aesthetics, you should pass.