I've played this game on and off for a couple of years now. I don't quite get the reason for the mixed reviews, considering this is one of the best of the idler games that I've played. I prefer an idler where you can actually play, instead of basically setting and forgetting with occasional clicks to do upgrades.

The main sticking point seems to be people hitting walls and being unable to progress further. They really are not playing the game properly. The main thing you want to be doing is getting as far as you possibly can, then doing a dark ritual. Accumulating dark mana improves stats by a significant margin. The game I feel also does progression walls really well, requiring you to actually strategize and intervene in some cases. It's an incredibly satisfying and rewarding experience to be able to finally smash past that roadblock or unlock something you've been grinding for.

I also tend to prioritize unlocking as many rewards as I possibly can, as those tend to also propel progression. More often than not, said rewards give considerable bonuses and generally also require some form of intervening from the player. Same thing goes for unlocking pets and doing quests.

There's also a lot you can do to break up the regular grind and gameplay through the means of events. Events are probably the best feature of this game, with some of them being really interesting concepts, and fun to play. The game also introduces mechanics much slower, and layers on a ton of different mechanics at a good pace instead of other games dumping everything at once and saying "just click the highlighted spot a bunch, you'll learn, trust us".

The only downside, is a lot of times you'll end up feeling lost, not being able to progress. Which most times is due to a fault on your part. When I tend to get to this point, I'll usually just look things up. Which is hard to do considering there is no good wiki. Just do yourself a solid, and join the Discord. Most times there's going to be a pin/something you can search for where someone gives advise or a solution."

MTX also isn't egregious. It's there, but never really necessary.

TLDR: Bad reviews because people don't know how to play. Game has a ton of depth, super rewarding, with fun events to break up the monotony of grinding. Mechanics and systems are introduced in a much better way compared to other idlers.