Aurora Legend was a Surprisingly Solid AFK RPG

Okay, so I’d perhaps neglected to do any research into Aurora Legend prior to downloading it. I saw it was highly rated and decided, you know what? It’s an RPG! That in and of itself is more than reason enough to try it out and at least give it a chance. And.. that was the beginning of this journey.
Or, well, my journey, at least. The characters in Aurora Legend have their own journey currently undertaken.

See, the game begins by showing you a brief prologue of the history of the game: Bad guys did bad things, good guys came and vanquished the bad guys.
We’re one of the good guys, an adventurer of sorts.
After the brief prologue, we’re greeted by the NPC that guides you through the introductory functions and features of the game.
What instantly caught my attention, though, was the fact that down the bottom of the screen my first recruit, an adorable little fire mage, was randomly doing battle with various monsters.
“That’s a cool little addition to the game” I thought. Until a few moments passed, and I saw I was receiving items and currency while she continued to repeatedly grind through things on her own.

Yup – it was at that moment that I realized the exact game this was: An AFK RPG. I’d never played one before this so this was completely new to me.
All I had to do was click the “fight boss” button down the bottom of the screen to slowly progress through the game, but otherwise, everything else happened without any input from me.
I mean, heck, the game continued grinding after I logged off and closed out of the game. Having never played through an AFK RPG, I had no idea this continued to happen, so logging back into the game 2 hours later really caught me by surprise.
I had a ton of XP books, enough currency to do whatever I wanted, and.. yeah.
This was all a very interesting experience for me, and it left me wondering to myself: Why do people play games like this?
At its core, it’s a Gacha game, or has Gacha mechanics, but.. I have to ask you guys, since you all play these games: What about them makes you play them? What specifically do you enjoy about AFK RPGs or AFK games in general?

While the graphical style was definitely pretty solid, the special effects looked great, characters and cutscenes were all really well done, I just don’t see the appeal of that little input from me.
I guess I’m just a fan of being a little more hands-on with things.