[REVIEW] Siralim 3

 

Have you ever encountered a game and thought, “This is the exact game I need at this exact moment?” The game doesn’t have to be particularly involving or challenging or even objectively good (is there even such a thing as objectively good?), but it’s just what you need at that point in your life.

For me, this game is Siralim 3.

 
Made by Thylacine Studios and released in May 2018, Siralim 3 is a standalone game that doesn’t require playing the previous 2 games first, and touts itself as a mechanically deep monster taming RPG. And that’s definitely a good one-line summary of the game. The old-school pixel graphics will have an immediate appeal to fans of the retro gaming aesthetic, and I am definitely down for another monster catching game. Those things are like candy to me, I swear. I was already set to look upon this game pretty favourably, especially when I read some of the game’s features, like a lack of level cap.

Yes, you read that correctly. No level caps. You want to build your team of monsters to level 2000+? Cool, entirely possible. This guy has done so. This person claims to have his monsters around level 61,000+, and no, I didn’t add too many zeroes on the end of that number! Even if these people are fudging details, what they claim is still someone a player can actually accomplish. Siralim 3 gives back exactly what you put into it; if you want to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours improving your party, the game allows for those improvements, instead of telling you that you’ve played enough and should probably see some sunlight for a change.

Combine that with over 700 monsters to potentially tame and train, and Siralim 3 quickly establishes itself as the sort of game that won’t let you go if you give it half the chance.

AS COMPLEX AS YOU WANT IT TO BE

 
The main story of Siralim 3 is fairly simple. You’re the ruler of Nex, which is suddenly attacked by the kingdom of Siralim. The gods themselves lend you their aid to overcome your enemies, but in return, they demand your help restoring influence to their realms, which are being corrupted and taken over by agents of Siralim. With the aid of a team of 6 monsters, it’s your job to travel through the various realms, aiding the gods and restoring power and balance to the world. It isn’t too long, though, before it becomes apparent that there’s far more at stake than you first thought, that the gods may not be much on your side as they led you to believe, and something is deeply wrong with the world.

It’s incredibly linear, just going from one realm to the next with maybe a small amount of time doing some specific level-grinding. The average time to beat the main game is a little under 30 hours according to Metacritic, and that tallies with my experience. I actually thought I was a bit underleveled for beating the game, since my team was a good 10 levels below the level of the enemies I was fighting, but at that point I’d done enough experimenting with different team builds and equipment and Traits (more on those later) to be holding my own without much difficulty.

But Siralim 3 isn’t a game you play for the main story. Siralim 3 is a game you play for everything else.

With the lack of level cap, it’s quickly apparent that the bulk of your time will be spent in post-game activities, and believe me, there are a lot of them to occupy your time and attention. Once the main story is over, you can still continue exploring the realms, increasing your influence with the god, hunting down monsters you didn’t acquire previously, and overall improving your team.

But there are realms you can’t even access until post-game, along with special variants of monsters that can only be found there. There’s the chance to get the gods themselves to be part of your team, fighting at your command like anything else. There are tavern brawls where you fight against other players’ teams. There’s the arena, where you fight a series of battles with teams chosen from a random selection of monsters rather than your own well-trained and customized lot. There’s so much to do to keep you entertained, beyond merely succumbing to “just one more level” syndrome.

EXTREME MONSTER HUNTING

 
As mentioned, the game boasts over 700 monsters to collect and train, but it’s not just a matter of finding them all out in the wild. Many can be found that way, yes, but there are others that can only be found as special variants from the Itherian realms, which have Traits that you can’t find elsewhere. Others you can only get by winning enough tavern brawls or arena battles, meaning that acquiring a complete list will require many many runs through the tavern and arena to save up enough points. Some, as I said earlier, are the gods themselves.

But in addition to all of these, most — possibly all, but I’m not sure — monsters have Singular variants too. If you’re familiar with Pokemon, these are basically the equivalent to shinies, creatures with a different colour palette that are far rarer than the regular sort. There’s nothing special about Singular variants beyond the colour change in Siralim 3. They don’t have different stats or different abilities or anything of the sort. But their rarity makes them collector’s items, essentially, and if you’re the sort to want a complete set of these rare versions, then you’re going to have your work cut out for you. In the 50+ hours I played before writing this review, I found exactly 2 Singular variants.

I’ve mentioned Traits a few times now, and those are abilities that monsters have. Each one seems pretty unique to the particular monster that has it, so no matter how often you summon a monster, it’s not going to have a different trait. This makes team building a little tough early on, since chances are you’re going to encounter new traits on new monsters that you want to try out, even if there’s no space for anything new on your team without having to adjust your whole strategy.

Never fear, because you can actually put Traits on equipment, known as Artifacts. Each monster can be equipped with one weapon or piece of armour, which not only can provide a boost to certain stats but can also have a Trait slapped on it via Siralim 3‘s crafting system. It effectively gives you a maximum of 12 Traits to work with on your team, allowing you a much greater variety of builds for your team. This is what allowed me to be at such a low level compared to the enemies I was fighting at the end of the game. It’s easy to hold your own when most of your team has Traits that do passive damage to enemies, give you extra attacks, boost healing and dodging, the works. It becomes much more strategic than “who has the highest levels or best stats,” when you bring crafting and Traits into play.

100% GRIND GAME

 
Siralim 3 has been described as a grind game, and I have to agree. Given the number of monsters available to catch, the crafting system, the extremely expansive post-game content, the lack of level cap… This is a game that caters to people who enjoy sitting down for a few hours and not doing anything but making their way through dungeons hunting for items or experience.

To be clear, a grind game is a game that’s essentially designed around grinding, rather than a game that uses grinding as a way to keep players playing even when nothing is going on. The latter usually comes down to poor pacing in terms of storytelling or general game progression, and often demands that you take time away from the main story in order to do all the sidequests to gain enough experience or money that you can safely continue the game, even when that makes no sense from the perspective of the character you’re playing. It’s one thing to take on sidequests because they coincide with the main quest or you just stumble upon them randomly, like an NPC begging for help. It’s another when you have to go seeking them out because the alternative is not having the right equipment or levels to progress with the game.

A grind game, though, wears its grind-happy nature on its sleeve and makes no bones about it. Siralim 3 is extremely well paced during the relatively short main story. Chances are you will only need to take a couple of hours to grind up a little, and even then, maybe not if you’re really taking the time to explore and fighting all the enemies that come your way on the overworld maps. It’s grindy in the sense that to experience the fullness of it, you will be playing it for dozens, maybe hundreds of hours, doing the same thing over and over, and if that’s not your jam, that’s fine. Not every game genre appeals to every person. Grind games tend to have a very niche audience, I admit; it just so happens that I’m a member of that audience and Siralim 3 is a very very good game within that genre! It’s well-paced, it’s got plenty of content, it’s got seasonal events that are still ongoing even as the team works on the next installment of the franchise. There’s a lot here to love, if you’re into that sort of game to begin with.

WHAT I NEEDED, WHEN I NEEDED IT

 
Earlier, I commented that this game came into my life exactly when I needed it to, and I want to clarify what I mean by that. Lately I’ve had so many health problems, and pain has kept me awake at night for weeks now. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t try to sleep at any particular time of day anymore, but rather I sleep whenever I’m exhausted enough to grab a few hours here and there. It sucks, but I’m getting by for the moment.

But I couldn’t have asked for a better game to get me through some pain-filled nights. Siralim 3 being what it is, and giving back exactly what the player puts into it, allowed me to mindlessly grind at times when I was too messed up to do more than mindlessly press the confirm button over and over again, but also gave me the right degree of complexity to give me plenty to keep my mind happy when I felt more coherent and up to strategizing. Whether I was just crawling through randomly-generated dungeons for hours and adding levels to my team, or whether I was trying to hunt down what I needed to get a certain Trait on a weapon, or whether I was up for tackling a boss fight, Siralim 3 gave me what I needed when I needed it. It’s no exaggeration to state that it helped keep me sane some night, kept me just that right level of engaged so that I could avoid sobbing into a pillow from pain while also not demanding more of me than I could give.

This won’t be the case for everybody. At least, I sure hope it isn’t, because I wouldn’t wish what I’m going through on anyone. But for me, a person who is already rather predisposed to enjoying grind games to begin with, it was pretty much perfect. The use of retro-style gameplay meant no worrying about incorrect subtitles or lack of accuracy, because there was no voice acting or sound cues to be concerned with. The music was good, definitely fitting to the variety of locations in the game, but also not necessary to appreciate the game on the whole. It was the perfect insomnia game for those who enjoy a good level-grind, for those who can appreciate putting hour after repetitive hour into a game.

I’m nowhere close to seeing everything this game has to offer, but frankly, that’s not a problem, because I anticipate many nights in the future when I’ll need to pick it up again to keep me going. That there’s still content I haven’t encountered yet is a big draw, and good motivation to keep pushing forward.

And I am already extremely excited for Siralim Ultimate!

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