Siralim 3 Review: Mashing My Monsters Against Other Monsters (PC, Mac, Linux, Android, IOS, PS4, Xbox One, Switch)

    As a kid, I played a good bit of Pokémon, starting off with the third generation. I enjoyed it a good bit, even though I always rolled my eyes a bit at the way they acted like friendship was the most important part of being a trainer. Sure, you love that Shuckle, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a crappy Pokémon that Electivire could kill make faint in seconds. And don't act like you never filled your PC Boxes with Pokémon you collect solely so you can say you "caught 'em all." I wound up being disillusioned and leaving the fandom around Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 when I found that the whole "maybe capturing Pokémon and forcing them to fight is bad" thing was a BS lie by the villains, who could be seen literally kicking a Pokémon like half an hour after their introduction. That's a lack of subtlety worthy of David Cage attempting to talk race politics in a video game! It didn't help that when I considered going back in for Sun and Moon that Nintendo decided to start throwing out DMCAs against good fan games like a creepy guy throwing out candy with razors in it for Halloween (allegedly, because that doesn't happen.) Anyway, what I'm saying is that this is one of those Monster Collection games. It's Thylacine Studios' Siralim 3 (Early Access version 0.1.5!)

    Siralim 3 and it's prequels play pretty similarly, but as a newcomer to the series, I'm mostly focusing on the third game and what's in that one. For those who might be wondering about the difference between this one and the last one, you can read it here. Anyway, the story is somewhat of a continuation from the last game, but you don't need to have played it. Apparently, the King of Siralim, the protagonist from the last game, has turned evil and is sending out armies of monsters to take over the world and the realms of the gods. As the ruler of Nex, you have to stop him and his armies with you own monster armies. It's obviously a pretty basic story, but the game admits the story is a sort of "extended tutorial" for the endgame features, where the game's replayability really kicks in. 
    The game starts off in your castle, which acts as a hub for a variety of services. In the north is a summoning room where you can summon new monsters by using monster cores and some of your resources (you have brimstone, power, granite, essence, and crystal.) In the east you can create and enchant artifacts for your creatures to make them stronger. It never explains how, say, a mystical cube with an eye in the middle of one side can use a bow. "With extreme difficulty" is my guess. The west side has a library where you can read up on all sorts of stuff regarding the game (and there's a lot of it.) The south has a stable where you can swap around monsters for your team of up to six, or make your monsters breed to create new monsters with higher level caps. The less said about the mating process, the better. Not all of these facilities are available at first, though. In order to unlock things, you have to use the teleporter in the middle and adventure in the realms of the gods.
    The realms of the gods are the main dungeons in the game, with each god's particular realm being three floors each. The floors have a variety of chests to find, objects to interact with, an altar to that floor's god, and a teleporter that requires you to complete a mini-quest for that floor to activate. The floors also have roaming monsters that spawn in from time to time, and are generally very difficult to avoid since they move at your speed and can start a fight by touching you or your conga line of monsters. The floors all have small tasks you can do to make the god of that floor like you more, and they'll give you benefits at certain thresholds of favor. Among these gods are a spider goddess that wants to get into your pants (and probably eat you,) a sleepy Buddha look-alike, and an angry stone head with a filthy mouth and who likes to take your offerings without giving anything in return.

Thanks, game. Without that note, I wouldn't have realized Torun is a total jerkass.

    Combat is a turn-based affair where your team of up to six monsters fights against up to six other monsters. As well as smacking the other monsters around, you can also spend your monster's turn to extract a core if you want that monster, provoke monsters for damage tanking, or cast spells. The spells your monsters can cast depend on spell gems that you can give them and their element (Death, Life, Nature, Chaos, and Sorcery.) Even if you chose to specialize in Sorcery, like I did in my playthrough, mana is pretty tight, so until you can get some free spells for your monsters, you'll be doing a lot of flailing at the other team. Each monster also has a special ability unique to that monster. This can range from "highly situational," like skipping their first turn to boost the speed of allied monsters, to...

...pretty awesome, like being able to revive a random ally at half health half of the time when you attack. Which is incredibly obnoxious when they're the first non-tutorial monsters you fight with your newbie team.

    The game might sound simple, but as you progress, the battles can get pretty tactical. Monster special abilities can really force you to use unorthodox strategies, and monsters will start appearing with artifacts, as well. Although you can't steal the artifacts, they can make strategies much harder when a monster turns out to be immune to a certain status condition. It's pretty neat to see battles getting beyond mashing the forward button until everything dies. I also haven't gotten all the way to the end of the game yet, so there may be more to the game that I haven't seen via the library.

    One thing that I wasn't a big fan of was the writing. Given that the game considers the story as an extended tutorial, I wasn't expecting Fallen London. Still, I feel like the game sometimes tries to force humor, such as with Torun, God of Anger's constant grawlixed swearing, and the other times a grawlix pops up. There's also, for example, how you can find and eat fruits in Tourn's jungle realm, eventually causing you to vomit and find resources. It... it just seemed a bit random to me.

I knew those Brimstone Chicken Sandwiches would do something weird to my digestion...

     I'd also like to see the 'Inspect' command beefed up a bit. In battle, you can inspect your monsters and the enemies to see their stats, spells, abilities, and artifacts. However, I'd really like it to show what buff/debuffs a monster has and what they do. I'm smart, but I can't remember every buff and debuff in the game (says the guy who can remember almost every item in the Isaac games.) You also can't get a good look at what spells do, which is annoying given that some spells have some rather obtuse effects. Like 'Fatigue' which increases the damage modifier that slowly increases as battles drag on.

Choose your own joke: "Bring out the gimp!" "But he's been dead for centuries!" OR Hey, mummy. Aren't you supposed to be dressed in black leather?

    Siralim 3 is looking pretty neat, so far. It feels pretty fleshed out so far, although I assume part of that is because the main gameplay is so similar between games that it's easy to reuse some code. It's a bit tricky for a newbie like me to get on board with some of the more obscure stuff, but I think I can manage. Hoping to see how this turns out in the end.

Afterword:

    It's been about a week since I heard that John Bain, better known as TotalBiscuit, died from cancer. It's been pretty gloomy without him. I first remember discovering him when he and Jesse Cox, also known as OMFGCata, were playing co-op Terraria. I feel like discovering those two guys was what really got me to notice some of the larger video game YouTubers. He really seemed like a professional guy who wasn't afraid to be brutally honest, if need be. I wish his family and friends the best.

July 8, 1984 - May 24, 2018