Siralim Ultimate

With just about 50 hours of playtime under my belt, I’m going to go ahead and share my thoughts here on this hidden gem that everyone should discover. Siralim Ultimate is one of those games that is difficult to describe using the usual categories. It is an RPG, monster collector, dungeon crawler and, above all, a huge build-crafting laboratory. Its greatest strength and weakness are the same thing: its incredible complexity. At first, it looks like a traditional monster collector. You collect creatures, fuse them, build a team of six and fight turn-based battles. But that only scratches the surface. Traits, fusions, artifacts, spells, specializations, perks, Nether Stones, relics and many other systems can interact in countless ways. That is where Siralim Ultimate truly shines. A seemingly mediocre creature can become the centerpiece of a powerful build if its trait works with the rest of your team. You can build around attacks, spells, buffs, debuffs, death, resurrection, summons, indirect damage, defense, speed or almost any combination you can imagine. The amount of content is huge, and the endgame can provide hundreds of hours of progression. There is always another creature to obtain, another build to test or another system to optimize. It also works extremely well on Steam Deck: there are no reflex requirements, and some builds can automate much of the combat. However, the game's complexity comes with a price. Siralim Ultimate does a poor job of explaining many of its own mechanics. With so many interacting effects, it is surprisingly easy to encounter an enemy that seems completely invincible without understanding why. Is it a barrier? An immunity? Damage reduction? A trait? A combination of several effects? The combat log should be much more informative. The game desperately needs a proper combat breakdown showing exactly how damage was calculated and why an attack failed. A "Why did this happen?" option would make a huge difference. The game would also benefit enormously from better quality-of-life tools: a global search for creatures, traits and items; a proper in-game Codex; build presets; better inventory filters; creature comparisons; and a build planner showing where to obtain the required creatures and materials. The other major issue is grind. It is not an accidental part of Siralim Ultimate—it is fundamental to the experience. For players who enjoy optimization, farming can be extremely satisfying. For others, the repeated loop of exploring, fighting, collecting resources and defeating bosses can become monotonous. The story is also clearly secondary. There is lore and a world behind it, but Siralim Ultimate is not a game you play for its narrative. Its presentation and UI are functional rather than impressive, and managing such a huge amount of information can become cumbersome. Still, it is difficult to criticize Siralim Ultimate too harshly because its core idea works so well. It does not try to be the best narrative RPG or the most accessible monster collector. It wants to give you an enormous toolbox and let you build increasingly powerful teams with it. And it succeeds. Siralim Ultimate does not need less depth. It needs better tools for understanding and managing that depth. As a traditional RPG, it has significant weaknesses. As a game about team building, progression and theorycrafting, it is exceptional.

Having played 320 hours, I obviously think it's a great game. There is an insane amount of stuff in addition to creatures to collect and build your team from. Very rewarding when you get a good damage mechanic going.

Worth every penny in just the game itself but the fact that you can cloud save and access on other devices makes it even better. I wouldn't say this is super RPG beginner friendly but with a soft learning curve I think anyone who generally enjoys turn based RPG's would have a good time playing this.