Siralim 3

Siralim 3 is the third entry in Thylacine Studios' monster-collecting dungeon crawler series, and its scope is genuinely difficult to summarise briefly: a Steam achievement list running to 1,172 entries, a breeding system that lets you combine two creatures' traits into a new one, and procedurally generated dungeons designed to be run not dozens but hundreds of times as you build out an ever-larger roster. It entered Steam Early Access in May 2018 and exited to a full 1.0 release five months later in October, and eight years on it sits at Very Positive, 94.5% of 989 Steam reviews — a strong number, though the game's own review history, read closely, is candid about exactly where that strength comes from and where it doesn't quite reach.

Scope that fans describe as close to bottomless

The praise in both the positive sample and inside otherwise negative reviews converges on the same point: this is an enormous amount of game. Reviewers who describe themselves as longtime fans of Dragon Warrior Monsters and similar creature-collecting RPGs consistently call out the breeding and itemisation systems as genuinely deep in a way few games in the genre match, and the achievement count alone — over a thousand — signals a design built explicitly around long-term, incremental goals rather than a short, curated campaign. One reviewer with over 2,900 hours logged across the series calls it an "instant buy" from this developer specifically; several others describe treating it as a long-term hobby project rather than a game they expect to finish.

A tone problem the review sample doesn't shy away from

Set against that scope is a specific, recurring complaint about the writing itself. Several reviewers describe the game's humour as crude and juvenile in a way that goes beyond taste — one reviewer explicitly states discomfort with "humorous' sexual harassment" content in the script and says they considered refunding over it, and another describes the intro specifically as leaning on "heinous jokes" and excessive capitalised shouting that nearly stopped them from giving the game a chance at all. This isn't the dominant complaint by volume, but it's specific, repeated in similar terms by unconnected reviewers, and distinct in kind from ordinary "the writing isn't very good" criticism — worth flagging plainly for anyone deciding whether to buy, rather than folded into a general complaint about tone.

When the grind tips into busywork

The more common complaint concerns the core gameplay loop itself. A meaningful share of reviewers describe combat as capable of resolving into holding down a single button and watching outcomes play out with little active input required, and several specifically compare Siralim 3's rarest item drop rates to mobile gacha games — one estimating roughly 1-in-1000 odds on certain end-game items — an odd fit, several note, for a game sold as a full-price, one-time purchase rather than a free-to-play title designed around exactly that kind of grind. Series veterans add a further, specific complaint: several reviewers who loved Siralim 2 describe feeling that key systems like breeding and randomised realms are gated later and more restrictively in this entry than they were previously, making an already grind-heavy game feel more grind-heavy still before it opens up.

A series that later solved its own problems

The clearest sign that Thylacine Studios itself recognised where Siralim 3 could improve is what came next. Siralim Ultimate, released in 2021, is widely treated by the series' own fanbase — visible throughout this game's more recent reviews — as the more polished, more balanced successor, and several current reviews of Siralim 3 recommend it over this entry outright even while crediting Siralim 3 with meaningfully improving on the first two games' issues in its own time. That's a useful way to read this review in context: Siralim 3 was a genuine, well-received step forward for the series in 2018, and its own sequel three years later addressed enough of what reviewers criticised here that most newcomers to the series today are steered elsewhere first.

Verdict

7 out of 10. Siralim 3 delivers exactly the sprawling, deeply systemic monster-collecting RPG its most dedicated fans describe, with a scope few games in its genre match at its price. Its review history is honest about the cost of that scope, though: a grind that tips into gacha-like rarity tuning at points, combat that can run on autopilot, and a specific, repeated complaint about crude humour that goes beyond simple taste for a number of reviewers. If the series' style already appeals to you, or you specifically want this entry rather than its successor, it holds up well. Otherwise, most of its own community will point you toward Siralim Ultimate first.