The Siralim games from developer Thylacine Studios have provided some of the deepest and content rich RPG-ish type games on mobile for nearly a decade now. The elevator pitch would be to call it Pokemon mixed with Diablo, as the main elements are to collect, upgrade, and combine a huge mixture of monster types to use in battle as you go dungeon diving and complete various quests around the game’s huge open world. But as catchy as “Pokemon meets Diablo” is, it still doesn’t do the series justice because there’s just so much more you can do in these games. They’ve grown with each entry too, starting with the original Siralim on mobile back in July of 2014, followed by Siralim 2 about two years later in August of 2016, and Siralim 3 just about two more years later in October of 2018. Each game more stuffed to the gills with awesome things to do.
So where do you go from there? After an Early Access period, Thylacine released Siralim Ultimate on Steam this past December, and now its mobile iteration has arrived this week. I have to admit, I found the first two Siralim games too difficult for me to get into, but Siralim 3? Oh boy, I lost more hours to that game than I could possibly count. For whatever reason that was the one that clicked with me, so I was thrilled to see Siralim Ultimate pop up on the App Store this week, especially because I wasn’t even aware it existed or that it was getting a mobile port. What a lovely surprise.
I’m not even sure how to begin to describe Siralim Ultimate. I think I’ll steal from our own Shaun Musgrave’s review of Siralim 3 on the Switch from a few years ago: “The Siralim games are like well-hidden sinkholes to the center of the Earth. They seem completely benign from the outside, and then you step into one and soon realize that you will never, ever get out.” I love that description so much because it’s so darn true.
If a completely over the top RPG-roguelike-monster-collecting mashup with literally thousands of hours worth of content and more than 1200 unique monsters to collect sounds like your particular cup of tea, I can’t recommend the Siralim games enough. Siralim Ultimate is the newest and biggest, so even if you skipped out on previous entries this would still be the place to start. The new mobile version has fully customizable virtual controls, which work just fine, but it also supports physical controllers and I’ve found myself enjoying it a bit more with actual buttons. Whatever the case, I know what will be keeping me busy for many months to come, and in terms of bang for your buck I’m not sure it gets much better than something like Siralim Ultimate.