When Pokemon brought about the massive resurgence, if not reinvention, of monster-battling RPGs it was a fantastic moment; dozens of monsters that all belong to a specific element, and the rock-paper-scissors style of battling where you need to match your creature with your opponents.

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You have one Pokemon out, with a set number of skills, and you’re battling one Pokemon who also has a set number of skills. It hasn’t grown much beyond this in the past decade or two, beyond adding more monsters to the point that the library is so large that they’re having difficulty adding every creature into the title.

Other titles have poked and prodded a bit at the monster-catching and battling genre, with various effects: Temtem comes from Humble Bundle publishing as an MMO that still has the standard fare, more or less.

Enter Siralim, a long-running cult-classic franchise that overhauls monster-battling and dungeon crawling with more content than you could possibly hope to conquer in a month. Breeding monsters to create entirely new forms of oddity that will champion your hero throughout endless dungeon crawls while they level. Cross-specie breeding is more than possible here: it’s encouraged.

Breeding your monsters will have you poring over stats and traits, but if you manage to find the solid combinations, your strength will amplify exponentially. – Thylacine Studios via YouTube

The offspring from breeding will inherit their parents’ stats, appearance, and traits, so breeding your uber-monsters can turn babies in Herculean ankle-biters as a fun tactic that will while away hours, which will, in turn, result in you steam-rolling literal gods of various dungeons. There are already millions of possible combinations, and the title is only in Alpha state following a successful Kickstarter campaign.

The developer, Thylacine Studios, states that there are well over 1,000 unique monsters in the game; not reskins or palette-swaps, but 1,000 unique monsters that each have their own unique traits that they bring to battle. Those traits can be a berserk that allows the monster to attack five times in a row when they take damage, or to pop a shield on all of your monsters when magic damage is taken, among thousands of other abilities.

The dungeon-crawling aspect is decidedly retro, but serviceable for what it is: a vehicle to bring players into the next frenzied bout of combat. – Thylacine Studios via YouTube

Mixing and stacking these traits to make an immortal team is an extremely difficult process that requires thought and strategy, while you’re breeding and finding new monsters to incorporate to offer a strong mix of offense and defense.

There is no one monster versus one monster here, either: six monsters on your team are in play at once, and they all affect each other along with enemies: you can have one monster focus on weakening enemies to poison attacks, and then focus poison damage on your enemies. Keep that debuff monster’s speed high, though, so you can ensure that you always have the first strike when you run into a group of six enemies who are trying the same thing.

The combat screen shows your monsters on the bottom, and enemies on the top. Note the turn-timer on the right; exploiting this is a massive advantage that the enemy will take advantage of if you opt not to. – Thylacine Studios via YouTube

Combat is further defined by the specialization that you choose to pursue within the game: Clerics can cast shields and resurrections on fallen monsters in battle, healing them when they take damage. Hell Knights offer a massive buff to critical chance for their monsters that can then be buffed even further to add unique effects on crit. Monk’s teach their creatures how to dodge, and every time they do so successfully in battle, they unleash a massive counter-attack.

That’s just three of fifteen different specializations that are currently in the title that will last you for thousands of hours in terms of content; you’ll also be able to swap your specialization to any other, on the fly, if you can progress far enough in the title. It’s admittedly a big if: as you progress through Siralim, the dungeons become far craftier at what they start throwing at you, and eventually your weak spot within your favored line-up will be revealed and exploited mercilessly.

This is all just a fraction of what the upcoming Siralim Ultimate has in store when it releases sometime this year on Steam; if you’re curious as to what this franchise has in store, you can explore the past three Siralim titles on Steam, which features cloud-based saves so you can alternate between playing on your cell phone and on your PC.

Enchanting and crafting items give your monsters a bit more bite, and can be added to spells to turn your juggernauts into metaphorical demigods. – Thylacine Studios via YouTube

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With a nearly endless amount of content to chew through, millions of monsters to capture and breed, classic dungeon crawling, and a bizarre fever-dream of a storyline that consistently keeps you progressing forward, Siralim Ultimate is a title that you should be tracking. The title is expected to drop on Steam, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and the Nintendo Switch; Steam is estimated at arriving sometime in 2020, and the title is currently in a closed Alpha status which you can access if you’re willing to fund them.