Bay 12 Games Forum

... yeah, tastes vary. I've gotten kinda' fond of the art style over the few hours I've sunk into the game so far. S'actually little changes between same-family critters a lot of the times and most everything is pretty functional -- distinctive critters (outside the palette swap part, anyway, and there's more variation to those than I had initially noticed), fairly effective overworld tile stuff (barring one or two of the dungeons, anyway), functional-enough animations... it's honestly fairly solid, imo. Low-key and old-school, sure, but solid. Fairly consistent aesthetic, doesn't bungle trying to shoot for pretty, everything's just kinda' lined up in a proper row. Could be improved, certainly, but I'd kinda' hate it if it went towards something like ToME4's Shockbolt tiles... or dreadmor or dungeonmans or something. I like the pixel work

It's definitely not pre-SNES style, though. Roughly SNES era PC game would be more accurate, imo. It's a bit more sophisticated than the NES and whatnot could manage, particularly in regards to the in-battle critters -- not by much, but some.

*coughs*

... did I forget to mention there may be bugs? There may be bugs. Might consider tossing a bug report at their forums, I suppose. Though if it's giving you technical difficulties, definitely avoid for the time being. Things might improve at some point in the future.

Fair amount like Disgaea, from what I've seen so far, aye. At least insofar as the grind/progression type stuff goes, anyway. Sira's not a SRPG, heh. But... yeah. You can draw parallels. Mind you, its closest kin is still probably the gameboy DQM games, but Disgaea's got its shared elements, as well. Sorta' what you'd get if you mixed the two and cut out the plot, ha.

First, link! It's currently selling for ~10 bucks USD, and there's a decently hefty demo. I'd offer screenshots, but frankly the game's not the prettiest thing in the world and the demo's only about 23 megs. Go check it out.

Second, blurb:

Summon hundreds of powerful creatures to fight by your side in Siralim, a turn-based RPG with roguelike elements for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS. In Siralim, everything is randomly generated - including the dungeons, the quests, and the items.

Third, why you might give a damn: Well, did you like Dragon Quest Monsters? Did you particularly enjoy the magic key worlds? Well, this is more or less those, made into a game.

For those who have no idea what DQM is, think Pokemon but more JRPG tropes. If that still doesn't help, think a SNES-era RPG where you murder monsters into your party and you've more or less got the idea.

Pros:

• It definitely scratches that itch that DQM scratched. Monsters everywhere, bringing them into the party, raising them up, etc., etc., etc.
• There's tons of critters, and each and every one of them has a very much notable special ability. Example: My low level-ish party has:
  • a critter that gives everyone on my team a chance to stun (stop enemy from acting for a turn or two) whatever hits them
  • another critter that turns invincible for one hit when it attacks or is attacked
  • a third thing that has a bouncing attack that poisons up to three enemies
  • and a last one that has a 20% chance to move to the front of the action queue at the end of anything's action.
• You've got loot. You've got loot oozing out your pores, as well as ways to customize equipment and various resource sinks to sink resources into. There's also a whole host of various consumables, spells, and just in-general a bunch of junk.
• Battles can get freakishly brutal. The game scales with you, and, as noted, everything you fight has potentially battle-changing special abilities. There's also several different varieties of special curbstomp critters running around. Of course, your own menagerie of abominations bring all sorts of destruction to the table, but fights can get incredibly nasty.

Cons:

• This game is grindy as the buggerall. It's basically a sandbox, where you're given a castle, and a host of fairly-samey (tileset and loot varies a bit, but that's about it) random dungeons and not much else -- there's a series of tutorial-ish quests to introduce you to the game, but if there's anything beyond that I haven't yet noticed. There's also a host of mostly-forgettable resources, a great deal of those consumables and whatnot are of arguable interest, and junkloads of things to sink those resources into. Some of which are grind-requiring bottlenecks on your general capability or ability to progress (to the extent progression exists, anyway).
• No plot in sight. Pro or con is arguable, there, but it definitely lacks the kind of motivative/connective stuff DQM has. Don't go into this thinking it's more than it is, heh.
• Several things are kinda' slow, even with message speed turned up. Game is in terrifying need of rapidfire. You're going to be doing a lot of fighting, with a lot of "mash A to continue" stuff.
• Game can get pretty brutally difficult. There's also a certain degree of memorization (or wiki-walking, I guess, but I have no idea if there's a wiki up so :V), since figuring out what the zog you're fighting does generally takes starting to capture it (or a spell, which wastes one of your critters turns and, by the by, enemies can come in groups of six) and, well, as mentioned, some -- many, really -- of the special abilities are outright game-changers that approaching incorrectly can cause you to get your face wrecked. Fortunately, while the game has a hardcore mode, it doesn't default to it. You almost certainly don't want to play it
• Expect palette swaps. They're fairly common -- some critters have a little bit of other variation, but it's generally just color swaps. There's still quite a few critters, but there's also quite a few different colored same-critters. And, well. Each and every one will be doing something different, so. Yeah.

Overall: Somewhat limited, but it generally seems to know exactly what it's doing and setting out to doing what it does pretty damn well. I'd fairly comfortable rank it near the old DQM games, particularly the plain gameboy/gameboy color ones. It definitely isn't an epic game or whathaveyou, but if you're feeling a monster breed or old-school RPG battle itch, this can probably scratch it for you. It's also pretty easy to pick up and put down, so while it's a time sink it's one fairly easy to take in chunks, or pick up and put down.

Lastly, why make a thread: Well, it didn't seem to have been mentioned here, and it's definitely right up some folks alleys, so... here we are. Figured people might like to know. Discussion, impressions, etc., are more than welcome, of course.

Ah, and actually lastly: If you have trouble opening the demo (or the game, I guess) -- specifically, if trying to run the .exe spits out something about not being a win32 application or some such nonsense -- just rename it to a .zip and extract it wherever.

E: You saw nothing!

This thread is obviously a front for the Tea Party. Terrible, terrible people.

As for tea, it must be with a small bit of milk and no sugar. Sugar spoils it utterly. Sweet tea? *Shudders*

There's a significant difference between sweet tea and tea that is sweet.

Anyway, you usually use honey or something instead of actual sugar. Maybe some sort of fruit. Tea that is sweet is often quite nice, but sugar alone is often too... sugar.

... might as well start off by getting mention of the unholy abomination that is the sodatea out of the way.

The sodatea is very simple in practice. You take your normal tea, of whatever persuasion you prefer. But, instead of water: Soda. Carbonated drink of choice. Boil it. Steep the tea. Drink.

It... it's usually a sugary bioweapon fairly sweet. And probably somewhat caffeinated, considering if you don't go specifically after decaf stuff, you've just doubled-down on the caffeine. So there's that.

It's been a few years since I've had any, since I've been trying to avoid caffeine near-entirely for the last year or two (and decaf is anathema so no), but. It was often pretty nice. Also gets fairly surprisingly good reactions, in my experience -- everything from high school students to old southern grannies have spoken positively of the taste. Alongside a bit of incredulity _{because really, something like that probably shouldn't taste as good as it does}, but eh.

Don't worry, we have plenty of reasons beyond dynasty building to object to jeb running anything. There was this whole florida governorship thing that gave bucketfulls of reasons why the bugger shouldn't run anything more complex than a broken model train.

Did I mention the country's educational facilities spontaneously self-immolating? Pretty sure I did. That's one of them.

Remember: A vote for Jeb is a vote for your children dying in a fire. Don't have kids? That's okay! He's so terrible he'll cause you to retroactively autoimpregnate and enroll your unholy progeny in school.