Temtem

Ok, I'm about done with this game. I gave it the old college try and I just can't recommend it to anyone. Firstly, the MMO elements are so pointless. I feel like the vast majority play this game solo (like most Poke-clone creature collector games), so the lack of an offline mode is an oversight to say the least. The bigger issue, though, is the balancing -- or I guess, lack therof? I feel like the game wants to be a more "difficult" version of Pokemon, but it's not. Not really. It's just more frustrating and achieves that so-called "difficulty" through annoying mechanics and frustration. For example, the lack of healing spots combined with extraordinarily long routes packed with trainers doesn't make the game difficult. It just means that I have to buy more healing items or backtrack to a healing center more often. Furthermore, this issue is exacerbated by the absolutely pathetic amount of money you get from winning trainer battles. Then there's the key item that lets you fully heal your team ONCE and then it needs a recharge. I can understand starting out with one charge in the beginning of the game, but there really should be ways to add additional charges to this item. Then there's the AI of the enemies in the game. Both the wild / "untamed" Temtems and the ones in trainer battles. The battle system does have an interesting mechanic where you use stamina for moves, that recharges to full after each fight and you have to strategically manage which moves to use in longer battles or take advantage of resting or stamina-restoring items. However, the enemies don't seem to follow this logic and spam their most powerful moves over and over and over at you, even if it means they exhaust and damage themselves as a result. As such, you are in a position where you constantly need to heal after every trainer battle or every few wild Temtem battles...and all this ties in to the lack of healing spaces mentioned above. Moving on, there's also a stark discrepancy in how strong your Temtems are vs how strong enemy wild Temtems are...or at least it seems that way. You'd think that with the whole SV / TV system (equivalent to Pokemon's IV / EV system) that your trained Temtems would be significantly stronger. Yet somehow my Temtem that is 10 levels higher than a wild Temtem doesn't knock it out in one hit using a super effective move. That's just ludicrous IMO. All in all, I don't understand a lot of the game design decisions the devs have made in this game. Don't get me wrong, I can understand the intent (i.e. making a more "difficult" Pokemon game b/c Nintendo and Game Freak seem determined to only make their games cater to 8 year olds), but the way in which it is actually done just doesn't work. This is not it, chief. If you really want to play a decent Pokeclone, I'd recommend either Nexomon or Coromon. Both are really solid entries into the creature collector genre.

This is a sad one, because I really think it had a lot of potential. I am a completionist so I generally try to explore all aspects of every game I play, and this game fell short on too many things all around for me to recommend. TL;DR Co-op is bad, campaign was terrible imo, mid/early late game is great, lategame is horrible. I'm not shaming anyone for enjoying millennial humor or tropes or anything, but the campaign was so chock full of it I struggled really hard to get through it. It made everything seem so unserious and random that the story was completely gone for me. The side quests are even worse, there are dev self inserts cracking quirky jokes- the classic "im a super important guy in the lore but I'm actually a useless roamer" archtamer character... ugh... I just struggle with that type of humor so it was a lot of painfully spamming my way through text to walk 2 steps to painfully spam through more walls of text. Also a lot of... weirdly adult humor? Which didn't sit right with me because your character is pretty young to my knowledge and there's a quest where they talk about how huge your ass is? Co-op is a real slog. My friend literally just stood in place while I walked ahead so we could avoid the extra fights that two people walking causes (it's actually imo unplayable if you both just run together- fights every other step) and to avoid spending precious early resources on scents. The campaign is soooooo long. So you have to play together for like 40 hours to get anywhere into any interesting mechanics. Then you get to the early endgame and it seems great! Lairs are really fun, everything is fresh with weeklys, breeding, and other systems to explore... but then you really dive into them and they just fall apart. Breeding in my experience was never financially worth it, it was always more efficient to just grind the money and buy 7/7s on the AH- which is the nature of an MMO sure but there's another endgame pillar down the drain. Farming lumas doesn't make much sense because they have horrible stats so they aren't competitive...? And umbras are so annoying to get but they're... the same as a plain 7/7? AND THEN the very late game is SO strange to me! It's an "mmo" but all of the tempark events are forced solo except 1, and feel so RNG heavy it's just tiresome. I know my hour count looks high, but again I go through all of the systems when I play games and this one is so grindy it just took that long. It's a dying MMO and servers will probably shut down sooner than later. Just not worth picking up imo.

This game is fun but its ridiculously overpriced. Get it on sale

Got it on sale for 12 bucks. Figured id give it a shot at that price, and honestly i was really surprised at how much i liked it, given all the bad reviews. Scratches the pokemon itch while also being able to play with my friends. But also separates itself enough to not just feel like a clone. Which I also have 4 friends who are playing so they may affect how i see things. The game isn't perfect but right now that seems to be an impossible task for games to get everything right. Some crashes and bugs here and there, especially UI issues in co op. But simply restarting your game basically fixes anything. There's NO micro-transactions anymore and everything is obtainable with time and a little luck. --HUGE tip id give to anyone who is new is to go online and find and use all the active codes in the redeem spot in the menu. (This code in particular was hard to find but will give you the full 2000 feathers to start your game off with pro season of your choice or just so you can get something nice in the shop) - G9K7-915M-4Q1K-H9RS

This game had amazing potential but the developers sadly ruined it. The game was poorly managed and its potential was never realized. These stupid games like swarm and pioneers are a waste of time for these devs. They really should be putting their resources in fixing Temtem which they never will. Also they lied on their kickstarter so all of the people from the kickstarter got scammed at the end of the day. Then these developers have the balls to start other kickstarters. it is actually wild to see the amount of disingenuous actions being taken by these developers.

Temtem has the potential to be great but is sadly ruined by the inclusion of MMO mechanics, forced grinding, and a disrespectful amount of time wasting. They aren't doing and more content updates so the game is basically in maintenance mode. The Tem designs are mostly great, graphics are nice, and I like the different islands. I like the 2v2 combat and think it adds a level of depth that's missing in Pokemon as you have to take more elements/types into consideration. Unfortunately what ruins it is the forced MMO mechanics and quest design. There is *SO* much backtracking, repetitive fetch quests (even the main quests are like this), and your progression is constantly gated by story events. You collect equipment to help traversing the islands, then the game just takes them all away again in a scripted sequence and you have to re-collect them all. There's another scripted bit where you lose all your Tems and are forced to use a weak predetermined team. This nearly made me quit the game. You need to level the Tem a set amount of times to evolve them so catching one at level 1 or 30 makes no difference. E.g. if they take 35 level-ups to evolve you need to level them 35 times regardless of the catch level. It's boring and grindy for no reason. I also feel like the Tem types should be spread out more - each island is basically limited to 1-2 types and they all have the same moves. You can steamroll the entire game with Gazuma and Platimous from the first island. Some stuff can't be completed without playing in co-op, e.g. the sticker collection. There's a limited amount of spawns on the map so you literally can't complete it without trading, but good luck with that when the player count is dwindling. Discord is pretty much a requirement. Customisation items are very expensive, taking hours of grinding for a single item. If you're intent on making this an MMO make the customisation items cheap so people are able to express themselves... Most players I met were using the default gear even in endgame areas because the clothing shops are too expensive. I wouldn't really recommend it unless it's at a high discount, and be prepared for a lot of grinding and time wasting. If there's a sequel please just make it a single player only game and remove all the MMO grindy trash.

Don't waste your time and money. I ignored all the reviews and thought I'd play it. It starts off perfectly fine for a Pokemon clone. Then the difficultly ramps up forcing you to grind out levels. Also you start getting into battles you are not supposed to win which might make you waste resources trying to win. You might think, oh just reload and don't use resources this time. Nope it's a MMO that is always online and you cannot quick save. I made to the final boss (because I hate myself) and lost multiple times. * Spoilers * It adds a timed mechanic where you have to beat him in 15 turns but he constantly switches out his Tems. So if you are like me and tried to make a well rounded team I could never have my counter tem match his. After getting close and still running out of time I alt+f4 and uninstalled it. Trash Oh so since I didn't beat the game I didn't get to experience having a house, a mount, or shinys, because those are all unlocked once you beat the terrible story

Devs abandoned the game for a new game, without fixing glaring issues/bugs or implementing an offline mode for this game, even when they knew their servers are horrendously bad.. Scummy. We funded their next project, not this one.. Can't recommend and i'm definitely not buying anything else from this developer again.

As many hours as I have put in this game, and although I do get enjoyment out of it, I have a hard time recommending the game itself for multiple reasons. 1. There are missions in the game that you can accidentally break sequence, or will actually spoil some of the story by showing you dialogue you shouldn't have access to yet. It also allows you to get quests that should probably be locked, as you cannot complete them, but gives no context as to why. 2. It also will give you items to access areas, then take those items away until later in the story, making some parts of the map completely unplayable if you didn't think to stop the main story and investigate them first. It overall creates a frustrating experience where you are not sure what parts of the game you actually can experience. 3. The leveling system is not explained well, and I had to search wikis to find solutions more often than not, and even some of those players did not know the issues, despite the game being out for years. 4. The Tempedia, similar to a Pokédex, does have some interesting features to see creature animations, but will not show you actually where to find some of these creatures, nor are there hints in the game on where to find them. It can cause a confusing experience when there are quests that ask for finding specific Temtems. Although the game is cute, and there are some interesting mechanics, the game itself seems to still be rough for a final product. I will be honest, I will continue to play the game. I like having an alternative to Pokémon that still gives the feel of some of the older games. The game as-is is not worth the price whatsoever. If you still want to try the game for yourself, get it 80% off or more. It does not have the polish that justifies the standard price.