[h2]While I'm (mostly) enjoying this game, its many faults are such a turn-off I couldn't really recommend it to anyone other than die-hard Pokemon fans, and even then only with caveats.[/h2]
[h3]Pros:[/h3]
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[*]The Tems have good designs, both looks- and battles-wise! The evos make sense, and I honestly really like the change that a Tem evolves not at a set level, but after a specific number of level ups, regardless of starting level.
[*]Tems have their SV and TV (IV and EV equivalents, if you're into Pokemon) values displayed in their profile, so you can tell upon catching a Tem how "good" it is, and which Tems you should breed for higher stats.
[*]The battle system is always dual battles, and many Tems have special abilities (Traits) and moves which have different effects depending on their battle partner. Moves also work on a stamina system instead of a points system, requiring you to time your move uses and skip turns periodically rather than spamming your most powerful move constantly.
[*]The different areas within an island have coherent designs, and the ways they connect mostly make sense. Most of them also have very obvious areas that you can't explore now but hint at a mobility upgrade you get later - and you can often see other players using those mobility upgrades.
[*]Getting a mobility item gives you immediate exploration bonuses, in items, new Tem-catching areas, new Tems, new trainer battles, and new areas. It's very rewarding (and therefore extremely frustrating when it's later taken away).
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[h3]Cons:[/h3]
[list]
[*]You can't rotate the camera, and the environment isn't designed to account for this. It's easier to travel "up" than any other direction, b/c you can literally see more in that direction, which makes sliding puzzles and ledge falls an exercise in frustrating blind leaps of faith.
[*]The human designs are... uncanny? They're not strictly [i]bad[/i], but there's such a huge design difference between character's faces that it looks like some of them are from a different game altogether. I initially thought it was a weird stylistic choice, where adults had semi-realistic eye and mouth designs and kids had huge anime eyes and anime expression mouths, but some of the adults have the stylistic anime faces, and some of the kids have the creepy semi-realistic faces. I don't like it.
[*]Just truly terrible game design. The story and quests don't make much sense and are often obvious busywork. You are given exploration items and then immediately have them taken away for several chapters. There are multiple unwarned-for points of no return, one of which completely changes your personal Tem team with a cast of pre-generated Tems for several hours. It really seems like they didn't write or develop this game in its entirety, they just made multiple setpieces and jammed them together with no regard for if they made sense in order.
[*]The writing is extremely variable. The main questline is largely nonsense, probably due to the disjointed way it was pieced together. Some of the side quests are better, and some individual dialogues are actually really good. However, there are also a lot of but-thou-must moments, which your character will explicitly call out but still cannot do anything to avoid.
[*]Dialogue trees are buggy. They're supposed to grey out options you're already chosen, so that you can track conversations. Some of them will loop infinitely, never marking off options. Some will simply repeat all branching dialogues twice instead of going back to the previous choice menu. Some will reset for unknown reasons and re-highlight all the options. Not all convos are repeatable, even tho they branch, which would be normal except that many of them are one-time-only plot conversations and you can easily lose information by choosing the wrong path. Many trainer pairs, even in the first area of the game, will not display their dialogue properly so it looks like only one character is talking.
[*]Tems can only be bred a specific number of times, and that number goes down faster the better the Tem's stats, and the child inherits the parent's lowest breeding times number (Fertility, in-game) instead of starting at full. There are items that can guarantee stat inheritance, but they cost real-world currency (which can be found in game if you don't mind spending days to weeks grinding for pennies' worth). Restricting the number of times a Tem can breed makes sense (otherwise you'd have a flood of max-stats Tems on the market) but the excessive restriction means that only the most obsessed can get high-stat Tem teams... or people that have paid real-world money for a quick shortcut.
[*]MMO cruft - the game is always-online, despite the game being almost entirely single player until the campaign is over, and there's a lot of Premium Currency/Season Pass bs. I will give this a slight pass, since the Season Pass is largely only cosmetic items - but season pass also gives you exp boosts and in-game currency, and the premium currency is required to get Tems with high stats without grinding to catch a perfect Tem. EDIT: Upon investigation, it's actually not possible to spent real money on this anymore. Which is good, but also baffling, b/c it seems as tho they reacted to the reasonable complaints of a season pass in a paid-for game and just... left it in instead of finding an alternative way to give new players those rewards? It still means there's a ton of grind to get everything, but at least it's not pay-to-win anymore.
[*]The FreeTem! group is a pretty obvious ploy to get people to log in more frequently and spend time and in-game currency doing busywork (catching and releasing specific Tems). This could have been used as a commentary on how they're actually making the problem they're trying to solve worse, like PETA or like Brits accidentally incentiveizing snake farms in India, but it's played rather straightforwardly, which makes it even more disappointing.
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