The easiest way to explain what Temtem is like is to compare it to Pokemon.
In many ways Temtem is Pokemon but done better. The balancing of Temtem is divine when compared to Pokemon, which has creatures like Delibird that are practically unusable in any and all circumstances. Every Temtem is meant to be viable. The difficulty and overall gameplay are also better and more engaging than any Pokemon game. Every battle being a double battle makes the turns much more interesting by allowing synergy between your team to flourish while also making type matchups much less one-dimensional than Pokemon, because having a type advantage against only one of the two opponents still leaves you vulnerable to attacks from the other.
There are also many tweaks to mechanics in Pokemon that just improve the battling formula significantly. The Power Points from Pokemon, which limit the number of times you can use a move without returning to a Pokemon center, have been entirely reworked into a stamina system, which I think is the best addition to the battle formula. Stamina depletes as you use attacks, with more useful attacks costing more stamina. This adds an entirely new layer to battling and teambuilding which I really enjoyed. Moves with a "hold timer" as well as the changes/additions to status effects are also great changes that differentiates this game from Pokemon and nerfs especially strong abilities like sleep.
Inside battles, there is no RNG at all, which I have enjoyed as a somewhat competitive player. Randomness can be very fun in Pokemon at times, but I don't think that it has a place in a game trying to be a skill/strategy based competitive game. There are still random events in the singeplayer, such as encountering luma (shiny) Temtem, but there is no randomness within battles themselves.
Breeding has also been made significantly easier than it is in Pokemon, by removing the randomness of getting a monster with perfect SVs (IVs in Pokemon). The process is too complex to describe here, but the short version is that by using held items you can guarantee that you will get a Temtem with perfect SVs in every stat by breeding a group of tems together that each have 1 different perfect stat. Moves (including egg moves) can also be remembered at any time by simply going into a tem's summary screen! Unfortunately, breeding leads to the first major problem I have with the game, which is the cost of in-game items.
The previously mentioned items that allow you to breed perfect SV tems are consumable, and cost a prohibitively large amount of in game currency. Doing any of the optional side activities in this game costs currency. Raid dens, the battle frontier, participating in "dojo wars", breeding, TV (EV in Pokemon) training, even USING FAST TRAVEL, all cost in game currency. Once you have a good team of Temtem and can farm money by rematching gym leaders and winning games on the online PvP ladder, these costs are not as punishing, but getting a good team is either extremely expensive or extremely time consuming.
I bred an Anahir with all perfect SVs after beating the game. I had about 200k in currency after beating the game. Breeding this perfect tem cost me about 180k, and that was just to get one perfect SV tem before even TV training it. I ended up with multiple perfect Anahir and am able to sell some of the extras in the auction house to make back some money, but at the price that perfect tems go for in the auction house, I will barely break even after selling the extra perfect tems I bred, which isn't even to mention that I have to wait days (or maybe even weeks) for someone to actually decide to buy them. Getting an entire team of 8 perfect Temtem is not possible with only the money you get from beating the campaign, even if you are the one breeding them. This sucks because to make money you need to already have good Temtem.
To fill out the remaining 7 positions on my team, I just used any member of the species I wanted regardless of what its SVs were, and got to TV training. TV training presents a similar problem, you can use consumable items to TV train Temtem, but they are very expensive. Because I was broke (and couldn't make money yet due to not having a team of TV trained Temtem already) I had to TV train by knocking out wild tems (just like EV training in Pokemon). This was a brutal process. TV training all 8 tems took around 5 hours of just grinding, even though I was training multiple tems at once and in optimal training locations. This is by far the worst part of the game IMO. Stamina, SV hacks/glitches, and breeding are great examples of how Temtem transforms outdated or unnecessary mechanics from Pokemon to be more streamlined and intuitive, and it shocks me that they didn't do the same for TV training. There are some locations where TV training a specific stat is relatively painless because only 1 temtem can spawn in the tall grass which always drops 3-4 of the desired TV, but other places (such as the optimal location to TV train speed) have only tems that yield a small amount of TVs each, and also has additional encounters that provide TVs for stats that you don't want, which you will need to run from, wasting more of your time. TV training is actually worse in Temtem than EV training is in Pokemon, as you can only get one of the TV yield boosting hold item, and it doesn't even increase yields as much as the power items in Pokemon do. Yes, you can TV train Temtem with consumable items quickly, but that is expensive and not possible after merely beating the campaign; everyone will have to TV train a team manually to start off and it is a major turn off and I can see it pushing many players away from trying the postgame.
The only other thing that I think Pokemon does better than Temtem is the general world design/atmosphere. The music in the game is not bad by any means, but it is not as good as the music in any of the Pokemon games and doesn't really work as music to casually listen to outside the context of playing the game. And in most Pokemon games, talking to NPCs is satisfying just because they have interesting things to say about the town they're in or Pokemon that live nearby. The NPCs in Temtem are almost all a waste of time to talk to. Even many of the dialogues from NPCs during cutscenes were incredibly boring and I ended up skipping through them without reading sometimes--something that I have never felt the need to do in a Pokemon game. This isn't to say that there is no interesting lore in Temtem, but it is drowned out by the masses of uninteresting NPCs that just waste your time. Temtem does at least have a quest tracker that shows on the map if there are NPCs that want to give you a quest or have an item to give you, which is a very nice QoL feature, but it doesn't excuse the terrible dialogue.
TLDR: Temtem does most things better than Pokemon, such as competitive, difficulty, tweaks to the battle systems, online features, and reducing frustrating RNG. It especially outperforms the most recent Pokemon games with the impressive amount of polish underlining the entire experience. The game does, however, fail to fill the world with interesting NPCs or make the postgame accessible to players who aren't willing to go through a multi-hour grind.
This game is great! It has learned from many of Pokemon's mistakes to make a new and better, although still not perfect, experience. If you just want to play the campaign singleplayer and don't care about postgame or competitive, go for it. The 40-50 hour campaign is great and much more engaging than a Pokemon campaign. If you want a competitive monster battler like Pokemon that is more balanced, with no RNG, and many unique improvements over Pokemon's battle system, this game is great for that as well.
Also people complaining about the premium currency are misinformed. Exclusively cosmetics, with no in game effects, can be purchased in the game with real money.
In many ways Temtem is Pokemon but done better. The balancing of Temtem is divine when compared to Pokemon, which has creatures like Delibird that are practically unusable in any and all circumstances. Every Temtem is meant to be viable. The difficulty and overall gameplay are also better and more engaging than any Pokemon game. Every battle being a double battle makes the turns much more interesting by allowing synergy between your team to flourish while also making type matchups much less one-dimensional than Pokemon, because having a type advantage against only one of the two opponents still leaves you vulnerable to attacks from the other.
There are also many tweaks to mechanics in Pokemon that just improve the battling formula significantly. The Power Points from Pokemon, which limit the number of times you can use a move without returning to a Pokemon center, have been entirely reworked into a stamina system, which I think is the best addition to the battle formula. Stamina depletes as you use attacks, with more useful attacks costing more stamina. This adds an entirely new layer to battling and teambuilding which I really enjoyed. Moves with a "hold timer" as well as the changes/additions to status effects are also great changes that differentiates this game from Pokemon and nerfs especially strong abilities like sleep.
Inside battles, there is no RNG at all, which I have enjoyed as a somewhat competitive player. Randomness can be very fun in Pokemon at times, but I don't think that it has a place in a game trying to be a skill/strategy based competitive game. There are still random events in the singeplayer, such as encountering luma (shiny) Temtem, but there is no randomness within battles themselves.
Breeding has also been made significantly easier than it is in Pokemon, by removing the randomness of getting a monster with perfect SVs (IVs in Pokemon). The process is too complex to describe here, but the short version is that by using held items you can guarantee that you will get a Temtem with perfect SVs in every stat by breeding a group of tems together that each have 1 different perfect stat. Moves (including egg moves) can also be remembered at any time by simply going into a tem's summary screen! Unfortunately, breeding leads to the first major problem I have with the game, which is the cost of in-game items.
The previously mentioned items that allow you to breed perfect SV tems are consumable, and cost a prohibitively large amount of in game currency. Doing any of the optional side activities in this game costs currency. Raid dens, the battle frontier, participating in "dojo wars", breeding, TV (EV in Pokemon) training, even USING FAST TRAVEL, all cost in game currency. Once you have a good team of Temtem and can farm money by rematching gym leaders and winning games on the online PvP ladder, these costs are not as punishing, but getting a good team is either extremely expensive or extremely time consuming.
I bred an Anahir with all perfect SVs after beating the game. I had about 200k in currency after beating the game. Breeding this perfect tem cost me about 180k, and that was just to get one perfect SV tem before even TV training it. I ended up with multiple perfect Anahir and am able to sell some of the extras in the auction house to make back some money, but at the price that perfect tems go for in the auction house, I will barely break even after selling the extra perfect tems I bred, which isn't even to mention that I have to wait days (or maybe even weeks) for someone to actually decide to buy them. Getting an entire team of 8 perfect Temtem is not possible with only the money you get from beating the campaign, even if you are the one breeding them. This sucks because to make money you need to already have good Temtem.
To fill out the remaining 7 positions on my team, I just used any member of the species I wanted regardless of what its SVs were, and got to TV training. TV training presents a similar problem, you can use consumable items to TV train Temtem, but they are very expensive. Because I was broke (and couldn't make money yet due to not having a team of TV trained Temtem already) I had to TV train by knocking out wild tems (just like EV training in Pokemon). This was a brutal process. TV training all 8 tems took around 5 hours of just grinding, even though I was training multiple tems at once and in optimal training locations. This is by far the worst part of the game IMO. Stamina, SV hacks/glitches, and breeding are great examples of how Temtem transforms outdated or unnecessary mechanics from Pokemon to be more streamlined and intuitive, and it shocks me that they didn't do the same for TV training. There are some locations where TV training a specific stat is relatively painless because only 1 temtem can spawn in the tall grass which always drops 3-4 of the desired TV, but other places (such as the optimal location to TV train speed) have only tems that yield a small amount of TVs each, and also has additional encounters that provide TVs for stats that you don't want, which you will need to run from, wasting more of your time. TV training is actually worse in Temtem than EV training is in Pokemon, as you can only get one of the TV yield boosting hold item, and it doesn't even increase yields as much as the power items in Pokemon do. Yes, you can TV train Temtem with consumable items quickly, but that is expensive and not possible after merely beating the campaign; everyone will have to TV train a team manually to start off and it is a major turn off and I can see it pushing many players away from trying the postgame.
The only other thing that I think Pokemon does better than Temtem is the general world design/atmosphere. The music in the game is not bad by any means, but it is not as good as the music in any of the Pokemon games and doesn't really work as music to casually listen to outside the context of playing the game. And in most Pokemon games, talking to NPCs is satisfying just because they have interesting things to say about the town they're in or Pokemon that live nearby. The NPCs in Temtem are almost all a waste of time to talk to. Even many of the dialogues from NPCs during cutscenes were incredibly boring and I ended up skipping through them without reading sometimes--something that I have never felt the need to do in a Pokemon game. This isn't to say that there is no interesting lore in Temtem, but it is drowned out by the masses of uninteresting NPCs that just waste your time. Temtem does at least have a quest tracker that shows on the map if there are NPCs that want to give you a quest or have an item to give you, which is a very nice QoL feature, but it doesn't excuse the terrible dialogue.
TLDR: Temtem does most things better than Pokemon, such as competitive, difficulty, tweaks to the battle systems, online features, and reducing frustrating RNG. It especially outperforms the most recent Pokemon games with the impressive amount of polish underlining the entire experience. The game does, however, fail to fill the world with interesting NPCs or make the postgame accessible to players who aren't willing to go through a multi-hour grind.
This game is great! It has learned from many of Pokemon's mistakes to make a new and better, although still not perfect, experience. If you just want to play the campaign singleplayer and don't care about postgame or competitive, go for it. The 40-50 hour campaign is great and much more engaging than a Pokemon campaign. If you want a competitive monster battler like Pokemon that is more balanced, with no RNG, and many unique improvements over Pokemon's battle system, this game is great for that as well.
Also people complaining about the premium currency are misinformed. Exclusively cosmetics, with no in game effects, can be purchased in the game with real money.
Kirbyster
3 months ago