TEMTEM is a good creature-catching MMO that isn’t for everyone

Humble Games and Crema were launched last month Tem for Nintendo Switch, PC (Humble Store [affiliate link]| Steam), PS5 and Xbox Series X | S (affiliate link). This marked the end of his time in Early Access which had lasted for two years. The game is an online multiplayer game of collecting creatures. Features a story spanning six islands, the ability to team up with friends, customizable characters, and more. You can buy the game now for your preferred platform for $ 44.99. Humble Games was kind enough to provide me with a review copy on PC and the following thoughts are mine. If you have played Temfeel free to tell me anything I got wrong in the comments below.

I really like creature collecting games. I grew up Pokémon and I still love him today. That said, Tem it wasn’t for me. There are some good and even great things about this, but there are enough things that don’t interest me that I’ve ended up concluding that it’s not for me. I’ll start with the positives and then share some of the negatives.

First of all, I like the designs and character designs. It uses cel shaded graphics that remind me a lot The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker and even though I’m not very well versed in that art style for that game yet, I quite like it in here Tem. In addition, the designs of many of the Temtem creatures look fantastic, vibrant and original. Another aspect that I like Tem it’s music and audio. The sound design is perfect and the music is fun and relaxing. It really fits the vibe I got from the game and some of the music was really good.

Now, let’s get to the unfavorable part of the review. One aspect I didn’t like was the slow progression of the story. In the beginning, you are tasked with carrying out a series of simple tasks like going to Professor Konstantinos’ laboratory, choosing your first Temtem (I chose Crystle), and going to a nearby town to join the Professor and your rival Max. However, I was really disappointed when after embarking on what seemed like an arduous journey to a town called Arissola to find a Sophia character who will help you train, it turns out she’s not there. Instead, you have to take the longer route to another area of ​​the map that once again seemed forever away. To me, this felt like a slap in the face. I had been playing the game for a couple of hours and then being “rewarded” for still trying to meet this person embittered me.

This brings me to another aspect that I wasn’t a fan of. As I mentioned, there are stretches of the game that seem very long as you go from city to city. Part of this has to do with the large number of Trainer battles you sometimes have to experience. There were well-defined areas that felt long and stretched out due to the number of trainers I had to fight one after the other and I didn’t encounter any wild Temtems. It seemed too much. It was also aggravating that I would have fought so many Trainers and then felt under leveled in parts because they would have pulled out a level 18 Temtem and my max was 14. Temtem looks like a game where you have to grind and for some it is great, but not me.

Battles are one aspect that the team is behind Tem it has really worked to make it different from many of its competitors. Instead of being able to use each move a certain number of times, each Temtem has Stamina and each attack consumes a variable amount of Stamina, like MP in an RPG. This is an interesting decision and it doesn’t pay off for me. Especially since Temtem’s first moves consume a lot of their Stamina. It just didn’t seem well balanced for many early Temtems. Also, all battles are double battles and I’m not a fan of that. I like that double battles are a thing sometimes, not always.

There are other areas that I don’t like, but the last one I will mention here is the Tamer Pass and the seasons. I’m not a huge fan of these mechanics in any game, but seeing it in a game that you pay more than $ 40 for isn’t in my favor. I mainly see them in free-to-play games as a way to get people to use real money for the game. It’s optional and the rewards / purchasable items appear to be purely cosmetic, so that’s not a big shame, it’s just weird to see in a game that costs as much as Temtem (or more).

At the end of the day, I can understand why people like it Tem. It offers a lot for people who have problems with other popular creature collecting games. I have seen many complaints that some are too easy and Tem it sure seems to take a little more work. You’ll definitely want to have the wiki handy to check out the perks of type, leveling / evolution, and more. At the end of the day, I have no problem saying you really like her Tem. He has some virtues and does different things. They just didn’t land well on me. Every time I’ve played it, though, I’ve wanted to play a different game.