At the beginning of our Temtem adventure, we had every intention to review the Pokémon-inspired massively multiplayer game based on its own merit, steering clear of comparisons between the two as best we could. Developer Crema never shied away from where Temtem’s blueprints came from during its successful Kickstarter campaign and lengthy Early Access period, yet with its 1.0 release and debut on the Nintendo Switch, we naively hoped we could divorce Temtem from its muse. It only took a few hours in the Airborne Archipelago to realise how futile this would be. Of the massive mansion that Pikachu and pals built, Temtem exists as both praise and criticism, innovating, refining, and referencing a two-and-a-half-decade-old formula without shame.

Temtem’s world is made up of the six floating islands of the colourful Airborne Archipelago. Here, a professor let us choose one of three starting Temtem. Then an annoying rival picked a fight with us. Afterward, we caught more Temtem, foiled a criminal organisation’s plans, and challenged Dojo Masters. Each Temtem we caught or fought against had one or two types and abilities, and most could evolve after a certain amount of levels. If a wild Bulbasaur appeared while we were exploring the islets of Omninesia, it would’ve taken us a moment to remember which game we were playing.

Yes, Temtem blatantly copied Pokémon’s homework, yet it surprised us with how well it modified the formula, more often than not for the better. Foremost, tamer battles are two-on-two affairs, which means a type advantage does not equal an automatic win. Everyday tamers don’t pose a significant threat, but if taken lightly they can decimate half of your team, leaving you vulnerable midway through one of the many labyrinthine locales. Dojo Masters, the rival, and the heads of the villainous Clan Belsoto will wipe you again and again if you don’t pay acute attention to type matchups.

Each move also costs stamina, which is the most original – and significant – addition to Temtem’s battle system, replacing the likes of accuracy and power points. High damage moves or powerful status-inflicting techniques drain stamina quickly; if it runs out, your Temtem might KO itself from overexertion or have to skip a turn to recover. Together with a steep difficulty curve, managing stamina makes for an engaging, deep battle system. Indeed, the first Dojo Master wrecked us again and again, quickly teaching us that Temtem battles aren’t cakewalks. Later battles left us sweating as we made it through with only a sliver of health on our last Tem.

We could continue to wax on about how Crema copped and altered just about every one of Temtem’s mechanics from Pokémon, from advanced stats to breeding techniques, but we’d breach a reasonable word count quite fast. In short, not once does Temtem borrow a concept from Pokémon without making it more challenging or streamlining the esoteric.

Even the always-online, massively multiplayer elements seem like a critique of link cables and the inconvenience of friend codes. In the Airborne Archipelago, other players traverse the lush islands at the same time as you do. Anyone, at almost any time, can offer their Paharo for your Swali or challenge you to a fight. You can even team up to clear quests with friends or randoms. We tried tackling a Dojo with a random tamer, each of us bringing our own Temtem into battle, though we had to back out once our partner proved more hindrance than help. But if you have friends, co-op seems like a great way to experience this meaty adventure.

The MMO functionality encapsulates the socialness of creature collection better than ever before. However, there are a couple of caveats. Other players often flood the screen with their lead Temtem following behind. In populated areas, this caused the Switch to struggle to maintain any semblance of a healthy frame rate amidst so much clutter. The game also crashed every few hours, whether or not we played docked with a wired connection or handheld over Wi-Fi. Luckily, we could reload right back where we left off whenever this happened, though we hope for a patch or two sooner rather than later.

Most detrimental is the inherent grind of an MMO. Frequent backtracking adds bloat to the main quest, an abundance of sidequests provides mediocre rewards, and, as much as we love battling, opposing tamers and wild Temtem halt progress to the next town or Dojo a little too often, making the journey to the endgame feel about a dozen hours too lengthy. Crema sprinkles plenty of charm into the story and its characters, but somewhere a little over halfway through, our motivation to finish the adventure dropped off a floating islet.

For those that do stick it out, a wealth of endgame content (of which we’ve barely scratched the surface) unlocks. Catching the 164 available Temtem is the least intensive of these tasks. While competitive battles between players require an absurd time investment to properly prepare for, the island of Tamer’s Paradise promises challenging activities for those who would rather play alone or cooperatively. Then there’s collecting stickers, decorating houses, and hunting for ultra-rare Luma Temtem, packing in enough content to keep a monster-battling fan happy for months – or years, given Crema’s promise of more updates to come.

Even without the endgame content, Temtem is worth a look for anyone who has enjoyed a Pokémon game in the last two-and-a-half decades, especially those who have wanted a steeper challenge to go along with their critter collecting. It’s a familiar, imitative experience in so many ways, yet we came away satisfied with just about every tweak made to the well-established formula. Sure, the main quest becomes a bit of a slog, and yes, the Nintendo Switch does struggle to keep up at times. Despite these qualms, Temtem's engaging battles enshrine it as one of the most innovative additions to the genre in recent memory.

Scoring Policy Review copy provided by Humble Games

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Wait can I get temtems physical in the West or is it import only? Besides that I should get this since I love monster collecting.

"but somewhere a little over halfway through, our motivation to finish the adventure dropped off a floating islet"

With a line like this, I'm truly baffled that this is an 8/10.

I’d like to give this a try, maybe when there is a sale, I feel sorry for them with the timing that we all like Pokemon again now with 2 good games this year

If it wasn’t an MMO I would bite. Heck, I’ll check it out if they’d implemented an offline mode.

@Greatluigi You can get it physically I bought mine from Amazon.

Cons: Although you pay money, there is a separate battle pass in the game.

I really want to give it a chance, but gosh the artistic direction is awful! It looks like a generic mobile phone game. The colors used as well are quite a pain for the eyes. It looks sad and generic AF. Better to wait for Pokemon, or give some Digimon games their chance.

@PepperMintRex Unfortunately they have been very clear that there are no plans for an offline mode, and later parts of the game even seem to have been built with specific parts of the online functionality required, from what I'm reading.

@Gohanjin Because it's a fairly low budget game and the design time/resources were fairly limited. It wouldn't surprise me if they didn't really have many artists as most of it just looks like block out.

Wait is there a monthly fee for going online, this is an MMORPG after all right?

Some of my complaints so far (just finished the first area)

1) The map does not show town names or route names which can make it really hard to contextualize the region.

2) The quest system is not for me. It was confusing and convoluted and not really helpful

"Superb battles that require strategic thinking"

I won battles in Pokemon Sword, while watching movie on Netflix, without even looking at the switch screen, just pressing the button repritely choosing random attacks....Pokemon doesn't require any reasoning to win the game. That's what I found annoying. That's why I never bought a Pokemon game, I only borrowed it, but I always got sick of it very quickly.

@umbreon_sylveon If you zoom out (ZL) far it shows you the names of locations

It looks pretty good! I'm glad it came out well, despite its technical hiccups. I'll give it a try as soon as I have a spot.

I'm going to hold off on this one for now. I don't like the always online requirement, the mmo grind, or the Pokémon circa 2013 aesthetic nor am I fond of the $45 price tag for an mmo. I'm surprised this game reviewed so much higher than Nexomon, but hopefully that means a lot of the QoL issues I had with Nexomon are not present here.

@RicebinBernacky Same. I think Temtem gets good praise because it is a Pokemon alternative rather than a good Pokemon alternative. Pokemon is accessible because the system is easy to enter and hard to master. With Temtem cranking the "hard to master" part to 11 ruins the enjoyment factor for me.

This line right here makes it a hard pass for me: "[N]ot once does Temtem borrow a concept from Pokémon without making it more challenging or streamlining the esoteric."

That and the fact the game gets so grindy ruins it for me. People should go back and replay Soul Silver/Heart Gold and remind themselves that grinding due to harsh level spikes is FAR from fun.

If nothing else it brought us a Crowded House reference.

@Nanami_Ataraxi wow. Thanks! This is going to help so much!

The generic monster designs really spoil it for me. That's what a lot of these indie monster collecting RPGs get wrong for me: the creatures feel like bootleg Pokemon, vs. series like SMT, Monster Hunter Stories, and Monster Rancher where they seem to have a strong sense of identity to them.

@Wexter I remember people hyping this to high heaven when Dexit was exploding on Reddit and Twitter. Now that people aren't as angry about the direction of modern Pokemon, I barely ever hear about it.

Not that it would happen any time soon, but the lifespan/playability of this game being very finite as an MMO along with the pricetag are a pass for me. On a minor note, I never understood how the game's name stuck. It sounds like stuttering.

The game fed off of the pokemon hatred going around at the start of it's early access, and they have an item that makes fun of people who use EXP Share called the "Coward's cloak". The leveling system is also iffy, with the Temtem not evolving at a specific level, but rather number of levels gained from when caught. It feels like a mess.

Can’t see any mention of the in game micro transaction Nova Packs. Bit of an oversight for a review? £40 for the game plus micro transactions, should have been mentioned.

Game's great, give it a try, really fun and with a nice difficulty curve, i only miss from Pokemon the exp share for the whole party

@Impoh mmm... not totally agreeing here... There's some cheap games with quite good artistic direction. Also thinking about some games made by a single man that had stunning/unique visuals/styles like Dust: An elysian Tail or Braid. Temtem visual stype doesn't talk to me at all. Maybe it will for some but clearly, even with PS2 graphics, Pokemon games are way more appealing due to their unique style/instant charm.

Doesn't seem bad, but the MMO aspect makes me a bit nervous. Also, there are enough new major pokemon games, I never seem to have time to get into a pokemon-like.

So is PvP required for story progress then? Because I don't care for the "socialness of creature collection", I always found my trips into competitive pokémon matches more exhausting than anything else.

And the thought of making breeding more challenging aka even more time consuming doesn't sound promising either. IV-breending can be a pain if you need a specific Hidden Power for coverage etc.

@Scaredy_Cat No you don't need to interact with other players at all if you don't want to

@umbreon_sylveon You are most welcome

@IrnBru67 I'm not a fan of battle passes either, but its just cosmetics.

@JoeDiddley Apparently devs against discounts for their game. But all in for battle passes.

@Nanami_Ataraxi It's multiplayer game, there is no such thing as "just cosmetics" for multiplayer games. Cosmetics are EVERYTHING for many people, just look at Fashionframe and ff14.

@VoidofLight One thing I cannot stand about Temtem is how "hardcore" it is trying to be by making the parts that people already find obnoxious about Pokemon and make it worse... This game is made for people who hate how Pokemon has become easier to get into the advanced mechanics and want to gatekeep in their games. (seriously they named EXP Share, Cowards Cloak... how childish)

I just can't stand the Temtem "fanbase" and to an extent Temtem because it feels like a game made purely for the most hardcore at the detriment of everyone else.

@Ralizah I cannot stand Temtem's monster design. They lack a cohesive theme and identity. Kinda sad that the best-designed Temtem is a literal Fakemon. They just don't understand the design ethos that makes Pokemon iconic.

As for how Temtem became popular? Yeah, it road the wave of Pokemon Dexit hate. And to be honest, if the Devs did not play so hard into that I'd be more willing to enjoy this game on its own merits. But, the devs seemed so hellbent on "fixing" Pokemon by making a game that is just badly designed and over-emcombered by overcomplication.

@Wexter Exactly. I remember buying the game around when it first dropped, and how quickly the community was tainted because of disgruntled pokemon fans, to the point where the devs started influencing the game due to it.

The always online and mmo grind are a dealbreaker for me, as is the potential for randos to approach me and demand trades/battles/team-ups when I’d rather explore a game on my own terms. I love pokemon-likes, but my internet isn’t stable enough, nor do I have the patience my younger self did for grind-heavy games. I hope others will enjoy it, though.

If this was released a couple years earlier it would've been huge, sadly the TemTem hype and interest seems to have almost completely died out.

Between excessive grinding, MMO treadmills, interruptions from random players, and crashes every few hours, any passing interest I had in this game completely diminished throughout the review. And I'd guess any surge of early adopters will die off hard once the new Pokemon generation launches.

@VoidofLight How did the disgruntled fans influence the game?

@Scaredy_Cat I dont have time to waste anymore. I play games to have fun and i also despise the whole competitive thing in games , it seems to me that i am getting worse in many things in real life just to study and be a little better at a game only to be beaten up by a 15 year old genius a bit after mid rank . Loose-Loose situation !

@Wexter The beauty of well designed JRPGs is that grinding is an option for the player to brute force through the game when they are otherwise not skilled enough to.

I fully understand that there are plenty of games with difficulty spikes and poor balancing, where grinding is pretty much required. Pokemon HGSS are not examples of those though. If you struggled at any point in HGSS and could do nothing else but resort to grinding, you just missed something.

No shame there. I did the same thing when I beat the original Silver version as a child that could barely read. Had pokemon at the end of the game with terrible moves and not a solid enough understanding of the game to even know what I was doing.

@MarkyVigoroth Read above the comment I left. The fans flocked to TemTem, and the devs designed their game around somewhat mocking Pokemon while trying to be it's own thing.

@greengecko007 This game is just grindy though. That's all there is to it. Most JRPGs, aside from games like Shin Megami Tensei rely on levels. If you're lower level, you're going to get squashed unless you made some god-like team with your characters... which isn't most people.

@Greatluigi Who cares if you can get it physically it's a MMORPG, once the servers go down so does the game and you are left with a small bit of plastic to remember better times.

@alecseus That's fair enough, forgive me. Although I have no want/need to buy cosmetics I shouldn't assume everyone else feels the same way.

@VoidofLight I mean... what were the specific changes crema did in response to the disgruntled fans? All I saw here is calling th Experience Share the 'Coward's Cloak'.

@MarkyVigoroth The Cowards Cloak, the overall game experience being grindy to make it "difficult".

I think you guys might be exaggerating on the grind. It takes around 60 hours to complete the main campaign including slacking off a bit. Personally, it feels just as grindy as a Pokemon game without exp share (I fought every NPC I could). The game has a LOT of dialogue and character interactions so you could actually just play it for the story and combat only.. which is kinda what I did.

And yeah, it has a battle pass for cosmetics. Every main city for each of the islands also has a normal cosmetics shop you can buy stuff from with the normal in-game currency. I personally don't know how to feel about the battle pass (because the current one is mid imo), but I guess even FF XIV and WoW has their own cosmetic shops requiring irl money... And XIV requires payment for a monthly subscription AND any expansion after Heavensward (but we ignore that because it's massively successful for a reason and they deserve it). WoW's expansions eventually become free when the next one comes out so you just have to worry about the subscription in that one. Temtem's case isn't unique.

Also if you max out your Battle Pass in Temtem, you make enough of the special currency back to buy the next one. Since Temtem is an indie MMO, it makes sense they would do something like this to help keep a steady flow of cash money to continue funding future updates. They have to make money after all and it took them 6 years to reach update 1.0.

Not saying everyone's concerns have no grounds. Just keep in mind that they DO plan on updating the game past 1.0 and the money has to come from somewhere.

And yes, I'm bored. I typed this all up because I really do have a lot of time on my plate...

Enjoying the game so far. Temtem is becoming my new fav monster taming game... sorry coromon, I guess I dont need to buy pkmn S/V anymore.

Thanks for the review. Good read. My household are currently enjoying the game

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