Is Temtem Actually Worth it? | Full Version Review! | Nintendo Switch and Steam

I loved the dialogue. If I'd known I'd have wanted to read all of the old Early Access dialogue before it changed.

People seem to be averse to going back to heal at the previous Temporium. Is this some generic thing not limited to Temtem, or is it just because it's empty content which is bad for streaming and let's plays?

I also found myself skipping the dialogue... I think it's because the random no-name NPCs on the long routes each have so much to say that you get numb to pointless dialog. It's like the game is training the players to skip its own text

Great review. I'm interested in playing this but i'll wait till after a price drop. The game having to constantly be online is a bit of a turn off, especially since i plan to only play solo.

Isn't this online only? Useless to me then 🤦🏾‍♂️

I really enjoyed my time with Temtem, but I will say that it would be so much more enjoyable for me if it weren't an MMO. Let me elaborate.
1) It doesn't run that well on the Switch to begin with and constantly having to be online certainly doesn't help. This is not much of an issue on Steam (not for me anyway), but sometimes, I just like to take my Switch and watch Netflix in bed while playing a monster tamer, and that's just such an inconsistent experience with Temtem.
2) Then there's breeding. I vastly prefer breeding my own monsters over just buying them from somebody else, but the fertility system, while I understand why it's necessary specifically in an MMO, is the single most annoying thing ever sometimes. The amount of times I've vasted huge amounts of Pansuns because I got the wrong sex no less than five times in a row is just too annoying, and don't even get me started on X/Y incubator tickets only raising the odds of getting the desired sex by 50% while being expensive to the point where you're probably better off just buying the monster. Never mind the fact that your eggs take actual time to hatch rather than you actively hatching them. It's just too tedious, but buying your desired Temtem off the market is not exactly satisfying either.
2.5) You can technically take any Temtem and improve its SVs (basically its genes) using items until they're perfect, which I like, but there are two problems with that: you still most likely need egg moves and it's horrendously expensive in terms of Feathers spent.
3) Making meaningful amounts of money is a drag as well. You can rebattle the Dojo Masters once per week for a respectable amount of Pansuns and it'll also give you Feathers, which is nice. The battles are a little frustrating sometimes unless you have ideal teams for all the Masters, but that's better than them being total pushovers. Then there's Koish fishing. I don't think I have to explain how monotonous this task is, and it's not even that great as a source of income a lot of the times. FreeTem is a great way to make money – if you have the patience of a saint. It's only slightly less monotonous than fishing and the encounter rate in the optimal area has driven me away from this activity altogether. And then we have what I consider to be the most lucrative way of making money: breeding. Which sucks because breeding is, again, very frustrating a lot of the times, and you're also relying on other people to buy your monsters/eggs, which they might not do for weeks. I realize it's not supposed to be super easy to make money, they have an economy to worry about in this game, but it's just one aspect of this game that I find to be annoying. The daily post delivery stuff is okay, but only if you use external resources to instantly know where to go; otherwise, it can be super annoying as well.
4) You can only have one save file on Steam. I'd love to play through the game again, but it's really no fun on the Switch for me anymore and I don't want to lose my progress on my main safe file. I know that we're eventually getting a Nuzlocke mode and I'm super excited about it and it's going to have a separate safe file, but that's very specific.

I will absolutely play more Temtem in the future, I'm just burnt out and a little disappointed specifically by how frustrating the breeding system turned out to be. I also haven't done many of the endgame activities because I get annoyed with the breeding system anytime I slightly feel like preparing for them.

i love combat has no RNG bs, i hate attacks missing so I welcome the stamina resource system 100% acc fully.
the issue i have tho are the temtem abilities, their 1st or 2nd form will have an amazing ability, then their evolution form's ability is totally different and often awful just...why lol. like the Mental type starter 1st form ability it does bonus dmg to sleeping targets and they dont wake up too. tho when it evolved its new ability gives water type stab, wat. apparently its 3rd form becomes part water but it barely learns water moves anyways just feels like a waste smh. or that poison water duck, 1st form abilty gives poison stab and has powerful poison moves so worth it for double stab poison attacks but 2nd form loses this ability for something useless so now its poison moves do less meh. Coromon does this better, as 2nd and 3rd evos just get a stronger version of their ability.

sadly tho, i still can't do co-op with my boyfriend. when he invites me, i get no party invites notifications as it says I am "busy" apparently what they told me. while my invites dont go through at all. I play on xbox series X as does he and he's also on Steam/Steam deck too. tried all 3 platforms nothing works. mentioned to devs since release and no reply from them. my bf got us this game to play together and we still can't =/

I'm playing the game since Early Access and I enjoyed my first playthrough, even that there was a lot of dialogue... Until playing the story again with a second account or playing it co-op with someone else. So I agree, it can become tedious over time, even if you skip everything.

My main issue comes with the learnsets of each Temtem. First I will talk about what you mentioned about the high Stamina cost while giving Houchic Kick + Hypnosis as an example. I'm pretty sure this problem happened when they started to raise the Stamina cost for most moves (+ changing the Stamina formular in general) during EA after raising the max Level, that was either from 50 to 72 or 72 to 100 to maintain the balance for the PvP aspect. This is why I never had that experience as I was playing the early game in an earlier state where the Stamina cost wasn't as high.

Now to my problem: The learnsets of most Tems for the story is terrible! Atleast the starters have something they can work with consistently. But other Temtem gets stuck with low power moves up 'til the endgame. The reason why Umishi is recommened for a playthrough is because it gets powerful moves early on even in its unevolved form. Water Blade is already a good first STAB move compared to other Types (the reason behind this is the move got buffed and added to Oceara's learnset in exchange for the too powerful Aquatic Whirlwind after it got Hurry-wart as a trait, which resulted in Water Blade becoming an early Aqua Bullet Hell for every other Tem that has it which is stupid as Crema states they don't want to change the so-called "story-moves" to make them more suitable for PvP when they could have given Aqua Bullet Hell to Oceara instead of copy-paste it to Water Blade). Water Cannon at Lvl 14 is absurdly strong, even if it means you can only use it once and run out of Stamina, as well as Sharp Rain at 17.

I'm not playing the game often atm as the metagame is set and everyone plays basically the same team. I fought the Club Dojo in Deniz today and the three holograms had the same 6 Tems. While this is fine, everyone is allowed to play what they want, but for me it is getting boring facing the same thing over and over again. Our club also is on a break until the next patch comes to shake up the metagame a little bit (also Showdown helps in trying new things out without spending too much pansuns).

Btw. I like to hear you are neutral towards a RNG-free battlesystem and one that does have it (like Pokémon and Coromon), I hear from many Temtem-fans that the RNG-free battlesystem is what makes Temtem the better game when this is actually up to the preference to each player. While I also prefer Temtem, there is nothing against RNG in battles, it's actually good that they differ in that matter.

I think within the next couple of years Nintendo will release a switch revision or a switch 2 so i hope some of the older games including Temtem gets patched to take advantage of the stronger hardware

I stopped playing Temtem cause the devs are some of the biggest assholes I've ever seen. They hate their player base and actively do things to drive people away from the game on purpose.

How is this vs Nexomon 1&2? I found Nexomon through this channel and loved them; binged both

I’ve always found your temtem videos very helpful. I recently was struggling with deciding which tems to get rid of the. I saw your vid on that quest. Very informative thanks for bringing reliable info to the playform

One very important thing, the game is VERY TEDIOUS

My wonky internet connection didn't make it a catch for me on switch, but on Xbox the game ran smoothly and I was able to progress to Arbury. Definitely one of the best monster taming games out 👍🏿👍🏿

Haven't really been playing the game as much as I thought I would. I might start playing again someday. Doubt it though.

I thought about giving Temtem a chance. After all, it's not it's fault that people referred to it as a Pokemon killer years ago. But this review suggests to me waiting a little longer might be for the best.

The online portion was one of my concerns. I mean, what if your internet goes out while you play? I usually don't care about multiplayer. I just want to play.

As for RNG... Well I feel like an RPG like this benefits from it. Critical hits have been a thing for so very long! Taking it out of the equation is kinda not great. And if what you said is true, and since you tackle the monster taming genre I trust you a lot, it sounds like even without it there are issues. Sounds like Stamina is a real pain in the neck here.

Sad to hear the story isn't great either. I mean, I don't ask for the most epic tale. But something that I can still enjoy. I know it's just your opinion, but from what little I know, I feel I wouldn't like it either. I know that people would disagree with me, but friendly rival all the way!

Thank you for telling us what you think about Temtem! I think for now I will stick to Pokemon, Nexomon and Moco Moco Friends! Because the biggest deal breaker for me is the online portion since I would play alone anyway.

Pros -
Colorful, They/Them inclusion**, Some Monster Designs, Doubles Format

Mid -
Maps are very basic, Music is very basic, Sound effects very touch n' Go, Traveling is very slow; gets faster but it takes a long time to get to that point. Like a LONG time.

Cons -
The plot is dryer than Death valley, MOST characters are forgettable and have bloated ( or repetitive ) dialog, Battles are long and intolerable, Levels / Damage scaling is poorly treated often making long battles even longer, Many mechanics are poorly executed ( Hold moves ) , Move pools are either bloated or have nothing no in-between. Always -online play style. MMO features take a hard backseat ( literally needlessly implemented to justify the 'always online' need ) You CANNOT change your characters Name or Physical appearance later. Small thing you can change like hair , clothing, n stuff like that. But your running animation / idle animations are FROZEN so is your name. Unless you wanna nuke your save.

** There are times the dialog will "forget" you chose They/Them and will default to He/Him . This also happens for She/Her from time to time. This may have been patched but it's so fine-comb it may be hard to notice / find. Just know it's an error.

Overall - Tem Tem is what happens when you take a game like Pokemon Coliseum and suck the soul out of it. Of course, this is just one persons opinion. I was also very critical with Coromon which came off to me as just a slightly up-scaled pokemon romhack ( with sprites that looked like they were from Lake Kindrid of Gaiaonline ) . I'd give TemTem a 5/10 . Wait for a sharp price drop before buying. Do not buy the "season Pass" . The Devs are pretty much as bad as Nexon ( Mabinogi / Maple Story ) and will 100% feel nothing about charging you 20+$ USD for pixles that do nothing.

"Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears." _Les Brown

I've just seen a video about this game that's about a month old saying about how incredibly grindy the game is, about how you never have enough in-game money because you get so little & the prices for the in-game shops are so ridiculously high.

I was wondering if the info the video gave is still accurate or if it's outdated.

Which monster taming game has the most competitive roster of mons x quality battle system?

I lost interest in this game after hearing people's experiences with the game being tedious and some stuff about the devs (Also the price). :P

(Can't remember specifics about the devs, so I may be thinking of another game. Not certain (Regardless, I've definitely seen much worse devs))

I think the game need more real co-op activities in the endgame, do a dungeon all in different ways and nothing co-op like fight 2 or 4 people vs a boss is sad right now...

Overall, not really! Ifound it very tedious on a lot of parts (oh my god the walking) and the low qualiti of life improvements compared to pokemon.
Scarlet/violet will make everyone forget this game exists.
IF they ever make a temtem 2 then it might be relevant again.
I found the dialogue very funny thought, it was also VERY liberal to lgbtq and thats mostly a good thing even if at times in this game it felt forced.

I saw TemTem in store for the first time this past weekend, lol. You need a Nintendo switch online membership to play online, so it technically costs more to play if you don’t already have it.

You had me until frequent crashes... Hopefully it gets patched up a bit more

Hey I just wanted to give my thoughts on the review. I love Temtem and I've been playing for hundreds of hours. I started playing because I got sick of modern pokemon games and wanted to try something new. Generally I think it's a better experience then any modern pokemon game.

I disagree that max is a flat out bad character. Max is the way they are because they're privileged. They didn't have to earn anything and were given amazing temtem for reasons explained in the story. I feel like I genuinely hated them and never wanted them to get the better of me. I tried extra hard in their battles lol. I do agree that their redemption fell flat, but I like them as a character. They're more memorable than the mojarity of rivals in pokemon. The story in pokemon has never been a high point and Temtem is no different, with the only exception being Sun and Moon. Max still stands out despite the generally boring story.

Also I'd like to explain the high stamina moves early in the story. Most of the high stam moves are typically really good. For example crystal spikes is an extremely fast and strong move. Using it once in the early game will typically bring a tem down to red or low yellow hp, letting your ally follow up for the KO. Hypnosis is much stronger in Temtem since there is no miss chance. It's also really good in the early in the game because there's no mental types to resist it. I agree it can be a little brutal, especially if you get unlucky with stamina SVs or TVs, but it adds a fun level of strategy to the early game.

My personal complaints with Temtem are that the PvP can be a little grindy when it comes to building a team. It's still better than pokemon but I don't like grinding in general. This will pretty much be fixed soon since Temtem showdown will allow you to instantly share and build teams for everything except in game tournements. I also think most of the side quests are stupid and fetch questy. A lot of them are fine. They just require you to explore places you were going anyways or do some extra battles. But often they'll send you all over the map back and forth pointlessly. Other times they will literally give you quizzes on the game's lore. Just terrible.

the game has been bleeding players like crazy and every time I reach the endgame I go "no I am not about to do this shit for hundreds of hours" and by the looks of it that is what a huge majority of the playerbase thought since less than 5% of the playerbase on steam have even finished the story, I am done with this shit bruh, how are the developers so good at making the mechanics of the game work but then fuck it up in the accessibility, no I am not about to breed a perfect tem and tv train it every fucking time I want to try if something works or not, not to mention how shit it is getting into endgame when you get to it; freetem is a joke, koi fishing is a joke, dojo rematch requires you to have a good ammount of knowledge of the game that you wont have as someone that just got to endgame and TP gates you out of content if you dont have a whole lot of tems ready to go, the endgame is pathetic.

I put 60 hours into this game thru the steamdeck. This game Pokémons better than Pokémon

Temtem has been BY FAR the best "pokemon" experience I've had in years. The story and characters are a lot more interesting than any pokemon game imo (which doesn't mean much, but still) and all the dialogue serves to really add a ton of lore and flesh out the world. I don't know where the sentiment that pokemon has more lore comes from as I've had the exact opposite experience. There's fun running gags about insane twins and I really enjoyed the occasional ramblings about stuff like the socioeconomic and ethical implications of creature taming and dojo masters (gym leaders) as local authorities, next to lot's of myths and legends as well as different local customs.

The battle system is a lot more strategic and even in the story it doesn't devolve into a series of one shots. I also love that trainers actually have level 90+ and even level 100 tems towards the end of the story. I can't really speak for the competitive side, but the lack of rng is something that really appeals to me. The whole type charts also seems to be a lot more balanced, both in terms of their weaknesses as well as the distribution of types and type combinations across the roster.

But the biggest plus, for me at least, is that you can play the entire story start to finish coop. And it's actual coop, where you each send out one 'tem and play every wild encounter and story battle together.

S-Tier game but still needs to be up-kept because of the MMO aspect but that’s why I got the game I have faith in the devs and they can add new features and events and battle system updates and everything, I’m still playing the story while getting my Tems ready for PvP and I love it

Temtem can be described as a pocket monster reimagined by feminist trans. Horrible sickening trash.

Looks great but I have zero interest in always online games

Terrific review. Perhaps it is because I played the game in separate chunks of time as I was an Early Access supporter on Steam and we didn't have all of the islands available then, but I felt that the game's narrative fell completely off after Kisiwa.

Spoilers

The war arc in Kisiwa was a huge surprise for me. It was so surprising that I accidentally spoiled part of it for my friends. I did not expect to be helping a resistance fight for their freedom in a Pokemon-inspired monster hunting game of all things and it was an amazing turn of events as typically in Pokemon games you're just doing gym battles and maybe fighting an evil team, who have become more and more tame in recent iterations. Unfortunately, the following chapters in Cipanku and Arbury dragged.

I agree with your analysis on Max. The main problem is he goes from "I'm so jealous of you that I'll join the bad guys!" to "I'm sorry, but I still hate you. Will you forgive me?" It just does not feel genuine.

Similarly for the main bad guy. His motivation came in the eleventh hour and pretty much because "I'm evil just because I want ultimate power." We didn't even get to fight his ultimate super boss monster (at least not yet). The fact that he was the Professor was surprising.

A lot of the dialogue seem to just be fluff to the point where at the end I was just saying "Can we just fight now?" The twins sidequest was so drawn out and boring. It was funny the first time you ran into twins, but after the third time, it became a running gag that totally overstayed its welcome. Also, a lot of the jokes seemed like meta-commentary rather than something part of the game's universe and they went from funny to overly distracting.

The combat though was flat out the best improvement from Pokemon. I always hated Double Battles in Pokemon because it quite often became a spamfest of your two most powerful attacks against your opponent to see who could KO the other's the fastest. Here, you have a pretty good range of strategic depth. I would argue the fact that there is no random chance and that if an attack goes off it will hit unless you have a dodge ability or trait active, adds to Temtem's strategy. There is real synergy in some of the moves as pairing certain Temtems together strengths each other considerably. Also the fact that you sometimes had to make a call of whether or not to KO a temtem on your side to take out your opponent's ace all adds to the strategic decision making that makes Temtem very compelling.

Been tempted to pick up TemTem but I'm debating on which one I should get as both Steam and Switch have their pros and cons.

Still this is a fantastic review and it was one of the main reasons I kinda wanted to pick it up.

I tried playing it, but my game frequently crashes, taking heavily away from the experience

Well since game freak is the laziest game dev going temtem makes pokemon look even worse. The creatures look and act so much better, and I can't stand these types of games

Please do NOT buy this game on switch, you can't get refunds for this dumpster fire.

Does Temtem not have a squad of Frontier leaders? Like the Frontier Brains from Gen 3? Or the Battle Resort and Tower from Gen 4?

Does Temtem not have a squad of Frontier leaders? Like the Frontier Brains from Gen 3? Or the Battle Resort and Tower from Gen 4?

Thanks for the crash warning.

This is good but I end up buying the temtem game alone instead of the deluxe edition which contains cosmetic "outfits" lol

I remember when I designed (I don't know how many - maybe 25 - 30) so called "Playground techniques" - combat skills which can only be used by underdeveloped Temtem and will be forgotten as soon as they reach a higher evolution. My goal was to create mediocre powerful skills with low stamina cost. There was a place in the forum in which players were asked to design techniques. The developers completely abandoned this topic, which is a damn shame. Especially due the fact, that unevolved Temtem are absolutely useless later on. In Pokémon you can still have a pretty good time while not evolving any of your monsters. In Temtem: Good fn luck, my friend. The movesets and the stats are just horrible.

This review was good but honestly missed some points that i find important. I will literally never play a pokemon game again after this, it set the bar so much higher. Shinies have better stats, egg hatching is so much better, TVs and SVs are visible and TV training is easier especially with items for tems to hold. Many tems have unique moves or abilities, and the Stamina combat system is incredible. In pokemon you spam earthquake for 30 hours theb youve won the game, but you cant do that in this game. Every battle against the dojo leaders is always a close battle, as well as obline games.

Good review. Thanks!

is this offline on switch?

General X still has the best battle Theme of all Pokemon Games lol

No, not worth it. It is a scam and people could spend their money any other game and not get ripped off.

The story falls flat because no voice acting!

Excellent and on PS+ this month, I'm really addicted, all battle passes are free and the games visual fidelity is great. I'd say its not worth full price though, then again nothing really is outside stuff like Elden Ring.

This is more like club penguin and pokemon mmo vibes vs osrs or eso mmo.

The lack of RNG elements in battles was one of my favorite things in Temtem. Always feels like you never really win or lose in a close battle in Pokemon if you get hit by a crit or if you get a critical yourself. And it always feels cheap when you put your opponent to sleep or paralyze them and they’re right back in fighting shape the next turn but your mons sleep for 4 turns. Long story short, it sucks when good strategy loses out to bad luck. And don’t even get me started on the nonsense in later generations where your pokemon can just like you enough to not faint. Like, what?