Temtem

Genre: Turn-Based Monster-Collecting JRPG / MMO

Players: MMO

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Review:

Temtem, released in 2020 on PlayStation 5, and then ported to PC, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch in 2022, is one of numerous Monster-Collecting JRPGs that have cropped up in recent years addressing a growing frustration in one particular corner of the videogame world – people have become increasingly disappointed in the underwhelming releases the mainline Pokemon series has seen in recent years.

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Gotta’ Disappoint ‘Em All

While series fans have been grumbling about Pokemon for a while, it’s the Nintendo Switch generation that has really been seen as a particular letdown. Pokemon Sword and Shield were far from the grand first release on consoles that people were hoping for, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were an embarrassing cash-grab of a remake, and while Pokemon Scarlet and Violet did in some ways finally fulfill the potential of a true Open-World Pokemon game, they were also filled to the brim with underwhelming graphics, performance issues, and laughably bad glitches. And while Pokemon Legends Arceus was in some ways a breath of fresh air for the series, in other ways it was more of a proof of concept than a full, feature-complete game.

That’s a lot of disappointment for one of the biggest franchises in the industry, and other game developers have taken notice. Of course, by now on PC we have the breakout success of Palworld to point to as a surefire sign that others are starting to take the Pokemon formula places Nintendo couldn’t or wouldn’t go, and players are indeed responding to this. However, it wasn’t the first, by a longshot.

Neither, for that matter, was Temtem, though Temtem was fairly unique in which of the long-desired pleas of Pokemon fans that it seeks to answer – Temtem is, for all intents and purposes, a Pokemon MMO.

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I (Can Only) Choose You, MMO!

To be clear, as you play through the game, you’ll see others doing much the same, running through the same areas, and you’ll be able to interact with them if you desire, or not. There’s something delightful about seeing other players going through the same journey you are, and getting a glimpse of the lead monsters (the titular temtems) of their team trailing behind them.

However, this feature comes at a heavy cost. Temtem is online-only, meaning that the Nintendo Switch’s portability won’t be of much use to you for this game unless you’re in range of decent Wi-Fi. What’s more, any interruption to the gameplay pops up a requisite ten-second wait, far more than is needed to connect, and apparently a penalty to the player for disconnecting. This is true even if you’re not interacting with other players, and it’ll happen any time you press the home button to go to the main menu, any time you put the Nintendo Switch into sleep mode, and at one point when I had to turn off the Nintendo Switch right as the game started loading, I found that when I picked it up again, the game continued loading, then booted me back to the title screen to reload the game again.

If this is the sort of hassle players have to go through just for the option of engaging with other players at any given moment, I’m not sure that it’s worth it. As with Pokemon, Temtem is at its core a single-player experience with added multiplayer functionality, and the multiplayer elements just don’t seem so well-integrated that they justify this rigid adherence to penalizing players when they treat this like the single-player game it mostly is.

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Who’s That Pokemon Clone?

In all other respects, Temtem is very much a “Pokemon Clone”, and it’s not even trying to hide it. The starting selection of one of three pokemon temtem gifted to you by a professor, soon followed by facing off against your rival. A team of six pokemon temtem with your backlog stored in a computer, and healed for free at a Pokecenter Temporium. Your pokemon temtem can have up to four moves each, with the game using an elemental paper-rock-scissors system and your pokemon temtem having up to two types making some attacks capable of using type weaknesses to be not only 2x effective but 4x effective. You’ll catch wild pokemon temtem using pokeballs TemCards after weakening the wild creature through battle, and after leveling up and possible evolving your critters, you can pit them against other trainers spread throughout the game, or even trade and battle them with other players. Plus there are gyms dojos to complete, the criminal organization Team Rocket Clan Belsoto to contend with, and… you get the idea.

These similarities are more than just structural too. The way that everything is presented and organized in the game is shockingly similar to Pokemon, even down to the way you start at your mom’s house in a small town, the way your journey is treated as a coming-of-age ritual of sorts, the way enemy trainers engage you when they make “eye contact” with you (and are often positioned in places you cannot pass without them spotting you), the way trading out one of your active team members for another takes up one of your turns… this game’s developers weren’t just copying the core idea of Pokemon, they were copying it down to some of the smallest details.

Sadly, this even includes the map design, with this game copying older Pokemon games’ more rigid map design as opposed to the open-ended design of games like Pokemon Legends Arceus and Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. This results in an experience that feels very old-fashioned and runs counter to the freedom to explore that often accompanies MMOs.

The amount of Pokemon copying going on here is not to say that there’s nothing original going on here. Throughout the game there are multiple small adjustments and changes that make for a somewhat different experience. You now fight with two creatures out at a time instead of just one, and enemies likewise often come two at a time. In addition, the way moves had a limited number of uses in the Pokemon games has been ditched in favor of a stamina system where players must weigh the use of a move against the amount of stamina it’ll drain, a change I really appreciate. There are also moves that cannot be used unless a temtem has been out in battle one or more turns already. There’s a new item that heals your party and automatically gets refilled when you get to a healing station, making for fewer runs back to towns for free healing… basically, while this game copies the Pokemon formula down to the last detail, it then takes a moment to change a few things in ways that are mostly for the better.

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Huh? Pokemon Clone Stopped Evolving!

As much as Temtem positions itself to be an alternative to Pokemon, there’s one place where it disappoints every bit as much as Pokemon does – the presentation. Temtem looks comparable to the earliest 3D mainline Pokemon games, Pokemon X and Y. Actually, in many ways X and Y looked better, because they had a lot more personality.

Temtem’s cartoony, colorful 3D visuals look nice, but the fixed camera perspective and tile-based look of the world is distinctly old-school in ways that even the recent much-derided Pokemon games have finally moved past. And what’s worse, this game has some major performance issues on Nintendo Switch, with some heavy slowdown in areas. I cannot believe I’m saying this for a game that I’m comparing the visuals to a Nintendo 3DS game, but if you want a good experience playing this game, you’re better off playing it on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, or a decent gaming PC.

The one part of the presentation here that doesn’t disappoint is the soundtrack – this game’s instrumental soundtrack with a heavy focus on violin is truly excellent, with nice melodic themes like Briçal de Mar, Windward Fort, and Sillaro River, the extremely catchy Tamer Battle theme, and the delightfully epic Lady Lottie theme. I wish the rest of this game’s presentation had as much personality as this soundtrack.

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Blasting Off Again?

Normally I try to review games on their own merits, but I’ve been comparing Temtem to Pokemon a lot in this review, and that’s because this is a game that absolutely demands comparison to Pokemon. To its credit, for all its flaws I still think it fares better than some modern mainline Pokemon games – I’d much rather play Temtem than Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, for example.

However, the sadly ironic thing about Temtem is that in trying to deliver a comparable experience to Pokemon, it manages to disappoint in some of the same ways. The restrictive level design, the unimpressive graphics, the performance issues… this is all stuff driving Pokemon fans to find a better alternative, and to find these issues here as well is disheartening. Then there’s the one additional flaw created by one of this game’s biggest selling points over Pokemon – the fact that this is an MMO, something that’s nice in theory, but in practice ends up being way more trouble than it’s worth.

In the end, Temtem is a decent but not great Pokemon clone that’s probably better to play on other platforms, and even then this is far from the “Pokemon-killer” that many were likely hoping for. It’s still an enjoyable Monster-Collecting Turn-Based JRPG, but don’t expect anything that’s going to outright replace Pokemon here.

tl;dr – Temtem is a Monster-Collecting Turn-Based JRPG that is very clearly trying to copy the Pokemon formula, though it changes it in a few key ways, most notably by being an MMO. Unfortunately, the MMO elements are more trouble than they’re worth, the game’s graphics are unimpressive, and the performance on Nintendo Switch is pretty poor. This is still a decent alternative to Pokemon, but it’s not a better alternative, and even if you want to play it you’re better off getting it on another platform.

Grade: B-

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