Welp I’ll be honest I haven’t looked at the game since an early alpha in 2018. I just browsed the wiki and I take it all back. There are some really fun, unique ones that stick with you but yes it’s way more scattered than I remember.
It says a lot that a lot of people's favourite TemTem is the platypus fakemon.
I've actually bought the game in early access, mainly so I could confirm or deny to people how good it was.
TEMTEM GAMEPLAY - STREAMLINED, BUT STRETCHED
The game has most of its moment-to-moment interactions go faster... and yet it feels like a slower and grindier game. Healing? Faster. Catching? Faster. Starting Wild Battles? Faster. Moving? Always running.
Going anywhere?
Slow as all hell. With every battle made to at least do some damage, your temtem will take a lot of damage that builds up. Balms (potions) are very expensive too - a single 25 hp heal costs five times what a TemCard (Pokeball) costs. I'm progressing without having to grind yet, but that's mainly because I'm deliberately using a small team. (only grabbed my fourth temtem after the third town, and you start with two).
Routes wind back and forth, with lots of battle which are nearly all mandatory. There's no avoiding a battle - if you want to get past someone you always have to fight, and you nearly always have to walk through the grass. I've seen no npcs that both move and are fightable, either. The first route in particular doubles back on itself a lot, with a lot of small ledges to hop over. Combine that with very twitchy movement and no speed control, and it's very easy to set yourself back.
They give you an item called a Temessence vial. This item does everything a healing station does, healing your whole team, but only does it once per trip. It says a lot that smoke bombs (basically super-Escape ropes that take you back to where you can heal) are a much, MUCH smarter investment than balms.
This all stacks to mean that getting between any two towns feels longer than most Pokemon trips. Remember going from Fortree to Lilycove? especially the fence maze in the latter half? Yeah, imagine every route being that.
Trainers from the bottom of the screen can see you long before you see them. So that's a fun little addition, especially when you're two steps from town but you just wanted to check out this cool area. If two temtem tamers are meant to be fought together, you have to fight them together every time. No ifs, no buts, no 'positioning yourself and taking them out one by one'. Every fight is a mandatory two-person fight.
Every Tamer battle is preceded by several lines of dialog. Including dialog choices. This helps characterize the NPC tamers you meet - which is somewhat good, because they otherwise all just look like random players. To the point it's very easy to get them confused. It does, however, slow down the game even more if you're talking to them beyond just mashing A.
The music is generally... weaker? It might have to do with sound balancing, but the music for TemTems is just not as catchy. It sounds nice, and it's mostly violin based, but it doesn't really try to experiment or go places, and it doesn't have as strong beats as a Pokemon theme does. I've only heard the wild and trainer battle themes, so maybe the others are better, but those two will make up 90% of the gameplay, so...
Despite this, the underlying game feels solid. The battles are fun so far, the synergy moves are easy but satisfying to pull off... but I feel like I'm going nowhere. It doesn't help that trainer levels are all over the place - one minute you're fighting a small group of weak level 6 and 7 temtems, and the next you're fighting two (underlevelled) evolved temtems with powerful synergy moves. Add on weak monster variety and it feels like an intense skinner box.
I'll give more details in another post. Gotta talk about tem variety, the story, and why even if your rival's an asshole, the Professor is actually
way worse without anyone realising it.
