TEMTEM is a Good Creature-Capture MMO That Isn't For Everyone

Last month, Humble Games and Crema launched Temtem for Nintendo Switch, PC (Humble Store [affiliate link]|Steam), PS5, and Xbox Series X|S (affiliate link). This marked the end of its time in Early Access which had been going on for two years. The game is an online multiplayer creature-collection game. It features a story that spans six islands, the ability to team up with friends, customizable characters, and more. You can purchase 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 thoughts below are my own. If you’ve played Temtem, feel free to tell me everything I got wrong in the comments below.

I really enjoy creature collection games. I grew up on Pokémon and still love it to this day. That being said, Temtem was not for me. There are some good and even great things about it, but there are enough things that I don’t care for that I ended up concluding that it’s just not for me. I’m going to start with the positives and then I’ll share some of the negatives.

First, I enjoy the art and character designs. It uses cel shaded graphics that remind me a lot of The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker and although I’m still not huge on that art style for that game, I quite like it here in Temtem. Also, the designs for many of the Temtem creatures look fantastic and lively and original. Another aspect I like about Temtem is the music and audio. The sound design is spot-on and the music is fun and chill. It really fits the vibe I got from the game and some of the music was just really good.

Now, we get to the unfavorable part of the review. One aspect that I did not like was the slow progression of the story. At the start, you’re tasked with doing a bunch of simple tasks like going to Professor Konstantinos’ lab, choosing your first Temtem (I chose Crystle), and going to a nearby town to catch up with the Professor and your rival Max. However, I was really turned off when after taking what felt like an arduous journey to a town called Arissola to find a character Sophia who will help train you, it turns out she’s not there. Instead, you have to take the long way to another area of the map that once again felt forever away. To me, this felt like a slap in the face. I had played the game for a couple of hours and then to be “rewarded” with still trying to meet this person felt bitter.

This brings me to another aspect that I was not a fan of. As I mentioned, there are stretches of the game that feel very long as you go from town to town. Part of this has to do with the sheer number of Trainer battles that you sometimes have to experience. There were definite areas that felt long and drawn out because of how many trainers I had to fight right after each other and I didn’t encounter any wild Temtem. It felt like too much. It was also aggravating that I would fight so many Trainers and then feel under leveled in some parts because they would pull out a level 18 Temtem and my highest was 14. Temtem does feel like a game that you have to grind in and for some that’s great, but not me.

Battles are an aspect that the team behind Temtem 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 varying amount of Stamina, like MP in an RPG. This is an interesting decision and for me, it doesn’t pay off. Especially since some Temtem’s early moves consume a lot of their Stamina. It just didn’t feel well balanced for many of the early Temtem. Also, all battles are double battles and I’m not a fan of that. I like double battles to be a sometimes thing, not an all the time thing.

There are some other other areas that I’m not fond of, but the last one that I’ll mention here is the Tamer Pass and seasons. I’m not a huge fan of these mechanics in any game, but to see it in a game that you pay over $40 for is not favorable to me. I mostly see them in free-to-play games as a way to get people to use real money on the game. It is optional and the prizes/purchasable items appear to be purely cosmetic, so it’s not a huge bummer, 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 see why people like Temtem. It offers a lot for people who have problems with other popular creature-collecting games. I’ve seen a lot of complaints saying that some are too easy and Temtem definitely appears to require a bit more work. You’ll definitely want to have the wiki handy for checking type advantages, leveling/evolving, and more. At the end of the day, I don’t have a problem if you say you really like Temtem. It has some virtues and it does different things. They just didn’t land well with me. Every time I played it though, I wished I was playing a different game.