TemTem

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raisinbman
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Joined: September 8th, 2020, 12:22 am

TemTem

Post by raisinbman »

I was made aware of TemTem some time ago, but I probably should've been previously. Although I was once a Pokemon fan, the stagnation of the series and impossibility of actually catching them all ultimately made me conflicted and eroded my goodwill. The Professors tasked me with completing the Pokedex, after all! Through time we've had imitators and companies looking to cash in on the fad, and to Pokemon's credit, the wide swath of them weren't worthy. But even still I would try them all: Digimon, Jade Cocoon, Dragon Quest Monsters. I think, subconsciously, I wanted to finally catch 'em all. But nearly each and every time, it became apparent that was effectively impossible. Through absurd grinding and luck, yes, I would be able to breed that elusive monster in Dragon Quest Monsters, but by time I would reach that conclusion, even, there was no more interesting content.

And now we have Temtem and a number of other pokemon alternates, and the future seems to be much brighter.

Temtem clearly is inspired by pokemon, but shockingly, it does what Nintendon't. The Pokemon franchise, without exaggeration, is the biggest IP in the world. Yet, because they're so precious about it, they don't dare do certain things that would be the first step for other companies or franchises. In diving deeper into the mentality behind that, it seems Gamefreak doesn't want to expand their numbers and keeps the team small purposefully. But even without that knowledge, their lack of innovation, strange decisions in marketing, balance, etc. paint quite the picture by itself.

In my initial look at the game, it has you face your rival immediately, and LOSE to your rival. From listening to gaming podcasts for a number of years, Pokemon games being easy has been a sticking point for a very long time. This sets the tone for quite a different journey than you're used to if that's your point of origin. I was intrigued at this point.

Although you can definitely see designs of Temtem that are derivitive, I've never understood the criticism of some of the later pokemon, when in the OG generation we have things like Muk and Electrode. I've only seen 1 Temtem I'm not really fond of and I think could be improved, but even in it's current early access status, I like their vibrancy and they still surprise me with their creativity. The personality they give off, for the most part is immediately apparent.

Then we get into the story - Pokemon has never been about the story, but at times its flirted from everything from the mildly interesting to the absolutely absurd. While I haven't encountered anything too out there, I do like how the story is building the world and telling you about the various facets of it. They tease things like dojo masters, their team rocket equivalent, there's an actual language and culture to the places you go. The dev team, Crema, is from Spain and has really taken a flavor from islandic peoples and other cultures(I'd imagine their own culture but I'm not familiar enough with Spain to say.). They also have a bit of fun with interactions, but eventually, I ended up just fast forwarding through them. Of course, an exclamation mark appears above people's heads, and you fight them. It does rear dangerous territory with the battles being so hard and sometimes not being able to see characters who will challenge you, leading to you either getting KO'ed or obsessively going back to this game's Pokecenters just in case. The game offers a couple options for you to choose, and most of them obviously lead to the fight. I was surprised, however, in that not all of them do all of the time, and some let you learn a bit more about everything. However, they do get a bit too cute at time with running gags and it makes me wish there was a "STFU let's battle already" option always present on NPCs. I do applaud them for doing more than the minimum that we see from Pokemon or other old school JRPGs, and there are some absolute gems in there like when you encounter a colonist who is a bit too concerned with 'natives', a bit of humor you'd never find even in a bizarro pokemon in an alternate universe.

The world is definitely one of the more interesting parts of it all, with lots of different biomes that really differentiate it from pokemon, and even other places proper. There's a skytown continent, a toxic no man's land, for instance. Also,I think it's palette really sets it apart here. It has a sliding floor area, but that consists of crystals. And the crystals are cooled lava in a red hue.

Battles are kind of a monkey's paw, and I totally take into account that it's early access. One of the biggest complaints about Pokemon, and a trend for some time in Japanese games is that the games are easy. Ridiculously easy. But not so much here, to the point they start you off with a party full heal/revive/status clear in your inventory that fills up for free every time you head to the "Pokemon Center". But I'm really conflicted. I love the variety of battles - different Temtem at different levels with different moves in different combinations. But I actually think it's TOO hard. If you're even here, you're probably familiar with wild pokemon and pokemon battles. Generally, you encounter some pretty weak ones that nip at your pokemon's HP bars, or in case of battles, you may have to heal afterwards. With this, even wild Temtem hone in on weaknesses, and I'd say, are at intellegence/challenge level of Gym leaders, and the Dojo Leaders(gym leaders) are at the level of the elite four. After playing for a long long time and getting frustrated I realized this happens in Temtem for a couple of reasons. The movesets you face being one: wild Temtem have moves that can, and regularly will KO your team even in one hit if you aren't using type advantage. The problem with this is wild temtem give less EXP(I guess to encourage people to battle other trainers) and you have to have 2 temtem out. Even though you have a insta revive/heal in your backpack, I routinely had 1 temtem KO'ed which is pretty rough, and it's more than 1 usually in a trainer battle. You regularly have trainers and wild Temtem using moves that are as powerful as Hydro Pump or Solar Beam on you in nearly EVERY battle. Wild Pokemon tended to have weaker moves and would 'throw away' their turns with things like leer because you were going to face dozens, if not hundreds of them before you got to the next town or Pokecenter. I think this is one place especially that's going to get modified as they move out of early access, but I would say if they want to keep this, each trainer should at LEAST be healing you after battling them(they already give you money, just make it part of the culture that 'losers buy the next round'). Where I'm really conflicted on this is the idea of balance in the game is there's a stamina system that should punish greedy Temtem trainers from not just using obnoxiously powerful moves every turn or pay a penalty of health. Problem is, you're getting hit so hard it's worth it for your enemies. On the flip side, this really engages you. I was playing a pretty tough JRPG in the form of Tokyo Mirage at the same time, and I had to use many of the same tactics that I used there. Every move must be carefully calculated, and mistakes WILL be punished. Sometimes it's just luck. And more interestingly, I found myself using items. But in thinking about it, when do you ever actually use your money in Pokemon, anyway? Having to make sure I'm prepared for a cave or enemy trainers by grabbing revives, heals and the such, again, makes everything much more compelling. But as a whole, if I'm going to be challenged this much, I would at least like to be provided with all the tools I need to succeed, like in a fighting game or MOBA. It was a struggle early on when I did not have access to type advantages because early areas only have wind/grass/water Temtem. Probably most damningly, I had to permanantly bench my starter because melee(fighting) wasn't cutting it if he wasn't getting type advantage, and even then his low health just made him dead before he could power up properly. While I understand this sort of thing, a more casual or (nostalgic?) gamer could be majorly turned off of not being able to bring their first Pikachu with them along their journey. If I were provided with whatever this game's equivalent of Protect/Magic Mirror a la Wobuffett, I'd feel alot more confident in it, or having something like berries present. But as far as I've seen, your Temtem's movesets don't really delve into that? Even when I've been presented with dozens of TMs. Also in temtem movesets, they don't seem to really get better moves like they would in Pokemon that you can use to take advantage of their STAB properly and they're all right around level 40. I don't know if since this is an MMO, I should be waiting for more content and levels, but time will tell I suppose. I may be missing something in terms of hunting TMs, or breeding(please don't make me breed for this...) but I know better moves exist that could serve my purposes.

It does seem like going through the main path has left some stuff that I still haven't done in glancing at a wiki(as trying not to do that to just take it in for what the game is and how it's presented to me), and there are lots of sidequests. I tried to do a couple of sidequests, though, but the map system and quest log is either incomplete or not great, so I gave up on those. It doesn't help when I went to do a quest, the NPC I know was there last time was missing, and I have no idea where they went unless the quest isn't doable yet.

I want to get back to it, and was hoping to to do it over steamlink as my exercise bike game, but apparently my internet sucks too much or I can't figure out the secret sauce, so I guess my time with Temtem is over for now.
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