When "Pokemon Gold & Silver" was released in Europe in 2000, GameCube was just around the corner. Nintendo's next-generation CD-based product has been announced under the code name "Dolphin" and is well-known-all I can think of is how Pokemon looks on the machine.
I'm not alone. I remember browsing the game magazines a lot and guessing wildly that 3D Pokémon has something in common with my favorite Ocarina of Time and PS1 Final Fantasy games. This is a theoretical game in the sky.
Of course, that won't happen. Franchise owners The Pokemon Company, developer Game Freak, and parent company Nintendo have no intention of transferring the core Pokemon series from the Nintendo handheld. In fact, for a short period of time, gold and silver are planned to end the series-but continued explosive sales mean that all participants have changed their minds.
Found a successful formula and it won't change. Despite the stadium games and several spin-off RPGs, none of these have the style or scope of the main series.
Fast forward most of the twenty years, and here we are working with Pokemon Sword & Shield, the first product in a major series developed for gaming consoles. Except, of course, this is a mandatory decision: this is the only Nintendo machine now, and also a handheld computer. Maybe that's why Sword & Shield goes through so much complexity. In some places, it feels like the revolutionary, host-based, online-driven Pokemon game I've dreamed of for years, and in others, it looks worryingly like a franchise company whose wheels Trapped by its own heritage.
Although it was announced completely in advance, this month marks a normal release similar to Pokemon Tam Enter early. Now let's clarify-Temtem carefully draws the line between inspiration and counterfeit. But part of the reason this doesn't matter to players is that it offers many of the ideas Pokémon fans have been craving for years.
Temtem is a mature MMO; you'll see other players walking around the entire game, not just in a unique area. You can easily collaborate or compete with other players. Due to the early access nature of the game, these multiplayer features are currently limited-however, they are still more deeply connected to the main gaming experience than most games available online in Pokemon.
Fighting is very similar to Pokemon. Although their strengths and weaknesses are different, the main difference is that fighting is usually a two-on-two business. Two-on-two increases important wrinkles when working in complex rock-paper-scissors battles. Therefore, in competitive Pokemon, two-sided games (two creatures per game) are often considered the more interesting form. Temtem has acknowledged this and made this type of battle the backbone of its fight, not an occasional feature.
The inclusion of endurance sticks can obscure actions that other turn-based RPGs might accomplish by moving things like cast time, which again adds to the major challenge of combat. You can't just flick the right genre and break everything down with efficient and repeated powerful moves.
Basically, Temtem is fine. Like any early access game, it's spotty, with occasional errors and missing content, and a gateway to interesting areas with upcoming signage-but it does have a really good start.
Temtem developer Crema obviously takes Game Freak and Pokemon very seriously. Temtem owes this series and records most of its life and success. But it's clear that in addition to analyzing what Pokemon did right and doing it well, the developers of Temtem also studied what Game Freak failed to do in order to try to provide a fully functional alternative.
This is not to say that Temtem outright outperforms Sword & Shield-in some ways both games perform better than the other-but Temtem excels in small animal capture games with unique and exciting ideas. It may be the first good performer in Pokemon in the past decade, so hopefully the series' admins are forced to sit up, get noticed, and even consider making changes.
Competition is good. Temtem is an early access version that seems to work well for itself-but hopefully seeing another ape's formula can well make up for the negative side that Pokemon has needed for some time.
