Remember when people eventually stopped calling some games “Animal Crossing,” another “Harvest Moon,” or another “Stardew Valley”? Suddenly a new genre had emerged: farm simulation games. Well, something similar is happening with Temtem, the monster taming genre has arrived. The Crema Games title is posited as a real alternative to the almighty signature of Pikachu and the rest of Pokémon.
This time the story takes place in the Aerial Archipelago, some islands in the sky haunted by magnificent creatures: the Temtem. We, as young aspirants, must reach as many of these beings as possible and thus help Professor Konstantinos in his research. Along the way we will face our rival (a repulsive boy) to become the best Temtem tamers in the archipelago. But this dream will not be easy, since in the course of our adventures we will also face the Belsoto clan, a gang of thugs who try to use the Temtem for their own benefit, without caring what might happen to them .
Temtem’s storyline is agile and evolving far and wide the six islands that form the air archipelago. In each of these six zones there are several training dojos that we must overcome if we want to show that we have enough potential to be a Temtem tamer. This variety of islands allows us to visit imaginative scenarios that will vary the different environments or habitats in which they can be found 161 possible times.
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The Temtem
How cute is Temtem. The first thing that strikes us when launching the game is the care with which it was designed. The menu screens, the loading messages, everything is flooded with a beautiful aesthetic bathed in pastel colors, soft tones that little by little immerse us in this world of fantasy. Temtem relaxes in his drawings and animations and shows us a world that we constantly want to know more about. Is closely related to the art of the game The soundtrack
Each of the islands has its own peculiarities that vary between the particles in the air, the climate changes, the landscape accidents and of course the obstacles to exploration. That level design of Temtem is very demanding and on many occasions we’ll have to rack our brains to access the different items that allow us to fully explore the areas: surfboard for the water, equipment for climbing rock walls, etc.
Being a good RPG, we’ll be able to create our character from scratch, choosing face, hairstyle and clothes, focusing on three genres. Temtem deeply respects the LGTBI+ community, which we appreciate not only in the creation of our character, but also in the various couples we encounter throughout the story, whose stories will not be limited to straight couples. In addition, the personality of our character is gradually outlined in each conversation, since we always have several answers to give to our interlocutors; They range from the most conservative and friendly to the most rebellious and villainous.
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One of the things that first impresses the most about Temtem is its protagonists, the Temtem. That Design of all these animals is outstanding (taking into account the rival to overcome) and is solved with great mastery. The design of these monsters based on real animals is obvious but you can see some original intentions and a very hard creative work to make each of these beings an individual and attractive entity that will make you want to love each and every one of to stop and examine them…them.
These strange creatures have Health Points (HP) like in other monster training games, but they don’t have Magic Points (MP) or Power Points (PP). The attacks don’t have a number that determines their use, but are instead held by a stamina bar. In addition, this bar of energy does not limit our attack, but if there is not enough energy, it will absorb HP to end the attack. You can imagine how many tactical alternatives underlie this mechanic and it literally feels like another game. We must take advantage of the shifts in which we are tired to exchange the Temtem, use items, or we can directly ask our Temtem to rest for a shift to gather stamina.
Temtem is not an easy game, you will spend a lot of time going to the healing stations to be able to recover your valuable companions, in addition to the fact that the healing objects are not cheap (or we do not earn much money from the fights), so is loading potions may not be fully possible unless “farming” money is our religion. Fortunately, we get a very new mechanic, namely “The Essence Bottle”, a refillable healing bottle that allows us to heal our team instantly, but it has only one use and cannot be used in combat.
We were happy to receive a Nintendo Switch cartridge to test out Temtem. In general, the game works quite well, but there are a few notable exceptions. That’s what Temtem tells us first of all We must have a subscription to Nintendo Switch Online if we want to enjoy the game. Note that if we want to play online with other players, the subscription is not necessary to start the game. can not play without internet connection. It is important to emphasize this fact as it brings with it certain qualities that we cannot ignore.
We can appreciate playing online and seeing the rest of the players running around us with their Temtem behind us. We cannot interact with them, but we can interact with their animals, which are registered in our “Tempmedia” when clicked. For the rest, both to fight and to exchange, you will have to use the game’s menus to establish these relationships.
At Nintendo, the game suffers from moderate refresh rate drops when many players are online on the screen. This is especially the case when the console is docked and playing on a TV. With Nintendo Switch in portable mode, there is no game slowdown.
But something we suffered was multiple mistakes that put us out of the game. Something almost always related to the evolution of the Temtem and that if we do it in the middle of the fight the screen goes black and we are frozen until the fight ends.
The end of the epic
Comparisons are hated, but necessary in this case. Obviously in Temtem we see the work of young people who grew up with Pokémon and tried to create their own version. In many cases it improves by far (we already talked about the artistic and strategic part of the game). But there’s one aspect where they’ve fallen far behind: the epic narrative of the story.
What intrigued everyone about the Game Freak franchise was the fact that a ten-year-old boy ends up protecting the world from an evil criminal organization while also becoming the best coach, etc. We faced caves, forests, lairs and dungeons of all kinds, but that was it never mind, because the narration made sense: we were alone. In Temtem we are never alone. Due to the forced online integration of our game, we constantly see players around us from all over the world doing the same feats as us. Every time a dojo boss tells us “You’re the first one to get here” it’s pretty ridiculous to see thirty other characters surrounding them, to the point that we can’t see the character we’re interacting with can’t see.
It would have been a great idea to hide all these players from our game like chat is possible. A tip that we throw to you if you are interested in enjoying the story, because three minutes into the game, in our case, someone asked for help to fight with the X character at the end of the game. Five minutes into the game we already knew who our last game would be. Pretty disappointing.