Temtem

nice game!

This game isn't really that bad, but man is it like IMPOSSIBLE to buy clothes. Let me be a pretty princess, Jesus.

good pokemon like game

Unfortunately, you cannot skip battle animations. That gets tiresome really fast -- I managed 2.5 hours and the game is now gathering dust in my Steam inventory.

It's a good clone/spin-off. It became much more consumer friendlier after they stopped supporting the game. Duality of life after all! Don't purchase it for it's MMO capabilities, just purchase for the Pokemon scratch you came here for. Anything beyond that will disappoint you.

Fun monster catcher, greatly enjoy the cooperative experience. Do wish some of the advanced features were available from the start of the game but playing through the campaign once I think is a smart way to experience the game.

Even after playing this game for 100+ hours I struggle to recommend it.

Don't get me wrong, it has its moments. Some of the designs go hard and it's very fun to play with a friend. If you like monster collecting games you will probably get some enjoyment out of Temtem. However, the vast majority of the gameplay was just annoying and tedious. I kept playing because I was attached from following it for years through development, and because it was expensive and I wanted my money's worth. Temtem is not worth $45 period. If you buy it, buy it on sale.

The game itself is unnecessarily grindy, items are impossible to afford in the early game, quests send you back and forth across the universe constantly for no good reason, and the ending is extremely bad. There is also no endgame, so after you get through the story, you can look forward to hoping you can find some competent players to do lairs with you and that's pretty much it. Temtem as a whole has SO MUCH POTENTIAL but is too undercooked to live up to it, and I wish the devs would give it some more time in the oven.

I wanted to like this but there is something missing
Idea is there but wasn't well executed, feels empty
Definitely not worth full price
I can't recommend it, there are better creature collector/pokemon types out there

you were suppose to be choosen one temtem to destroy pokemon

Having a good time as casual

This is better than any standalone Pokemon game.

Plenty of creative endgame and refreshing roster of types and mon's.

Story AI is challenging
Competitive AI is at a competent PvP skill level
Gamepass is bought with in-game currency
End-game dungeons you can solo or up to 5 players
Nuzlocke/Random/Speedrun/Randolocke built into the game, uses your current file to start a separate play through with rewards.

This really has everything you're looking for in both a PvE and PvP sense of these style of games.

It may not compare to Pokemon in its entirety, but as a clone it has more to offer than any single Pokemon.

The kind of game that makes you say out loud "why on earth was this a design choice???" at least 35 times out loud while playing it.

The first words that come to mind for TemTem are "really, really satisfying". I have found my way back to this game multiple times when looking for a creature collector fix, and it's always just so fun and charming.

Very fun game and progressively gets more challenging. Engaging story and a lot of side quests, I've been playing on switch and steam so I have around 70 hrs total so far

Nice to teach kids that they as Male need to Dye Hair and play dress up with "Body Type" orientation. LOL. Anyway traversal is bad and has irritating encounters. Just not that appealing with some mechanics and not for me.

Cool alternative creature collector with mmo like features. However the final fight is some BS so good luck completing the story unless you bring your S+++ team.

One of the best games i have ever played!

Whomever made the temporary team idea needs to be fired. It is by far the worst part of the game.

Baffling game design. I wanted to like it and give a good review but so many aspects are just terrible and unnecessarily grindy. If it was actually an MMO, that would be understandable but it is a single player game painted up to look like an attractive MMO experience.

I wanted to have fun but the longer I spent with this game, the more frustrating of a chore i found it to be. Trying to find people to play with is pretty hard. Most players are pretty toxic, especially if you are new and asking questions/unsure about how things work. God forbid you question why all the characters are queer..

Uuhh, this was really fun when it came out! I bet it still is!

If you like Pokemon?!

Gotta be a Recommend!

VERY good game. I genuinely like this game more than Pokemon. A living economy, transparency about what all the numbers mean, etc. Easier to play and genuinely a ton of fun. 10/10 game

So much running around back and forth just to run up the gameplay hours. Waste of time...

Fun enough for coop if you like pokemon like games, but it gets fairly repetitive VERY early.

I got it on sale, and I have enjoyed my time on it, but, there are dozens of issues with the game and the devs.

Ehh..I do not hate it, but watch for it's lowest price. Pretty sure I paid 12 bucks. I get on every once in a while, and have left it idle a few times....this game, with no future updates; is worth 5. On an old android galaxy......

Fun and good overall

Good co-op game and pretty challenging at times.

The review describes the state of the game in 2025:
I can recommend this game as a Pokemon-like multiplayer game, but it is NOT an MMO. The developers have announced that the game is ending its development and there will be no additional content such as new creatures, maps, etc. The game was supposed to be "Pokemon on PC", but the project outgrew the creators and they abandoned the game in favor of their future productions.

This game sucks, why would you make a single player an MMO? It ruins the experience seeing all the random people littering the world. What a stupid way to hamstring your own success. How about you let me choose some other pronouns, like not/buying?

Fun co-op game! I have been playing it with my bf, he's on ps5 and I'm on PC. I love that it is cross play and coop so we can play a game together that we both enjoy. It's fun running around together in the open world. Especially when we miscommunicate on who is attacking which temtem and we're like well.. that didn't go as planned lol! I have learned through this game he does not know the difference between the male/female symbols, so we swapped to "the temtem directly in front of you" or "the temtem on the top of the screen!".

There are still a couple random bugs we have encountered, but nothing game breaking. A couple of times now a battle will start, and it shows the battle icon in the upper left of the screen with the timer, so it thinks I'm in the battle, but I'm not actually in the battle so I cannot pick my moves. It takes foreeeeeeeever to finish a single fight when this happens because of how long the timer waits before it'll let the battle move forward for just a single action. Thankfully it has only happened twice, and simply logging out and back in will fix it right up.

Mechanically better than Pokémon. Built entirely around 2v2. Moves cost mana and the stronger ones require a certain number of turns to pass between uses. Never cared for IV's, EV's and shinies but the auction house is a welcome workaround.

Dialogue however is painfully dragged out to a point where I was skipping it. Sidequests will have you backtracking to and fro over cheap consumables. Surprisingly difficult, so even more backtracking to heal up (had a repel on at all times). Was regularly looking up creature types because they aren't obvious on visuals alone. It's a kids game not suitable for kids; or adults apparently, there's only a 6% completion rate.

As for the multiplayer, seeing other players mind their own business does not qualify as an MMO. All of the interesting emotes and cosmetics are locked behind battlepasses so everybody looks the same throughout. There is online co-op. You control one Temtem each with no idea what or who your partner has selected so it’s just an added inconvenience.

If you are a Monster tamer game lover or like Monster catching collecting games, RUN!! This game isn't for your monster taming and catching fans and its not worth the trouble.

I am someone who has played a lot of Monster catching/Taming games in the past like Pokemon, Digimon, DQ-M, SMT, Coromon, Monster sanctuary, Monster Hunter stories, Siralim, Ni No Kuni, and many more.
So I am a bit of a veteran when it comes to Monster taming games.
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I wanted to like Temtem but Temtem is the type of game that takes 1 step forward but two or three steps backwards.

I will spoil a little here and there. But I mostly focus on PvE.

For a start the Combat is too balanced around PvP focused on it too much that it hurts the PvE, They really need to make PvE and PvP two different environments and balance it that way.
The Rend Skill is a great example. In a PVP environment cutting a foe’s HP in half is such a good thing. So it makes sense to limit its use.
But in PvE its not that good a skill because you can easily overwhelm most trainers.
In PvE moves like that have have a difference use, Moves with set damage values make for a good tools to weaken and capture monsters, HOWEVER Rend takes 2 turns to charge which makes it borderline useless in a PvE setting.
Come turn 3 when you can use it in a Wild encounter, the Wild Temtem usually has little to no Stamina left due to using all its strong moves. There is a chance that it will end up damaging itself due to recoil and KO’ing itself if you use Rend on Turn 3.

I think a fix for the battle style would be to change it so that in PvE, All moves are fully charged from the start rather than having to wait turns to use some moves. Then PvE becomes more about Cooldown management and Stamina use.

Moves of Monsters feel to limited. Dual typed Monsters often not getting a good move for their both types.
Physical attackers lacking physical move for their types or the move is 2 turn charge move and feels borderline useless. As there is no way to stall to use it.
Gharunder the electric/Toxic Gator but it's only usable moves are physical poison type moves. It’s physical electric moves are a 3 turn charge move and a VERY weak base Base 20 electric attack. Feel like it was balanced for pvp.

This game in the past had updates and changing moves on monsters as I've seen people complaining about that, something tells me that removed all the fun stuff to make things more competitive.

Secondly about the PvP, is in that horrible MOBA style. Its the normal Bring X pick Y, but your opponent picks what you can't use.
I think that going down this route completely destroys the PvP system, since monster taming fans aren't into style of PvP, but they want to use the monster they raised all the time and got comfortable with.
So denying the option of picking what THEY want to bring hurts the mode and make sure not everyone will want to engage in it. Other monster games that have PvP don't do this for a reason.

It shows that they truly don't know their audience.
As they also insert of PvP into a PvE environment which is bad, You should not do that.
You can't actually finish the post game without doing a small bit of PvP as when you are going to finish it to fight a certain group the game tells you "MAKE A PVP TEAM!" to fight them.
Why? I'm in a PvE environment, I shouldn't be needing a PvP team. Remove the PvP stuff in PvE people hate that, it shouldn't be part of the story.
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I am not going to speak about the story much, but... there are Multiple forced progression points with no way to return to previous unless you progress the game. If you are not prepared, It can potentially softlock people or cause people to have grind another team.
As some of these Force progression points remove movement upgrades and you don’t get one of them back til near the end of the game, Which bad as it locks you out of previous areas you wanted that upgrade for. Because there are side quests and monsters locked off to you. It should be only upgrades rather than taking the items away.

Crystal Mines is one of these forced progression points areas, oh boy its bad.
They take all your monsters and items away in itself is bad. Do one or the other not both at once. You are given a REALLY bad team instead. This team so Bad as that there is 10% chance to encounter a foe that might just wipe the whole team out.
That 10% encounter, The monster is fast (100 base speed) and has a High physical attack stat, It is a Melee+Crystal type. 3 out of the 4 monster you are forced to use are weak to it.
The only one that isn’t, Is a Butterfly thing with weak defence you get can at the start of the game.
Remember Temtems often spawns in pair so you have 2 of them to deal with at once.
Running from it has a high chance of failure because running is based on speed and it’s faster than all your monsters. So they will KO at least 1 or 2 of your monsters before you flee. And you have no healing items... So its back to the healing place if you encounter it. Or you can be unlucky like my friend and just wipe to them.
This part is just bad.
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I could go on about other issues like how it costs 20,000G to rename a traded monster, or ones you got from gifts or the auction house as they aren’t counted as yours.
They don’t progress the Tempedia for completion nor do they give your progress on achievements, You have to actually get the monster yourself via breeding, capturing or evolving.
This also means if you evolve a traded monster it won’t count as well.
So if you like trading with friends too bad they don't count you have to get it yourself.
I get it its suppose to be like a MMO but this is a bit ridiculous. If you pay to get the monster then it should count.

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Speaking of being a MMO...

Everything is a grind in this game.

The game is SUPER GRINDY, Seriously I have gone through some long grinds in game but Temtem takes the cake, There are weekly quests that require you to catch and then release 70-95 common monsters for money, it one of the only ways you get money in the game effectively, and its not fun.

Leveling up new monsters up takes days to get the new monster caught up. It not only needs Levels but also TV (this games EVs system).

The Altar Side quests require you get a team of monster of that type for that altar to challenge the people to use it. With the last two Altars have trainers that are Lv75 and Lv85. Meaning you have to grind up a team of 3 or 4 Monsters to that high. This is why my play time +400 hours as I was going for the achievements. There is an achievement for using each altar meaning I had to raise 3 or 4 monsters for EACH of the six altars. Its as a painful as it sounds.

Some quest and main quests require you get monster and then give it away... for no reason, wasting of time.
You often have to go out and breed the monster and then evolve it because just catching pre-evolved form would take longer. As Monsters don't have a set level they evolve from, Rather they have set amount of levels they need to gain to evolve from the level you them caught at.
A monster might take 18 levels to evolve regardless of if it is Level 1 or Level 50. It's quicker to breed monsters to give them away.

Also the "Coward’s cloak" & "Coward's Blanket". These are the names of Exp sharing items, What with the attitude to players that want to grind in your already grind heavy game.
"Oh you're a coward for using an item to help you get exp".
Is this what dev's think of people that use items like this? or some sort of edgy joke? It's a really bad take. Again, it shows they don't know their audience.

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All in all TemTem is okish monster game But there are WAY WAY too many faults with this game and structures that I can't recommend it.
Temtem really needed to do was take the lessons from Pokemon and other Monster taming and improve on them but it kinda didn't and some of cases it just made them worst.

This used to be a very Good game. I enjoyed it a lot. My only problem back in times was the breeding mechanism. Gonna try it again after a long time. Updated review soon. (Only if i can reset the character)

Game is fun but insanely limited by very stupid account policies. Can't just restart whenever you want, game limits you to resetting your character every 10 days so if you make a mistake you're just locked out of playing for that amount of time. The game also apparently has several reasons they will lock you out from resetting. They're so focused on stopping people from whatever new account cheating they're afraid of that they're making it difficult to even play the dang game. This sucks.

Never in my life have I seen a developer so hell bent of making their players as miserable as possible for absolutely no reason at all

The MMO aspect of this game feels like a detriment, resource saving in particular. I played for about a month to save up key resources to upgrade my tems, get lumas for a specific team, grinding for hours... only for an update which COMPLETELY changed the tems. They became useless and no longer synergized because they removed moves.. So now back to another month of grinding in hopes they don't change the tems completely again? no thanks

Despite having some MMO aspects it is still basically a creature collector like you know and love.

I bought it back in Early Access, and I had a lot of fun with the game, so much fun that I had six copies of it—4 of which I gave to friends and family.. Unfortunately, over the years, it became more and more grind-heavy. Even though the developers have scaled things back a bit, the old grind mechanics are still in place and are absolutely boring. Playing through the story is fun, but the endgame is a different story. I always felt like the developers focused too much on PvP and not enough on PvE, which is supposed to be enjoyable. Making money is boring, takes forever, and doesn’t feel rewarding. Unfortunately, the developers didn’t deliver on many of the promises they made early on.

The game is fun for the first playthrough, maybe even the second. However, you can only create one character, and the old one has to be deleted first, with no plans from the developers to change that. The game has a lot of potential, but sadly, the developers didn’t take advantage of it and made some questionable decisions.
Like, for example, introducing a challenge speedrun mode for the main story... surely something a lot of people were asking for, right?



If you’re into this kind of game, it might be worth picking up when it’s on sale—otherwise, best to steer clear.




It's secondary but still worth mentioning:

The game is ridiculously woke. The developers went a bit overboard with it. I have no problem with developers including some DEI elements in a game, but in this one they simply rolled the dice for every decision and 5.5 out of 6 sides have DEI.

Temtem is enjoyable if you love collecting monsters and battling with them. The monster-catching aspect is fun, but the character customization feels lacking, which is a bit disappointing. While the battles are exciting at first, they can start to feel repetitive after a while. Overall, it’s a good game.

Looks like pokemon, plays like the worst grindfest MMO. If you're looking for a pokemon replacement this isn't it. Any meaningful way to make money is locked behind grindy mechanics like releasing a certain number of a specific Tem, selling fullt bred Tems, etc. Some of which isn't even unlocked until some decent profession is already made. You're pretty much forced to constantly run back to the nearest(quiet far) healing center or use your Vial which you can use 1 per visit to heal. Even basic healing items cost more than you'll make from most battles. Oh or play PVP or the hard mode dojos(gyms) which you need to grind your Tem up for anyways to nearly double what the area requires.

TLDR: if you're looking for a fun pokemon replacement this is not it. This is a hard core creature collector with a broken economy.

I only made it to the second island on my initial playthrough. But, my buddy and I decided to play through the main story together and considering we beat the main story (which is decently long!), I consider this as another game beaten.

This game could've been so much more than what it was. I don't know the budget but I would've loved voice acting for these characters. How could it be that the dialogue was so memorable but the story was so forgettable? Honestly, we quit following the story and just skimmed the dialog (which didn't disappoint) and just trudged on.

The TemTem themselves are pretty cool, and I love the focus on synergies being 2v2 combat.

This game was so much more enjoyable playing through it with a friend, also, in co-op parties you each only get three Tem with the back three in each squad getting shared xp as long as they aren't knocked out. This feature was so nice!

I might come back and do more with it, but I also feel content leaving it where it is at the end of our playthrough :)

Backlog Games Beaten 2025
4/50

Really not understanding the recent negative reviews. The game is complete but the devs *have* updated. You realize this was made by Humble Games which was shut down last year, right? The fact that any updates happen at all is pretty nice.

Okay, now that all of that is out of the way, I have to say I like the game.
-Play with a friend and get bonus exp for temtems not in your half squad
-Lumas and Umbras are so cool
-Playing solo you can synergize off your own team, so get strategic
-The stamina is a really great idea
-You can buy new outfits using in game currency
-Crossplay/cross progression! Dude! Pokemon could never.
-NPC's swear lol

Look, if you remember that fan-made pokemon online game, this gives me those vibes hardcore! It's really nice and from what I've seen of the community, it's nice. it is LIVE and ONLINE so... there probably will be a couple weirdos. Overall, very nice though!

I picked it up on steam wen it was on sale but also got it free on PSN when it came up. I started a new run on PSN with friends.

I'm not sure I find all of the recent negativity totally fair, but I am a fresh player at the start of 2025 so perhaps I managed to avoid a lot of the growing pains of the game. Bought it on sale with no regrets.

Major Takeaways:
-Approach it from the lens of a single player experience vs. an MMO and you should find it enjoyable.
-Notably more challenging than many other creature collectors.
-All fights being double team with potential synergies make for a robust experience vs the usual 1v1 fights.
-No full party EXP share until the end of the game makes it a grind.
-The line between "difficult" and "tedious" feels blurred often. Expect to do a lot of backtracking.
-Surprisingly engaging and mature writing for the genre. Lots of wit and charm.
-A metric buttload of stuff to do if you're truly invested enough.
-There is a reason almost all of the achievements are rare: you won't be getting almost any of them until post game content. By then, the game may have overstayed its welcome for you.

Has a lot of polish that Pokemon games are missing. Story isn't perfect, but it's really good. Has some minor rough edges like most games. Developers are really good with support. Way fewer players continue to play it since release and active development, but there's still people around.

Worth the money.

Temtem Is an underrated game, it is a lot of fun and doesn't get the attention I feel it should.

fun

Would recommend if you love reading thousands of dialogue branches that they somehow expect you to remember every detail of. game is beautiful and fun as Hell in my opinion, but that could be because Im playing with my partner. I will come back and edit my review once I beat the game, as I haven't even left the first island, but after my 60th quest asking me to find some person they magically expect me to know the name of through tediously talking to every NPC with a booklength of something they think I really outta know I needed to write a review.

EDIT: Shortly after writing this review the rose tinted glasses fell off my face and shattered to the ground when I started to do the quests "for fun" and realized theyre a bunch of "walk to this side of the map, talk to person A, walk to other side of the map, talk to person B, walk back to Person A, Go back to person B, get a single item that is basically pennies at the store to just buy yourself" I'm sure the intention is for you to enjoy the island to its maximum extent, but after you've run back 50 times just to figure out you missed a quest and have to go all the way back just to enter forty more dialogue trees the island starts to wear out on you. No thanks, I don't want to run back and forth to the same place just to pad out the games longevity, maybe itd be a bit more fun to do this if it wasn't the same 2 temtem sprouting up. I know this may be harsh, due to the fact I've barely gone past the first island, but it legitimately drains me to the point where attempting to keep playing a game of tag like this I don't even WANT to progress the story.

Boring and abandoned by devs. Also, the creature designs are lacking and the story is rubbish. Played in co-op with a friend and still had a bad experience.

After playing for 400+ hours across multiple platforms (PC, PS5, & Switch) I have a few things to say about this game.

1st and foremost, if you are looking for a Pokemon-like experience to hold you over until the next release (Pokemon Z-A) this is the game. Its very in depth mechanics will have you hooked in and grinding at your own accord. The way they have double battles set up with combo moves and held items allows for some insanely fluid back and forth matches that keep me coming back (personally) for more.

2nd, this game no longer receives major updates. Im kind of torn on this, due to it being an MMO that has a LOT of players (they just passed 2 million less then a month ago) and this game DESPERATELY needs both new content and many different fixes to their server/NPCs. For instance, the ArchTamers are WAY TOO HARD. I love a challange, but after 400+ Hours, 150 Luma caught, and 8 Umbra I should be able to crush these 4. THAT needs to be fixed ASAP. It feels way too punishing. You put in HOURS of your life just to beat these last 4 and finish the game, and you cant. They are all on God mode.

3rd and last point; this game is the definition of players first. NO micro transactions and ALL prior season passes available out the gate to play at your own pace. That is not seen at all really now a days and has been promised by games like Marvel Rivals just to have them completely lie and lock the prior seasons behind a MASSIVE unlock amount needed/pay wall.

All and all: Play Temtem. Its a phenomenal game, but dont even try with the ArchTamers, they are not worth the stress!

great game, just doesn't have much replay value once you complete the main story. would be nice to be able to make new saves and start again with different avenues/routes

bought in early access but there was never any real progress feels mostly the same in a bad way

Bought and played early acces, return to the game after a while.. now i need to pay 44,99 ?? i smell SCAMMAZ