Recent reviews by Caliburne

I like fish.

I have put over 300 hours into a game about monkeys and balloons. That should be all you need to know about the quality of this game.

That and I miss tower defence games from the days of Flash and this definitely scratches that itch.

This game is the most relaxing experience I've had all year, as both a lover of the ocean and all things within it and someone who enjoyed those old flash games with restaurant management, Dave the Diver perfectly works off both my passion and nostalgia. The gameplay is wonderfully simple, yet addicting and the characters are all memorable, the titular Dave especially so, and I was always smiling when I watched them interact and genuinely cared to see how their stories developed.

Additional pros are the music, which has quickly become one of my favourite soundtracks of any game, it's so expressive and relaxing whilst perfectly reflecting the marine nature of the game. The designs of the marine life are all distinct and accurate to life and the game perfectly shows off the beauty of the ocean, whilst not shying away from the more alien aspects of it either.

The fact that this game is early access is incredible, whilst games under that category are so often abandoned or never truly develop, I have nothing but confidence here. Even so, the current game is worth the price it's sold at, this isn't an investment like so many other early access titles, this is a full experience that promises to get even better.

With the £30 price tag, I simply cannot recommend this game. The story is nothing special, the game-play gets stale rather quickly and some decisions are questionable at best in my own opinion.

I will readily admit, I have not finished the main story, quest-line or whatever you wish to call it. However, I feel no inclination to care nor try to advance the plot. Your rival is annoying to deal with from the start, seeming to copy Barry from Pokémon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum in terms of his attitude but they removed the likeable parts. Whilst Barry is annoying, he's never a bad person whereas Max in this game is just a prick. The only motivation your character seems to have is to move forward because that's just part of the universe, that young Tamers must leave home and go on an adventure, unlike other games in this genre where a goal is made apparent. The Elite 4 and Champion are obviously the best examples, you want to become the best trainer and whilst this goal is very simple it's at least a goal.

Game-play is a unique twist on the Pokémon formula, you still only have four moves but TemTem can relearn moves at anytime and instead of Power Points, TemTem moves use a Stamina bar that regenerates between each battle. This stamina bar has the unique feature of allowing moves above your stamina count to be used at the cost of life and a turn of rest making you think about whether it's better to rest or go all in on a move risking your TemTem's health and an extra turn. Whilst the battles are the focus on these types of games, TemTem's battles quickly become a hassle, wild TemTem will almost always exhaust their Stamina to land a powerful attack even when low on health and often KO themselves when you may wish to catch them and constantly seeing TemTem's KOing themselves to nuke one of your TemTem's just makes it feel like the games out to spite you as it strips the XP gain away from a TemTem you likely wanted to level up.

Quests are a neat feature at first, you can help people in the world around you to gain unique items, medicine and money but the issue comes with how quests are done throughout the game. Say what you want about escort missions, but I'd rather a couple of them were thrown in then almost every single quest being a fetch mission. "Get specific TemTem and come back to me.", "Talk to a dozen people and then talk to me again". There is a huge section of main story game where this becomes a huge issue, but I'll get into that in a bit.

The world is absolutely gorgeous to look at, the cartoon style works very well for it. Colours are vibrant and pathways are mostly clear to the player. Each Tamer you fight has a dialogue tree normally, which is both good and bad. People genuinely feel like people sometimes, but most of the time you're left questioning them or just trying to speed through your options to get to the battle. These dialogue trees become exceptionally painful when your objective is to run in a straight line fighting Tamer's. The TemTem themselves are mostly quite cute and I don't have complaints on most designs but there is an issue with how little variation there feels to be. Whilst there are 150+ TemTem species, each area only has three or four unique ones, keep in mind I said area and not routes. You can go through two or three towns and you will still only be encountering most of the same TemTem's.

Now, my biggest complaint. Tucma. Tucma is a brick wall that the game forces you to beat your head against. Due to story purposes, you lose the two special tools you've obtained and don't have access to anything to change your TemTem party and from there you must find an NPC with the party you were taking to the island. Whilst tedious, I can appreciate that it works to fit and cement the story. This is no excuse though when upon finding the NPC, you must do the same thing over a slightly longer distance, fighting Tamer's, retreating because you have type weaknesses that you cannot change and thus have lost almost all your TemTem's health, healing at the NPC and then walking all the way back only to go two steps further into another fight. It doesn't end there, as when you enter the next area you are forced into doing this yet again but this time with a party of four TemTem's that were given to you by a stranger and all of your meds and items have been taken away.

(Quick edit, I forgot to mention the fetch quests.) Once you finally finish the gauntlet of Tamer battles and running for heals, you have to do several fetch quests to advance the plot at all. Running to each corner of Tucma to fetch a single item and take it to the other corner. You'll likely start one and realise you can't even finish that fetch quest, until you fetch more items for the NPC involved in the previous fetch quest. It's tedious and nothing more.

This gauntlet can take hours of time and turns into a mindless drain of repetitive actions. It prevents you from leaving the island to go and catch a TemTem you may have wanted and the game gives you no warning that you will end up trapped on Tucma until it's already happened. Not to mention, the writing of this world is very poorly written. If you care for spoilers on the story, ignore this next part. The entire story of Tucma is that someone, your rival Max, has been dressing as you can using your name whilst committing crimes and annoying the populace. You are believed to be a fugitive and are arrested wrongly because of this. However, during your prison escape various Tucma residents see you and treat you as though you're a friendly, foreign tourist despite the fact the entire island of Tucma is assuming all foreigners are bad currently and your player is a renowned criminal. This isn't helped as at the end of Tucma's main plot, you're still unable to travel and by this point all sense of freedom has drained away. You're on rails.

I could go into more and more detail, but this is already close to an essay. There are other things to note, such as Luma's being far more of a pain to hunt then Shiny Pokémon and how poorly designed Luma Radars appear to be. I also dread to imagine how many times a Luma TemTem has nuked itself due to the Stamina bar. The fact that the second islands version of Gyms have a typing duo that essentially negates counter-play, since you don't even see TemTem type's that can counter one of the two typing's and said typing counters the counter to the other typing. There are also abundant references to other video games, but to such a degree it almost felt like this was a fan game rather then it's own thing. In fact, I think that's the perfect way to describe TemTem in its current state.

TemTem is a £30 Pokémon fan-game. It's tedious, grindy and lacks the engaging story or character of the game it wants to be and lack of variance in every aspect really drags the game down. Some points I've made may be nonsensical or anger-fuelled, but after spending hours of time getting through the grind that is Tucma only to discover I couldn't go help my friend on a previous island still, I had to write this even if it was solely to vent about my frustrations. If you enjoy TemTem, by all means, play on and have fun or feel free to discuss with me why I may be blind towards a more in-depth experience.

I hear Monster Hunter Stories 2 is good though if you're interested in this genre.
(Edit): Monster Hunter Stories 2 is indeed a much better game of this genre, in my opinion.

Cute. Very cute. Well worth it just to see one slime smile at you.

Lots to explore in this game and even more things to find. Interesting, filled with unique and even scientifically possible alien creatures, some lore and sharks I find Subnautica amazing.

Nothing quite like the feeling when you finally get that submarine, after the time you sspent farming materials.

I'd highly reccomend this game, just be wary on slightly slower computers, this game is huge.