Recent reviews by Bashie

Buy-In events are actually designed to be gambling with premium currency.

Needs a replay feature.

A short and interesting experience.

Interacting with Jess just completely sapped my will to keep playing.

I do not recommend this game not because it is bad, it's actually quite good, but because it is only for expert detectives.

Casual detectives will be able to complete most of Golden Idol, but then the difficulty will ramp up considerably for the final 3 cases. And the DLC, Spider of Lanka, is also quite difficult.

If you do plan to buy this game, hold off on buying the DLC until you've finished the base game.

Additionally, I strongly recommend playing Return of the Obra Dinn over this game if you haven't played that yet.

IMPORTANT TIP 1: This game's story is designed to be only for people who have played the original, it just won't hit the same if you play this one first.

IMPORTANT TIP 2: I strongly recommend playing on Classic difficulty, this makes combat more akin to something laid back where combat is automatic.

Even if you prefer action combat, the flaws in the system become more apparent when you fight manually, and it seems like gameplay is designed around automatic combat. If it weren't for the classic difficulty option, I wouldn't recommend this game.

The story actually does a good job of fleshing out the original story and explaining some things, even if it comes on a bit too strong at the beginning. But having the entire game in Midgar means there's also a lot of unnecessary padding. Sidequests don't really carry the game well, but they are mostly optional.

I think modern Yugioh would be made a lot better if they really leaned into accepting what they've become. Like normal, you toss a coin to see who goes first, then the player who got to go first wins the game without playing a single card (big time saver!). They shake hands, say "gg" and leave the table.

I can't recommend this game until they add a loadouts feature or at least make respecs free until they do. Currently, every time you want to swap to a different build you have to pay gold, reassign all your stats, and manually swap out your gear piece by piece.

Your storages no longer have a fee to transfer between holdings, but your bank space is still split up into 20 different tabs, and you can't name any of them so good luck keeping track. They really just need a unified bank space.

This game has live voice chat, and sure, you can report people who are abusing the feature, in theory. But once their mic is no longer broadcasting there is no way to tell who just said a slur unless you happened to be looking right at them at the time.

The queuing system for dungeons isn't ideal, it isn't automated and requires the lobby host to invite players and initiate the dungeon for those who enter the lobby. Meaning you can have enough people for the dungeon but the lobby leader simply isn't inviting people. Also, you cannot queue for a dungeon remotely.

They are currently doing a "Return to Aeternum" event to encourage people to come back, but it's still too soon to return.

temtem is a great game when it comes to its combat, and improves on the Pokemon formula to the point of doing it BETTER. But everything else in the game is so oddly terrible and infuriating that I cannot recommend it.

Which is strange because the gameplay is so good, while simultaneously being riddled with issues that are downright antithetical to good game design. These contrasts between professional and amateur are so extreme that I have never experienced something so surreal before in my life.

I have good things to say about this game, but I had to delete them so I could fit my (warranted) rants about the bad parts in the character limit.

World Design: This game has a strange obsession with shades of Alabama Crimson and Robin Egg Blue. These two colors are EVERYWHERE. The world consists of 6 zones, each with its own culture and setting, but none of them feel distinct because they all use the same color palette. These colors even invade many of the monster designs.

Character Customization: It appears that you have many options available, but once you finish character creation you aren't going to be changing much about your character. You will encounter many clothing shops, but a single clothing item or pack of dye costs up to 23,000 currency, while most trainer battles will reward 100-500.

And the absolute worst thing is that many options are ONLY AVAILABLE AT CHARACTER CREATION. So they are simply lost to you.

Lore: This game has a lot of lore, the issue is with how it is presented. Right away you are bombarded with names and sayings that you are expected to remember and understand right away. Lore is shoved into your face all at once, all the time, to the point where it becomes a blur and you don't really come away remembering any of it.

Dialogue:

Whenever you talk to an NPC, take a shot if they do one of the following:

-Hey don't talk to me do you mind? I know that there's a talk button but it's really your fault that you're using that feature.
-Please sit here while I tell you my life story.
-Get out of my house, it's so weird how player characters walk into people's houses, isn't that weird? (This dialogue can happen up to 5 times in the same town.)
-I have mistaken you for someone else, I hate you, I must now fight for my survival with a temtem battle.
-Two trainers challenge you, one is rude and the other is apologetic.
-NPCs just being rude to you in general.
-Slurred dialogue from a drunk that's painful to read.
-Allow me to ask you 10 quiz questions in a row on this world's lore, if you get a single one wrong I am going to call you an idiot.
-Text with three or more sets of '...' ellipsis in a single dialogue box.
-Hey, I'm that NPC you met one time, remember me? Of course you do!
-Something completely random written by a 14-year-old.
-Pop culture reference.

This drinking game is guaranteed to kill you.

World Travel:

A series of overt bungles makes this one of the absolute worst aspects of the game. This issue becomes apparent at the 3rd island. You are cut off from the two previous areas of the game with no warning. This in itself isn't necessarily bad, it's done in many games and is a great way to challenge your players by giving them a limited set of tools in order to overcome a hurdle.

The issue is for how long you are cut off, and what you are cut off from. Before this, you are introduced to two important resources. The breeding center and items that can be used to adjust your temtem's stats. These are both tools you may need to go back to in order to re-tool your team to be better prepared for upcoming challenges.

Another isolated resource is this game's version of the EXP Share from Pokemon. You will need this in order to surmount many Dojo Challenges. You are also cut off from monsters and quests from the previous islands.

As for the duration of your isolation, this is something that goes on for two full game areas. That's 2 to 3 days of nonstop gameplay before you are allowed back.

Surprisingly, this is not the worst offender.

It happens again when you arrive in area 6. Again, no warning. Trapped in an area with no access to any of these tools, but ten times worse. You have been dropped into:

-A single tiny town
-With a single lake
-With only 3 different types of wild temtem in it.
-Against a gauntlet of 4 trainers in a row with no healing.

I spent hours sailing up and down that lake, fighting nothing but ducks and fish in order to finally push past this hellish experience.

I love the idea of losing to a hard boss, stepping back, training, and re-tooling my setup in order to come back stronger and more prepared. But this situation gives you no opportunity to because you have been denied the tools you have been given throughout the game. Breeding, exploring, finding and catching new monsters. Gone. You can only grind XP and Money for healing items to force your way past.

And the worst part? It's actually possible to warp out.

With another missable item.

You have to complete a sidequest in the previous area before continuing with the main story. Then answer 9 quiz questions in a row that have to do with memorizing the lore of the game that you certainly haven't at this point, so be sure to look up the answers on the wiki. Then you can unlock teleporting. Yes, the teleporting feature is missable.

Difficulty: For fans that find Pokemon too easy, temtem is a breath of fresh air. Your first Dojo Master fight will be against someone with a full team of 6 monsters, as opposed to some Pokemon Gym Leaders that may fight you with only 2. In my first major fight, I actually lost twice before I succeeded, and I was happy for the challenge.

However, specific points in the game go overboard, the first being the lake I mentioned above, but it becomes absolutely ridiculous with the final two bosses of the game.

The first of these two, the boss will begin switching their monsters out. This in itself is, on paper, a great idea to add a new element of difficulty to the game. Switching in to take a hit with a resistant monster is an integral strategy, and now your enemies have started using it.

But not only is it sprung on you at the very end, with no time to adjust, but the AI is perfect at it. It will actually know what move you are using and switch perfectly almost every time. There is no mental tug of war, no misplays on their part, and no predictions on yours. Even when trying to account for the enemy's options or using multiple moves to cover multiple possibilities, you are going to lose in the long run.

The first time you encounter it, you can simply heal and outlast this fight. But this becomes downright infuriating on the final boss.

The final boss is the same thing, but after a series of turns, you automatically lose. The boss's entire strategy is literally nothing but switching, resisting every attack until you lose by default. No healing will save you. No strategy or planning will save you. Just you vs a brick wall until it falls on you.

I decided to look up a strategy. Apparently the solution is to use the Trap status effect, this prevents enemies from switching out. And I realized, Hey! I have this item that teaches my temtem a move that does exactly that, the Cage move!

No one in my entire team could learn it.

I had to re-train an entirely new team.

It was at this point I quit, at the final boss. Do not mistake me, I love to be challenged. But this was just awful.

Up until this point I was confused. Why was I trapped in areas with no way back to key resources? Was this done on purpose? Does creating situations where you are forced to waste healing items or incredibly difficulty bosses somehow a nefarious plot in order for you to spend real life money in the shop? But that can't be the case, because the shop is nothing but cosmetics.

At this point, my breaking point... I realized.

This wasn't done on purpose.

This was just done badly.

This is the ending the series deserved.

The art style also concerned me at first, but once you start playing it it really comes into its own, and there are a series of detailed close-ups from time to time.

NOTE: I highly suggest turning on the "Writer's Cut" option in Text and Language before you start playing or on your second playthrough.

Story and Presenation:

It's very hard to describe this game, I want to go over the depth of writing and thought within the game's script, but it's hard to explain it in a way that the more cynical reader of this review wouldn't view as hot air.

But from my own view, I recommend Golden Treasure for people who want genuine depth. If you somehow don't learn something new playing this game, then you are at least going to see what you already know from a new perspective.

This game slowly reveals a world that, in some senses, has a lot in common with other fantasy settings, but it's uniqueness isn't in how it shifts around existing fantasy elements, it's how it makes everything seem completely alien and new simply by presentation and poetic writing alone.

Of course, for all I know, this game might actually be retreading old ground of something else that already exists that I'm unaware of and it simply seems new to me. Heck, maybe it's built on decades of Otherkin lore or something!

My overall verdict: This author needs to write books, I see some Harry Potter levels of potential here.

Gameplay:

It's essentially a Visual Novel Roguelike RPG. You'll slowly earn permanent bonuses for your next run as you play, and perhaps my favorite mechanic is that every achievement you earn gives you a unique in-game bonus.

You'll need many multiple runs to find everything in this game, and they mercifully give you options to start a new game at specific points in the story. But even with that, skipping through already seen content with utmost efficiency and retreading old ground can still feel pretty slow due to some unskippable animations or fade-outs.

This game has many riddles, most fair, 1 that I found agonizing. If you care, try to take some extra time to figure out the harder stuff for yourself. The occasional maze or timed math problem can be a slog (I ended up cheating at the math by pausing the game with Ctrl Tab)

Overall:

Highly recommended, try the demo. I think I got a bit emotional at the end. And I certainly learned a bit.