EDIT: I pointed out that the collector Kudo has been broken for several months now (pretty disappointing for a CREATURE COLLECTOR) and got attacked by a super zealous/overly defensive superfan. Temtem has a hostile community that does not take criticism well and prevents productive discourse leading to actual solutions. 10/10 community.

-------------------------------------------- ORIGINAL (POSITIVE) REVIEW BELOW

To preface this review, I started roughly a week after the 1.0 release, spent full price on the deluxe edition, and topped up for a few cosmetics and the BP to support the game. I don't regret any of my purchases and overall, I believe I got more than enough value from this wonderful game.

The story is quite good and gave me nearly 100 hours of enjoyment. It follows a traditional formula that definitely fed off nostalgia and featured a few twists and turns that re-engaged me to the story just when I thought things were falling into a lull.

Even more than the story, I have to say that the musical component of this game is VERY strong. A lot of the BGMs and battle themes are absolute bangers. No offense to the trailer music, but everything else overshadowed it and got me pumped (the first boss battle theme, Lochburg overworld music, etc). Damian Sanchez is a true professional.

Difficulty-wise, I think that this game features a harder post-game than other similar games in the genre. This is a good thing because creature collectors often feature advanced mechanics that don't get utilized until much later. I feel that this particular difficulty level introduces said advanced mechanics at a healthy pace just before you arrive at the post-game and ensures that you can't just brainlessly coast through after the story without ever utilizing critical thinking.

Despite all these positives, the game is not perfect and has room for growth -- specifically regarding the UI/optimization, monetization, and bridging the gap between EA players and 1.0 release players. I mentioned my spending on top of the initial purchase because I do want the game to succeed beyond the 1m players it already announced today. The "negatives" might seem long-winded, but that's only because I want the devs to take all of this in and really work on hammering these out (which I think they are doing quite consistenly IMO).

UI/Optimization - Overall, the game feels like a switch game. Inventory/Temtem sorting has so much room for improvement. Whether it's locking Tems to easily identify and protect important assets, filtering/sorting Tems and Items, or even just better categorization of items, there's a lot that can be done to improve this particular system. A lot of the issues surrounding inventory and tem management seem to be easy conclusions to make if you have ever played any game where collection and large inventories are a thing. Trading stickers for example is quite annoying because the way stickers are sorted is fixed (and not immediately intuitive) and a lot of people end up making excel sheets to track what they have since a search feature is not implemented. Just let people filter/search/sort or whatever and 99% of these issues will be a thing of the past. Additionally, the screen transitions when moving from map to map (without loading screens) feels choppy and features a slight delay.

I also have mixed feelings about the overall economy and the clear line between an Early Access adopter and a new 1.0 release player. On the one hand, I understand that it is important to ensure that the efforts of EA players should not be wiped out just because a game is going out of EA on Steam. On the other hand, it feels weird to new players like myself to see end-game players flexing millions of Pansuns, mythicals, and controlling dojo parks on the first day of the official 1.0 release. As a game that is supposed to be an MMO, this all feels weird to me. Admittedly, I don't have an answer on how this could be better.

Piggybacking on the weird state of the economy due to EA and leaving the EA state, there is also a clear distinction between EA and 1.0 release players. From my experience (your experience may vary), the game doesn't feel like a true MMO because not everyone is on equal footing during the official release. All the thriving/sociable/active clubs are already established on day 1 and are mostly just taking in people who are in the post-game which requires at the very least a few days of effort even for the most engaged and hardcore player. The rest of the newer and smaller clubs are teetering over various levels of activity. Overall, this distinction is weird to me and weakens the charm of this game specifically as an MMO (it's still good of course). It makes the game's community seem smaller than the actual 1m current players that was recently announced.

Co-op feels like an afterthought. While I do understand that you can do lairs as part of the co-op experience, there's really not much incentive to play in co-op outside of it. The experience incentives for co-op play during the main story are negligible because the exp bonus is a) too small to make any impact and b) the exp share is negated by the utility of the coward's cloak and blanket. Once you finish the main story, co-op in the overworld (meaning outside of lairs) no longer yields any benefits because you can level proficiently in specific areas and there is no incentive other than building on "the power of friendship".

Even though I felt like I got my money's worth out of the experience, I still feel like they are pricing out a lot of PC users with their current price point. I think they could do a lot better with the cosmetics monetization to bring that barrier to entry down a little bit. There aren't a whole lot of choices in the cash shop (4 items that rotate daily and 3 items that rotate weekly?) and it's not enough to stimulate purchases from people who want to support the game or may just be browsing. It's understandable though if that manpower is being focused on fixing bugs in the game, but I really do think this is an area that they can do better in to make the game more accessible price-wise. I don't think it will cause a negative uproar if the customization options were to suddenly expand and get better.

Despite the lengthy pain points I described, I can confidently recommend this game to all of my friends! It provides more than enough entertainment for the price. It's a labor of love, and I have absolutely no regrets sinking 200+ hours on this game over the course of the last 2 weeks.

EDIT: I pointed out that the collector Kudo has been broken for several months now (pretty disappointing for a CREATURE COLLECTOR) and got attacked by a super zealous/overly defensive superfan. Temtem has a hostile community that does not take criticism well and prevents productive discourse leading to actual solutions. 10/10 community. -------------------------------------------- ORIGINAL (POSITIVE) REVIEW BELOW To preface this review, I started roughly a week after the 1.0 release, spent full price on the deluxe edition, and topped up for a few cosmetics and the BP to support the game. I don't regret any of my purchases and overall, I believe I got more than enough value from this wonderful game. The story is quite good and gave me nearly 100 hours of enjoyment. It follows a traditional formula that definitely fed off nostalgia and featured a few twists and turns that re-engaged me to the story just when I thought things were falling into a lull. Even more than the story, I have to say that the musical component of this game is VERY strong. A lot of the BGMs and battle themes are absolute bangers. No offense to the trailer music, but everything else overshadowed it and got me pumped (the first boss battle theme, Lochburg overworld music, etc). Damian Sanchez is a true professional. Difficulty-wise, I think that this game features a harder post-game than other similar games in the genre. This is a good thing because creature collectors often feature advanced mechanics that don't get utilized until much later. I feel that this particular difficulty level introduces said advanced mechanics at a healthy pace just before you arrive at the post-game and ensures that you can't just brainlessly coast through after the story without ever utilizing critical thinking. Despite all these positives, the game is not perfect and has room for growth -- specifically regarding the UI/optimization, monetization, and bridging the gap between EA players and 1.0 release players. I mentioned my spending on top of the initial purchase because I do want the game to succeed beyond the 1m players it already announced today. The "negatives" might seem long-winded, but that's only because I want the devs to take all of this in and really work on hammering these out (which I think they are doing quite consistenly IMO). UI/Optimization - Overall, the game feels like a switch game. Inventory/Temtem sorting has so much room for improvement. Whether it's locking Tems to easily identify and protect important assets, filtering/sorting Tems and Items, or even just better categorization of items, there's a lot that can be done to improve this particular system. A lot of the issues surrounding inventory and tem management seem to be easy conclusions to make if you have ever played any game where collection and large inventories are a thing. Trading stickers for example is quite annoying because the way stickers are sorted is fixed (and not immediately intuitive) and a lot of people end up making excel sheets to track what they have since a search feature is not implemented. Just let people filter/search/sort or whatever and 99% of these issues will be a thing of the past. Additionally, the screen transitions when moving from map to map (without loading screens) feels choppy and features a slight delay. I also have mixed feelings about the overall economy and the clear line between an Early Access adopter and a new 1.0 release player. On the one hand, I understand that it is important to ensure that the efforts of EA players should not be wiped out just because a game is going out of EA on Steam. On the other hand, it feels weird to new players like myself to see end-game players flexing millions of Pansuns, mythicals, and controlling dojo parks on the first day of the official 1.0 release. As a game that is supposed to be an MMO, this all feels weird to me. Admittedly, I don't have an answer on how this could be better. Piggybacking on the weird state of the economy due to EA and leaving the EA state, there is also a clear distinction between EA and 1.0 release players. From my experience (your experience may vary), the game doesn't feel like a true MMO because not everyone is on equal footing during the official release. All the thriving/sociable/active clubs are already established on day 1 and are mostly just taking in people who are in the post-game which requires at the very least a few days of effort even for the most engaged and hardcore player. The rest of the newer and smaller clubs are teetering over various levels of activity. Overall, this distinction is weird to me and weakens the charm of this game specifically as an MMO (it's still good of course). It makes the game's community seem smaller than the actual 1m current players that was recently announced. Co-op feels like an afterthought. While I do understand that you can do lairs as part of the co-op experience, there's really not much incentive to play in co-op outside of it. The experience incentives for co-op play during the main story are negligible because the exp bonus is a) too small to make any impact and b) the exp share is negated by the utility of the coward's cloak and blanket. Once you finish the main story, co-op in the overworld (meaning outside of lairs) no longer yields any benefits because you can level proficiently in specific areas and there is no incentive other than building on "the power of friendship". Even though I felt like I got my money's worth out of the experience, I still feel like they are pricing out a lot of PC users with their current price point. I think they could do a lot better with the cosmetics monetization to bring that barrier to entry down a little bit. There aren't a whole lot of choices in the cash shop (4 items that rotate daily and 3 items that rotate weekly?) and it's not enough to stimulate purchases from people who want to support the game or may just be browsing. It's understandable though if that manpower is being focused on fixing bugs in the game, but I really do think this is an area that they can do better in to make the game more accessible price-wise. I don't think it will cause a negative uproar if the customization options were to suddenly expand and get better. Despite the lengthy pain points I described, I can confidently recommend this game to all of my friends! It provides more than enough entertainment for the price. It's a labor of love, and I have absolutely no regrets sinking 200+ hours on this game over the course of the last 2 weeks.