Temtem launched for PC back in January - yes, Temtem came out this year - and shocked players all over the world. Before launch, it seemed as if Temtem didn’t just wear its almost brazen influence on its sleeve - its entire outfit looked like it was tailor-made from electric mouse fur.
Then Temtem launched and people - myself included - were pleasantly surprised. Yes, this is a catch-’em-up where you tame monsters and make them claw punch each other. But do you know what? Temtem’s claw punches are really good, and I think a lot of Pokemon fans will quickly realize that Game Freak should be taking notes on Crema’s indie hit. If you’ve managed to snag yourself a PS5, I definitely recommended giving Temtem a shot when it launches this week.
Temtem’s world is pretty similar to Pokemon’s in a lot of ways. You grow up in a small town and go to collect a magical creature from a professor at about ten years of age. You’re then given a device used to record all of the other magical creatures you encounter, all of whom beat each other up at your behest. There are fireballs and tidal waves and great big hurricanes, and somehow you’re affected by approximately 0% of those immensely powerful natural phenomena despite standing right in the middle of them, because video games.
But Temtem is also very different to Pokemon. All of the battles are double battles, which makes the turn-based structure far more interesting. Temtem leans into complex techniques that affect every Tem on the battlefield at the same time, and revels in checks and predictions. The quality of life aspects of battles are much better in Temtem as well - I recently wrote about how Pokemon battles are arcanely long at this point. Temtem remedies that by bunching lots of different information into a single, coherent move animation, which drastically improves the pace of battling - and earns loads of extra style points.
This is where most of the differences between Temtem and Pokemon lie: in small little changes that the latter has been in dire need of for years. The majority of core systems in Pokemon, from TMs to online battling, to how you even go about capturing a wild ‘mon in the first place, are vastly improved in Temtem because they’re consciously modernized. I reckon Crema probably spent quite a long time studying feedback in the Pokemon community, and while Temtem’s lore isn’t quite as dense as Game Freak’s 25-year-old cultural behemoth, this legwork evidently paid off in the more persnickety facets of overall design.
That’s not to say that Temtem is only worth looking at in terms of its quality of life enhancements. I think a lot of people who give Crema’s monster-tamer a go will come to appreciate that the narrative is brimming with the enthusiasm of a classic Pokemon story, but it’s been aged up quite a bit. There are bars in Temtem, and drunk lads shouting vague syllables at one another for reasons that are impossible to divulge from any of them. I think there are even a few bold words in it - imagine Nintendo approved the use of “shit” instead of “shoot” for Team Rocket. Pokemon would basically be Yakuza: But With Dragons.
Temtem is a curious beast. It might seem like it’s completely derivative of Pokemon, but I think it’s far more accurate to say that it cleverly iterates on the outdated aspects of its formula. It’s not just a cheap ripoff of an established IP - it’s a smart game that interrogates the weak spots of its influences and reinforces them with titanium, or whatever the strongest metal in Fantasy Land With Monster Scraps is.
Ultimately, though, Temtem is a really lovely and colourful game that I think people will enjoy far more than they might expect. At present, the original Early Access section and the newer Kisiwa area - which was added over the summer - are available to play, and I think you’ll get a respectable amount of very enjoyable hours out of them. That being said, the story isn’t finished yet, so if you buy the game and play through it now, you’ll receive brand new content for free down the line. On top of that, the Kisiwa expansion was genuinely brilliant - if that’s anything to go by, diving into Temtem on PS5 now is an investment that will definitely pay off in the long run. With just Demon’s Souls and Spider-Man: Miles Morales available at the moment, you could be pleasantly surprised by how valuable Temtem’s PS5 exclusivity is.
Just remember to choose Houchic as your starter, as it’s the best of the three by a mile and you can catch Crystle later anyway. As for Smazee… Let’s not go threre.
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