My Top 10 Worst Games Of 2020 – #9 – Temtem

My Top 10 Worst Games of 2020 continues with Temtem. In part 1, I went over why I didn’t enjoy one of the buggiest games I’ve played all year long in Sword Art Online Alicization. Click on the link to read about it. 

Temtem has a lot going against it in my opinion and is a great example of what I don’t want an online Pokemon experience to be. The only neat thing about it is the double battles and monster designs. Everything else is meh at best when compared to Pokemon or even Digimon. The worst thing that this game has going for it is the grind. Leveling up new party members takes forever because of the low experience gain in the game. You would spend hours trying to catch your fancy new Temtem up with the rest of your team and for what? Nothing. A level 15 Temtem can do some good damage against a level 30 and that shouldn’t happen. I should feel like my monsters are getting more powerful with every level up and move they learn. That’s not the case here. I had to turn back and heal my team multiple times almost every time I made it to a new location because the wild battles would take a lot out of my team. And the Temtems that I fought were more than 10 levels below my party. That should not happen, but since this is an MMO (a poor one at that) it does.

Temtem tries its best to be better than Pokemon but actually took a few steps backward. In Pokemon, I can breed my Litten over and over again to my heart’s content. In Temtem that’s not possible. You can only breed a Temtem a couple of times before they go sterile. This made breeding feel like a chore because once my Temtem ran out of fertility (which doesn’t make any sense) I was forced to use another one to try and get a Temtem with great stats. Getting a Temtem with great stats isn’t really a priority though and is a mistake I made for almost 30 hours. Why? Because I don’t PVP in this game. Battles take forever to get through. Yes, they’re animated pretty well and the battle music is alright, but I can’t just speed through battles the way I can in Pokemon and even Digimon. Temtem has two on two battles compared to the one on one battles in Pokemon. The problem is it’s so slow-paced that when I get into multiple battles in a row it can get very repetitive and boring. It becomes even more repetitive once I start grinding to raise my weaker Temtem up to match my current party. It’s a very slow and tedious process when even in older Pokemon games all I had to do was do a quick trip to the Elite Four and watch as my level 1 Charmander walked out as a level 45 Charizard. The second trip would have up to at least 60. This became even easier in the newer games with the experience share and candies that you can give your team to level up.

Nothing of the sort is in Temtem. At least not yet and if it was I’m afraid it would be as a paid microtransaction. Buying new clothes will take the average player forever when in every other game like this a few battles under your belt would earn you enough to buy a new, cheap outfit. In order to earn cash in this game you’ve got to catch and release Temtem over, and over, and over, and over again. That’s not fun. Then you’ve got to restock on capture cards which take away from your current total. Are you stuck in a particular part of the game? Too bad. Because battling gives you very little cash so you’ll either have to find someone to carry you through that part of the game ( I had to carry my wife through some sections) or keep trying until you eventually succeed because you can’t afford to buy any items.

Temtem isn’t as broken as Alicization Lycoris, but I genuinely dislike this game right now. I’ve found very little enjoyment out of it. I enjoy catching new Temtem and discovering new areas, but there’s no soul in any of it. In Pokemon areas felt more alive than they ever did in Temtem. The narrative is also better in Pokemon which is hard to believe since those games (outside of Black, White, Sun, and Moon) haven’t had good narratives at all. Temtem’s is even worse and is obviously woke enough to get social justice points, but the writing is piss poor and so are the forgettable characters that I met. I’ve played this game for 60 hours and I can’t name a single character that I spoke to. I can’t name a single area that I’ve visited because there’s nothing memorable to do in them besides battle other tamers and wild Temtem. That’s all this is and it’s not done in the same charming way as Pokemon.

I mentioned that you won’t be able to afford to buy new items. You can’t. Unless you’re willing to spend your life catching and releasing Temtem for small chunks of change so you can buy that new t-shirt. Don’t worry it’s only $30,000. In Pokemon that would be chump change. You can get that back by selling 3 to 4 items. In Temtem, on the other hand, that’s a lot of cash because you make next to nothing by winning battles. I’ve played for 60 hours and have a little over 25k in the bank. That’s with me being careful about what I buy and only buying healing items and capture cards. I also gave my wife about 10k so she could buy herself some healing items.

That’s why Temtem is on this list. It’s not a good game right now, but since it’s an MMO that could always change and I hope it does because Pokemon does need some competition. Temtem ain’t it though, but, hopefully, one day it will be.

Part 1 of my Top 10 Worst Games Of 2020 Can Be Found Here. 

Omar

Hi,

I’m Omar. I’m the founder of drakulus.com and the new founder of Petescorner.net. I cover every type of game genre there is and I’m using all of the skills I learned over the last 7 years working on Drakulus to make Pete’s Corner the best it can be. My favorite types of games are strategy, RPGs, and Shooters. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy other types of genres. Those are just my top 3. You can expect my brutally honest opinion on what I think of games in long reviews, editorial pieces, and game news coverage.