Listen... I REALLY wanted to like this game. But I have to leave this review because new players NEED to know this. Especially if you are into breeding mechanics.

I understand this game is in early access. But some aspects of games can not be forgiven on that fact alone.

Also, I did not purchase this game myself. But if I did, I could not even get it refunded because the biggest problems appear only after the refund period is up. So keep that in mind.
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This game has a lot of promise but also a hell of a lot of problems. Know what you want before you buy this game.

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1: The Temtem fights themselves are great. The animations look amazing. The moves feel balanced and this overall aspect of the game is rock solid.

2:The Temtem Feel unique and they play just the same. All temtem have cool looking rare versions known as Lumas. They blow shineys out the water in terms of catching them ("1-8000") version something like pokemon.

3:The maps and overall art (except for the peoples faces IHMO) look vibrant and colorful. I never got tired of the Aesthetics of the game. And the use of color itself in this game is used to exelent results.

4: The overall sound design and music is awesome. The music didn't get tireing after a while like most other games. Its helps one zone in aswell. And the temtem sound like animals really would. Thats a breath of fresh air.
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1: The way the game wants you to play is to fight temtem trainers on your way between story areas. That would be fine.. IF you didn't have to run back to the TemTem stations to heal your team after EVERY trainer battle. And there is at least 10 trainers between each area. They give the player a item that heals the team fully once. But it can only be refilled at tem stations.

This also means you have to run through the grass to get back to these stations. And if your temtem are weak and die then you can kiss you pockct cash goodbye. And speaking of money..

2: After playing the main story money is all but impossible to get. They way the game expects you to make money after the story is to catch and release temtem.

Not that bad sounding right?

Well, you need to catch around 60 Temtems to make around $6000. That process takes about 1 hour. But, you need to spend $1500 of that on 99X normal Temtem cards again so now you only made 4500$. That is with the items that give you a higher catch rate.. And to put into perspective how abysmal that is lets talk about breeding..

3: Temtem breeding and PVP like all other games such as temtem is the only endgame. So, if you wan't to play PVP you have to have perfect Temtems. All Temtems have a something called a fertility stat. It normally starts at 8. But if your Temtem is found with one prefect stat that makes it 7. They count down every time you breed a temtem. So you can only breed a temtem 7 times at best.

To do this right you have to purchase items known as DNA-strands. These range from $1000-$10000 depending on what stat you want to give to the egg. The eggs them themselves take 5-15 minutes to spawn at the hatchery and 15-45 minutes to hatch. ("That is with the item that makes hatching faster BTW")

So in saying that, One could spend 10 hours and spend $24000 to go ♥♥♥♥ themselves because they got a male Temtem four times in a row. And now all the Temtem you farmed are no good because their fertility stat is gone and you have to start ALL the way over.

Thats what the expect you to do. To even play the end game Its an easy bet someone would need to sink 200+ hours to even start. That is absolutely awful.

4: As of this review co-op is so buggy its almost not playable. To start each player has to play the revloving door game until they are in the same instance. Then, and only then can you invite them to CO-OP. Once in CO-OP if any player encounters a Temtem in the wild there is a 90% of both players getting a black screen they can only Alt-F4 out of. And after you reboot the game you gotta play the area hop game again to just add one another. This is not limited to just my instance. All my friends have the same issue. Its unbearably asinine.
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This game has promise. But its problems heavily out pace the highlights. Given time, I think this game could be great. But until they at least add a way for the player to guarantee a reward for time spent this game is dead in the water for me. Fix the bugs, Fix the RNG, Fix the Co-op. Then buy this game. Until then wait this one out.

You will thank me later.