TemTem Alpha Impressions: Pretty Damn Good

Where do I even begin to open with this one? Man. I probably poured a solid eight hours straight into this because I was just having that much fun with it.
I love both Pokemon and Digimon so having an MMORPG made in the same vein left me ecstatic to play.
I’ve been following TemTem for a long time now and have been excited ever since it was announced. I’ve been watching it slowly grow into something I’m really anticipating.
So, me being me, I reached out to the team behind TemTem and asked if they’d be kind enough to hook me up with Alpha access – that way I can take a look at the game and see if it’s really as good as I’m expecting.
They were more than happy to oblige, and thus began my descent into the pit of madness. No eating, no drinking, no using the bathroom or even getting up to stretch. Not for a full eight hours straight.
MrsStix even came over periodically to check on me and make sure I hadn’t passed out, that’s how bad it had gotten.

TemTem is a very unique styled Kickstarter backed MMORPG that raised over half a million dollars in crowdfunding. That goes to show you exactly how many people are looking for a Pokemon alternative set in an MMO world, right?
In TemTem you capture.. well, TemTem with unique discs that you can summon and store them inside of, like a Pokeball.
You journey across a large, beautiful world to become the very best Tamer that there ever was, doing battle with other like-minded Tamers along the way.
The ultimate goal, however? Defeat the 8 Dojo leaders and make your way to becoming a.. well I don’t know what the TemTem equivalent of a Pokemon Master is. A TemTem Master? Let’s go with that.
The game, unlike Pokemon and Digimon however, if the MMO tag attached isn’t clear enough, is set in a complete MMO world.
You see hundreds of other Tamers running around, doing battle, playing through the story, trading, teaming up and tackling content together. I’m surprised it took an indie developer to make something like this, honestly.

It plays just like Pokemon does.
You can hold a maximum of 6 TemTem, fielding two at any given time. The enemy can be comprised of up to two NPCs or players as well and can field one TemTem each if grouped, or two if alone.
Combat is turn based, however unlike in Pokemon where the Pokemon with the higher speed stat goes first, in TemTem speed is a crucial factor, but you also have attack priority.
I’ve had my TemTem go earlier than an enemy TemTem purely because I used a skill with a higher priority than theirs. This makes combat much more complex, as does the introduction of different damage multipliers.
1/4 damage done, 2x damge done, 4x damage done, it’s a very interesting concept that is taking a while for me to fully grasp but I feel like I’m getting there.
Thankfully each and every attack has their own unique animation, skill description and.. well, there’s actually another interesting combat mechanic.
In Pokemon you have skills. Those skills have a limited number of usages before you need to heal up at a Pokemon Center.
TemTem is different in so that it employs a stamina system, where each skill consumes stamina and after you’ve consumed the resource completely, you begin to hurt yourself based off of the amount of stamina your skill would otherwise use.
That means that each and every skill requires you take a moment and decide if it’s really worth it to guarantee that kill or if it’d be better spent using something weaker and hoping for a kill.

There are almost 150 I believe thus far. 141 total? And from what I can tell, each and every single TemTem looks fairly unique. I was surprised.
There are twelve elemental types as of right now: Crystal, Digital, Earth, Electric, Fire, Melee, Mental, Nature, Neutral, Toxic, Water and Wind.
Every TemTem can have up to two types total and therefore can be countered by a variety of other types.
This makes customizing your party both difficult and easy: You find out the types you’re missing in your party and then proceed to search out and capture them, solidifying your team and limiting potential weakness.
But then some people prefer to just.. keep what they want. What looks cool, like I do. I always had a team composition of Dragonite, Blastoise, Gyarados, Alakazam, and.. 2 others I’d normally use as HM slaves.

Actually very impressive. It has a more detailed character creator than most Anime MMOs do so that’s saying something.
You have several face options, a sizable selection of hairstyles, colors, upper body, lower body and back outfits and accessories.
You continue to unlock customization options in-game and can freely customize yourself on-the-fly. Unfortunately I never had enough money in-game to purchase different attire, but I was working towards it.
I required to many damn potions to keep my TemTem alive I just couldn’t afford anything else even though I wanted to.

Whether TemTem will be a good MMORPG for you depends on whether you like monster-collectors.
I love them, personally, but then I grew up on Pokemon and Digimon. I played Digimon World – the first one for thousands of hours when I was a kid.
I replayed Pokemon Yellow and Gold over and over until my Gameboy color broke.
Monster-collectors are one of my favorite kinds of games and I never thought I’d see the day when GameFreak released a Pokemon MMO. I still haven’t, but TemTem is the next best thing.
It’s vibrant, has personality, has a pretty gripping story from what I’ve experienced thus far, has actual cutscenes that remind me a lot of Zelda and is pretty much everything I want in a game.
Well, except for PvP. I don’t know if PvP is a feature yet or if that’s something they’re actively working on. I guess we’ll have to wait and see as I progress further in the game.
If I’m correct, the max level is 39? 49 right now and as such I can’t make too much more progress than I already have, but with an expected release date of May 2020.. it’s just around the corner.
So if you enjoy Pokemon games, are looking for a beautiful new monster-collector to play with your partner of friends, then TemTem is where you wanna start looking.
You can currently secure Alpha packs via the Discord store, or you can wait until next year and get the game when it releases then.
I’m going to remain up-to-date with it and heck, I’ll probably be giving away beta keys and copies of the game completely free for people that follow my wife MrsStix and I on Twitter.

But that’s just my opinion – my first impression of the game. What do you guys think? Did you enjoy it? Do you enjoy it? Are you looking forward to eventually trying it out or do you even want to?