A while ago I picked up temtem and let it sit in my library for years, Now that I finally got a chance to play the game I can honestly say that I do not recommend this game. the game starts out well enough but somewhere around island four or five the cracks begin to show as the story starts to feel like its rushed, the difficulty begins to spike and leveling starts to slow down. When I got to the final part of the game I just wanted to be done as my patience was starting to run out but then I got to the final boss of the story and realized how important understanding TV's was in the game and that almost made me quit on the spot. After spending roughly 12 additional hours leveling three temtem at a time and resetting some of the TV's I was finally able to clear final boss.
The ending is not worth the effort as it feels forgettable and left me feeling so tired I didn't want to continue with the side quests. I don't want to come off as saying that the story shouldn't have a challenge but the discrepancy between the NPCs you have to fight at the end and the wild temtem you can farm for leveling in the area preceding the final boss is a 30 lvl difference leading to a multi hour grind to lvl up with the final fight being a timed fight at max lvl. The game does have some charm and could be enjoyable but you can feel the min max feeling of as you get to the end of the main storyline and it's a shame really.

I picked this game up again after putting it down for a few years, and I think I am realizing why I stopped playing in the first place. It is really just painfully boring.

Everything about the design of the world feels more like it's meant to be "safe" and broadly appealing than it is to stand out in any way. I think the only Temtem designs I've actively thought about when I'm not playing are Barnshe and Owlhe, and that's because I absolutely despise how their gimmick are just "girl owl" and "boy owl". The human characters are equally forgettable, and at this point the story just doesn't get any emotion out of me even though it so clearly wants to.

The gameplay hasn't really been much of interest, either. All you really need to do most of the time is hit the opponent with whatever type they're weak against. I can't even remember what most status conditions do because the impact just feels negligible.

While I do plan on at least finishing the game, once I'm done I don't think I'm going to play again. There are just so many other monster tamers and plenty of better ones that are a lot more engaging than this one.

I really like the dialogue in this game like the one before battles and the game is cool ig