So, I hope nobody minds. I'm posting a wall of text albeit in this post about my feelings and thoughts on Temtem. Please realize that this is subjective of the current state of Temtem, and I know that the game is going to be balanced/updated to have less issues. I just want to say some things about the game as it is right now.

That out of the way, I will say that my initial impressions with Temtem have been incredible. It feels so good to play a game in this style that isn't afraid to just let you out in the wild, without holding your hand. Max is obnoxious, but I feel like it's a good thing with him being our self-proclaimed 'rival'. Although I'm not sure how I feel about basically being forced to lose that first battle, I understand why it is that way. It's setting the tone of Max's personality and interactions with you, and shows off that type matchups are very important. Moving on from there, I continued my adventure and had a lot of fun catching Temtem's, mostly just filling my collection. I don't remember too much specifically, but I do very expectantly remember my bad experience when it came to the sudden extreme jump in difficulty in Windward Fort. That final fight was way too hard, compared to everything else in the Fort thus far, and it was punishingly frustrating. Especially being forced to fight the lackeys directly before the boss, who feels like they're on a whole other level from her minions. While it's good that she feels this way, the lack of recovery to my already battered team basically mad this fight impossible my first time around, and I ended up solving this purely by overleveling off of Skails for a good hour or so. Lots of grinding on inappropriately leveled Temtem's makes things take a long time. Moving on from there, I went to the Dojo, which genuinely felt like a step down from the difficulty of the last area. I didn't mind having this break, but it feels like the balancing of the game is a little off for encounters in the story. The reward of the Surf Board was awesome, and really excited me to keep exploring. Lot of exploration and backtracking later, I've grabbed a lot of quests that need me to move on, so I did.

The second island honestly, was pretty fun. At this point I've massively overleveled a few of the tem's in my team, so I'm not really feeling any urgency from many of the fights here. I know this is purely an effect of me overusing some tem's on my team while I was doing all the additional exploring and backtracking. I honestly can't remember a lot of the second island, because the experience was primarily pleasant, save for one part. When I completed the third dojo, I was locked out from going back to the first island. I had heard from a friend the skates were needed to get an item that boosts capture rate, the "Four Leaf Clover", and being aware of the whole "No Skates" due to lack of content after the third island, I was a little less than happy. A friend invited me to their game and ferried me back, so I was thankfully able to collect my item, but I really don't think this could be mitigated by just allowing me to go back... Moving on!

The Third Island.... Oh my lord, the third island. This island unapologetically annihilated my team repeatedly, and the type match-ups became hard enough that I had to start looking up every single temtem on a wiki to make sure I'm not wasting attacks. The difficulty spike from the third dojo to this island is harsh, but not unbeatable. My experience has been extremely annoyed throughout this island, and I honestly just wanted the whole thing to be over. I understand why we lose our surfboard, and why we lose the skates, but it feels like it was simply just to prevent me from using shortcuts that exist with those mechanics. (I'm fine with this, but it's painful to lose game mechanics.) Then we come upon the part that honestly hurt the most. The loss of my team, shortly before I need to fight a dojo that's a whole step way above the average power level of the temtem battles before it. Back to grinding for a couple of hours later, I managed to barely pull off the victory, and then a friend of mine joined me in co-op for some play after. I had to give up the only Toxolotl that I caught to get my surfboard back, and after some more backtracking I acquired the acid-proof surfboard. While I'm aware this bug is fixed now, it was frustrating that we had to break up the co-op party to move along, regardless... Then came Max... My friend wanted to come with me, but something prevented us from forming party on the little island Max was on, and the water wouldn't let us surf in co-op. I actually accidentally triggered the battle, and ragequit at this point, but settled in and dealt with the battle on my return. Then, honestly, he was kind of a joke at this point. How did anyone confuse his complete lack of sense when it comes to tembattles, with me? It was however, at this point that I have taken a break. Frustration has really gotten to me at this point in the island, and I genuinely just needed to step away.

Overall, I will say that I'm very grateful for the Temtem team continuing to fix bugs as quickly as they can, and I am overall enjoying the game, my negative experiences with the third island, honestly just come down to me feeling like a lot of it is unbalanced, and needs work; which I understand the Temtem team is probably working on! I'm looking forward to future content updates, and I'm hopeful that the team keeps their clear enthusiasm with the game. I want to thank all of Crema for making something that people have genuinely wanted for so long in their own way, and working hard on making this game beautiful. Thanks for anyone who actually read through my review/rant. This is one of the best collecting/battling monsters game on the market..... pokemon needs to step up there game, ill leave it there!