Ok, I'm about done with this game. I gave it the old college try and I just can't recommend it to anyone. Firstly, the MMO elements are so pointless. I feel like the vast majority play this game solo (like most Poke-clone creature collector games), so the lack of an offline mode is an oversight to say the least.

The bigger issue, though, is the balancing -- or I guess, lack therof? I feel like the game wants to be a more "difficult" version of Pokemon, but it's not. Not really. It's just more frustrating and achieves that so-called "difficulty" through annoying mechanics and frustration. For example, the lack of healing spots combined with extraordinarily long routes packed with trainers doesn't make the game difficult. It just means that I have to buy more healing items or backtrack to a healing center more often. Furthermore, this issue is exacerbated by the absolutely pathetic amount of money you get from winning trainer battles. Then there's the key item that lets you fully heal your team ONCE and then it needs a recharge. I can understand starting out with one charge in the beginning of the game, but there really should be ways to add additional charges to this item.

Then there's the AI of the enemies in the game. Both the wild / "untamed" Temtems and the ones in trainer battles. The battle system does have an interesting mechanic where you use stamina for moves, that recharges to full after each fight and you have to strategically manage which moves to use in longer battles or take advantage of resting or stamina-restoring items. However, the enemies don't seem to follow this logic and spam their most powerful moves over and over and over at you, even if it means they exhaust and damage themselves as a result. As such, you are in a position where you constantly need to heal after every trainer battle or every few wild Temtem battles...and all this ties in to the lack of healing spaces mentioned above.

Moving on, there's also a stark discrepancy in how strong your Temtems are vs how strong enemy wild Temtems are...or at least it seems that way. You'd think that with the whole SV / TV system (equivalent to Pokemon's IV / EV system) that your trained Temtems would be significantly stronger. Yet somehow my Temtem that is 10 levels higher than a wild Temtem doesn't knock it out in one hit using a super effective move. That's just ludicrous IMO.

All in all, I don't understand a lot of the game design decisions the devs have made in this game. Don't get me wrong, I can understand the intent (i.e. making a more "difficult" Pokemon game b/c Nintendo and Game Freak seem determined to only make their games cater to 8 year olds), but the way in which it is actually done just doesn't work. This is not it, chief. If you really want to play a decent Pokeclone, I'd recommend either Nexomon or Coromon. Both are really solid entries into the creature collector genre.

Its an alright game, didnt keep my attention as much as Id like.

The co-op desync bug that was supposed to be fixed "with the next patch" 6 years ago still exists. Our party is stuck frozen and we only teleport to each other whenever someone starts a fight. Frozen in place as soon as we exit. Same bug is applied to other players in my game as well.