Temtem Battles Take Pokemon To The Next Level

thegamer.com:

Pokemon games all start the same. You pick your starter, you beat your rival, and you run off to beat up Pidgey and Rattata in the long grass to level up quickly and make it to the next town. Sometimes you lose to your rival, sometimes Pidgeys and Rattatas are replaced by Tailow and Zigzagoon, but you get the picture. Most fangames also follow this formula, giving you an easy ride until you get to the first Gym or equivalent, at which point the difficulty usually starts to slowly incline.

Temtem follows most of the PokeRules to the letter, but for this aspect in particular, it tears up the rulebook. Battles are all 2v2 – including the vast majority of wild battles – so you’re always at risk of opponents ganging up on one of your slots just to be mean, leaving you fighting at a disadvantage.

Related: Temtem’s MMO Mechanics Are Motivating Me To Play On

2v2 battles are rare in Pokemon. There’s usually one Gym Leader that’s a double battle, and a handful of trainers on the routes. In Temtem, even if you’re facing a single opposing Tamer, they’ll send out two monsters to combat your pair. There’s a reason that competitive Pokemon is played 2v2: it’s far more complex, strategic, and difficult to master. Facing AI doesn’t quite have the same depth of strategy as the Pokemon World Championships, but it’s certainly more difficult than your usual Route 1.

This is aided by the Stamina mechanic. Instead of each move having limited PP, which dictates the number of times you can use it, each Temtem has a Stamina bar which depletes as you use moves. More powerful moves cost more Stamina, you get the picture. However, instead of just switching to another, slightly less powerful move when Ember is out of PP, your Temtem cannot move at