I never owned a Tempest, but hope an improved version 2 is released. Unfortunately, I am doubtful it happens.
Having 5 six-stage envelopes is what makes the Tempest ideal for drum synthesis; with a strong emphasis on synthesis. People really do seem to struggle with this concept: i.e. drum machines with fixed parameters are for people who just want to make beats, and don’t otherwise care to dig deep into sound design; whereas, the Tempest is for sound designers who also want to make beats.
FM is available between the analog oscillators and the filter; which will get you most of the way, at least for the purposes of drum synthesis.
The sample selection is more than adequate as a supplement; which is all it was ever supposed to be. And noise is available everywhere in the Tempest, both as an oscillator (with 5 different kinds of noise available in the digital oscillators, which can be used x2, in tandem with the 2 analog oscillators, while being filtered and modulated separately); and as a dedicated modulation source, which can be directed at any parameter (x8).
Basic rhythmic notation and general musicality is the thing you’re not taking into consideration here: i.e. while the Elektron sequencer is undeniably amazing, when it comes to tweaking sounds on a per-step basis and recording parameter changes on-the-fly; some of the most basic aspects of musical performance and composition, like triplets and odd time signatures, are problematic and subject to workarounds. By contrast, the Tempest can achieve all of the same per-step tricks as the RYTM (albeit in a different way), while handling triplets and odd time signatures gracefully.
This is kind of like asking someone if they’d prefer to climb the mountain or take the gondola…
Are you in it for the exercise, the view at the top, or both? 
Cheers!
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I was in love with all of this right up to the end. On the tempest I can go from a tuned bass riff to an open then tight closed hat sound in two knobs and record the whole endeavor and the sound itself modulates the rhythmic sequence I laid down. For me the tempest is really inspiring - if I put in the work ahead of time.
But that doesn’t make it the best or the best for everyone. You could go even deeper with modular and an unlimited budget to build out 4-5 really deep percussion voices.
But - for sequencing - you can make all of your gear handle triplets and odd meters by running them from a deluge or a select number of other sequencers that are deep on this.
An ARytm will give you bread and butter and give you enough room to load up some weird stuff and get creative while still sounding in the neighborhood of your basic components.
The tempest is sublime and I said elsewhere today- I really want it to be my baby. On paper it’s so close to where I personally want to be but that’s because I find inspiration in sound. Dialing something in and then, sequencing it or playing it and my fingers fall to a pattern or a harmony that belongs to that sound. That’s not everyone, and if someone just wants to get the thought out of their head, the tempest can be exhausting in the same way modular can. You have to put in the ground work to get something specific out of it, and that’s not for everyone, which is totally fine. If it is for you, and you don’t want guardrails on your drum synthesis it is an absolutely unparalleled box
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Thanks for the comments, it turns out that early criticism was mostly wrong. And people at DSI definitely knew what they were doing 
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I feel like Tempest was an almost hit.
When it came out, there was not a bunch of modern drum machine options.
After it’s release a bunch of stuff came out that checked off a lot of marks, and it seemed like Tempest was definitely locked into some design choices.
If it had better mini I/O, something like p-locks that would of helped a lot.
If it also had user samples, more ability for project management, it would have remained a huge hit.
It remains kind of a quirky offering at this point.
Not to mention the price stays very steep.
It’s definitely a sound design monster and very much a performing drum machine instrument.
Shines as a poly synth.
You don’t really need p-locks on the Tempest: i.e. with 32 pads at your disposal, you can effectively “sound lock” (to stick with Elektron terminology) per-step. And when you consider how quick it is to copy sounds across pads, you can achieve the same results as p-locking, just as efficiently, with the added bonus of being able to then choose whether or not a sound behaves monophonically (à la Elektron) or polyphonically. Plus, you have four assignable parameter slots per-step, per-sound, in the sequencer for tweaking, if that’s not enough.
And you can do all of this with the sequencer running.
Cheers!
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I have had a Tempest for about 5 years and I love it to death. It definitely has a particular sound and to get the most out of it you really need to learn it as it is a very deep polyphonic, multi-timbral synth with percussion features. Understanding how the voice architecture works and how to set retrig of the oscillators is essential. It’s a great machine with fantastic performance features. You can hold down a room playing an entire set using only a Tempest.
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