The Tempest is my favorite synth ever. And I say synth, 'cause I don’t really look at it as strictly a drum machine. I look at it as a versatile 6 voice polyphonic synth with a sequencer. The pads are a dream, hands down better than anything I’ve played before.
As for an all-in-one playground of inspiration and wonder, I’d pick my OP-1. But as a machine that I can find space for on pretty much any song, the Tempest is tops.
Sure it would be nice if it had fully assignable outputs, filter input, sample loading, etc. But it doesn’t and that’s okay. It’s still a wonderful machine that’s a lot of fun to jam on.