I was stoked to boot it up and like…what? It’s such a stupid game on all fronts. I get that stealing mechanics works if you’re into that kind of gameplay, but there’s no way that anyone other than pokemon obsessed people enjoy this. Even then, it’s such a poor analog for actual pokemon games. I feel like it’s “success” is all media buzz. Every actual human in my life agrees it’s terrible. Even my partner who is actually pokemon obsessed lol. But the coverage on the internet would have you believe it’s goty contender. I have never felt more convinced that we are living in a simulation lol. I can’t be alone in this, am I? Is there where I learn that I’m that far out of touch? Like, truly, if you enjoy it, good for you. We all have things we love that others don’t get. But like, someone please tell me I’m not the only one lol.
If you were looking for a Pokémon game, you’ve been misled. It’s a crafting survival game that has monster capture mechanics.
It’s pretty fun for what it is, but a Pokémon game it is not.
Conversely, I’ve only heard good things from my friend group and I agree, it’s a lotta fun, at least in the early game. That said, the people I see enjoying it didn’t approach it hoping for Pokémon and aren’t hugr Pokémon fans to begin with. You may have let the controversy and buzz shape your opinions prior to simply experiencing it.
Wasn’t looking for a pokemon game at all. Really had no expectations other than for it to be good. And I just found it lacked in pretty much every front. There are survival games that do the survival thing way better and collector games that are way better at the collecting thing too. And if anything, the buzz shaped my opinion in favor of the game. Which is why I’m so disappointed and confused lol. I only lean so hard on the pokemon comparison because those are the only people I could see enjoying this. The survival is so shallow, I would guess people who truly enjoy survival games would get bored so quickly.
A lot of people like casual survival, which is the same reason Valheim was such a hit.
Plus Palworld has very good tooltips so it is easy to know what is going on. Honestly it is just easily accessible with less punishing survival mechanics and lots of things to so, which explains the mass appeal.
Yeah, your last sentence is a good point. It’s basically a survival game for people who dont really like survival games lol. Thanks for the input!
It’s not for people who don’t like survival games. It’s casual survival for people who don’t want to be ground to dust just trying out a game. Saying they don’t “really” like survival games sounds gatekeep-y.
I sure am glad it lets you set up several world attributes when you play singleplayer, and that it currently lacks PvP. It’s already punishing to have to corpse run as is, imagine it being literally impossible to even get your first pal on any server without being killed by a bunch of griefing tryhards
I was being pithy. Apologies. No intention to offend, just talking video games. Super low stakes here.
Aaaaaand now I understand why looking at gameplay footage really didn’t look all that fun to me. I generally dislike the crafting survival genre. Even No Man’a sky, with how light on the “survival” aspect it is, and as a space nerd with a deep space exploration fetish, didn’t manage to capture my attention for more than 10 hours. The endless resource gathering and crafting time just inevitably bores me to death after a couple of loops. Feels like work, and I am paying for it?
The resource and gathering is part of the exploration, and I rarely feel like I have to intentionally spend time gathering anything I particular. As you build up a base you can add resource things the past can use to gather more of the early resources as you find new things.
That is to day if you don’t it at all, then it wouldn’t be a good fit. But if you don’t like it because most games make it tedious, then this one solves the tedium part at least for the time I have played it so far.
At least in palworld, you don’t have to craft everything yourself. You can just have your workers craft for you!
In a lot of ways, it’s Ark without the material/food grind, ungodly long taming times, and chance of losing your tames.
It does seem to lack underwater exploration (at least for now).
In short, it’s way less punishing than Ark (coming from a longtime Ark player (1,000s of hours) and someone who played ~15 hours of PalWorld). They also fixed a few of the issues Ark had. Namely ( Ark vs Palworld ):
Tames Dying: (Ark has pemadeath for tames vs Palworld lets you Rez with a short 10 minute timer)
Losing Tames: Tames are objects in the world and can be lost in the world or even despawn VS tames are tied to the player or their base. You can always recall your tame instantly.
Taming: spend 20 minutes to hours sitting next to a knocked out dino feeding it berries, meat or kibble hoping it doesn’t get attacked by wild creatures VS see creature, attack it, get it low on health, optionally ice or electric debuff, throw ball(s) at it.
Land claiming: Pillars spammed in the world claiming every square foot to the point where new players starve/freeze to death trying to find a spot they can place a campfire VS each guild can have 3 bases. The base perimeter size is fixed and is centered on your palbox. You get 1 base at base level 1, a second at level 11(I think) and a third later. Can build outside the base but it will be subject to decay and damage from other players.
Base attacks: PvP and random dinos (oh crap, a Titano is wandering near my base) VS PVE base invasion events the game throws at you.
Getting around: On foot, slow flying mounts with limited stamina that can throw you off VS early mounts + fast travel to specific spots on the island.
Feeding your tames: log in to mount the Giga/T-Rex to kill things to refill the troughs VS setting up farms, assign pals to farm, they plant, water, gather, and fill the trough for you.
I almost see it as the EverQuest vs WoW debate. EQ really brought together many of the gameplay elements together (MUD + 3D) but later WoW comes by and offers a more polished, less punishing, and more casual and fun experience.
Gathering ore and coal to make refined metal is still a tedious chore. In singleplayer, shutting down the game makes everything stop. Online, you have to set up a base near several ores, then another near several coal rocks. Even with 2x capture rates, legendary balls fail often against 45+ pals
I’ve played 69 hours so far (Nice.) and I run a dedicated server that is quite busy. Everybody who I’ve introduced the game to are completely addicted, there is definitely something there.
Personally I have mixed feelings about it. Yes most if not all mechanics are borrowed from other games but it is very well put together and that is not nothing. I haven’t had this much fun just exploring a world and unlocking stuff like this in a long time.
It is extremely fun to play even though it is extremely “early access” and quite buggy in some areas, at least for those of us who are able to enjoy it. The world is pretty empty, there really isn’t anything in terms of story or lore but that just has me hoping that they don’t give up on this game and really flesh it out.
For me the hype is dying down a bit, the first 4 days I was basically playing from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. Now I play maybe an hour or two a day, I’d rather not burn myself out on it completely and wait for updates and more content.
It’s not Pokemon. It’s not trying to be Pokemon.
People are comparing it to Pokemon because they wanted the company to expand the world to have games in different genres utilize the monster capturing and breeding mechanics. That’s it.
The pokemon comparisons are mainly because of the pals’ designs. Aurorus + Meganium = Broncherry; Black and white Lycanroc = Direhowl, etc.
Welcome to social media driven bandwagons
It reached the second most concurrently played game on Steam. It didn’t have a lot of hype around it when it was released, tbh. So there’s gotta be something there that you’re missing.
It’s not a Pokemon game. It’s what’s been missing from Pokemon games since Gamefreak and Nintendo squandered the IP so badly with years and years of shoddy garbage release after shoddy garbage release.
This is just a goofy mon-game with guns. It’s closer to ARK: Survival Evolved than it is Pokemon.
It didn’t have a lot of hype? I didn’t see much in the way of advertising, sure, but there certainly was a lot of hype from people about it being pokemon with guns.
I agree that it’s not a Pokemon game, though, the gameplay is completely different. It’s also early access so things are going to develop over time. I haven’t bought it yet, but I’m interested in seeing what it turns into.
No it didn’t have a lot of hype. There was almost no marketing budget for it at all. Nobody talked about it until it was released. There was absolutely no hype for it. This isn’t like Cyberpunk 2077 where millions of people were chomping at the bit for its release. Palworld came out of nowhere and became a favorite organically.
It’s not a Pokemon style game lol, it’s an Ark style game.
I’m having more or less the total opposite experience. All of my coworkers (tech field) are playing and loving it. I’m enjoying it for the exploration and breeding mechanics. Right now I’m trying to breed up the best versions of my preferred team, for no real reason other then because I can.
It’s more Ark then it is Pokemon, people just constantly compare it to the latter because you capture cutesy monsters.
I like that it isn’t Pokemon, and doesn’t tread lightly for younger audiences, which you typically get in games that use this “cutesy” art style.
To me, Palworld is a mix of Ark, Fortnite, Zelda BOTW, Satisfactory, and the best bits of other games that connect up just right to make a genuinely fun experience IMO. It’s not the best graphically or from a UX perspective, but 50 hours in I can tell that the devs knew exactly what they wanted to do, and created something with a lot of unexpected depth that isn’t noticeable in the early game stages.
The only thing really taken from Pokemon IMO is just the monster collecting aspect, and some very similar looking designs for the monsters, which to be honest I would have done the same looking at how much other stuff the game allows you to do, not to mention the endless animations that are unique to each individual monster in the game - faces included!
All in all, the game will feel like a unity project, especially for console/AAA gamers typically used to seeing a certain level of polish and gameplay design. Beneath the rough appearance are some devs that have produced something that is actually fun and engaging. Extremely stable too at release for an early access game, unlike most other “full” games that have released in recent times. A full gameplay loop is about 2 hours, and even then there is still a lot more to discover in game.
I feel there are going to be a bunch of clones popping up, but none are going to have the same impact without the same amount of effort put in, and attention to certain gameplay elements that Palworld just gets “fun” IMO.
The guns and flamethrowers are a nice meme and great for getting people interested, but they are not a key part of the gameplay at all. At it’s core Palworld is a survival monster collector, with light automation thrown in: a genre that it’s kind of created itself
Let’s be totally fucking honest, this game has only sold so many copies because it’s a meme.
It’s a game where you shoot bootleg pokemon with guns. That’s it. If it didn’t have art that could at best be generously described as “remixed” pokemon assets, few people would have cared about it, and even fewer people would have actually bought it. From the very first time I heard of this game a few weeks before its release, I’ve only ever heard it described as a game where you “play as an anime girl and shoot pokemon with guns”. It’s a great game for YouTubers, TikTokers and Streamers to “react” to and “get hype” about (the thumbnails almost make themselves), it’s an easy topic for every game podcast to talk about, and that’s about it.
Whether the developers intended for this to be the case or not doesn’t change the fact that the game is a cheap knockoff of various other games mashed together, and it’s very heavily riding on the coattails of a pokemon aesthetic. If the monsters didn’t look almost exactly like pokemon that everybody knows and loves, nobody would give a damn about this game.
Personally I feel that the runaway success of Palworld shows just how shallow the video game world has become, both from developers and from players. There are so many good games out there that fail to find an audience, while a meme like Palworld sells millions of copies despite being utterly artless and devoid of creativity or individuality. I’m not sure if it’s the influence-economy or what, but I miss the times when the subculture could collectively look at some creatively bankrupt bootleg-ass shit like Palworld and simply laugh it off instead of rewarding people for making low-effort legally-dubious bubblegum trash.
Or maybe I’m just jaded…
Sounds like the music industry: Tons of amazing artists toiling in anonymity, and remixed pablum making all the money.
If the monsters didn’t look almost exactly like pokemon that everybody knows and loves, nobody would give a damn about this game.
Extremely probable, I’d say. Craftopia, their previous game, was pretty much “Breath of the Wild, but with survival crafting”, and sold well on Steam. If you removed the copied aesthetic, in both cases, it would’ve flown under the radar.
There are so many good games out there that fail to find an audience,
Sad but true
while a meme like Palworld sells millions of copies despite being utterly artless and devoid of creativity or individuality.
Now now, there was some effort in making the pals. I mean, some genres have pretty much been done to death, so it’s very hard to be creative. What would be a creative addition to a survival crafting game? Off the top of my head, I can only think of going underground, digging new spaces.
Also, just because it copies from a lot of games, doesn’t mean the end result is bad. If you separate a pizza into individual components, you have things that, by themselves, might be good, but together are much better.
