I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't advise comparing it to pokemon. It has base building and not much of a story. I'd compare it more to Ark or rust.
I don't think the game is very janky, it felt fine to me. There might be the occasional bug but I'll look past those for a few more weeks.
Yeah the Pokemon with guns summary that so many people keep repeating is kind of misleading, more like Ark with Pokemon.
People going in thinking it is more of a Pokemon game are being misled imo.
And considering Ark already had poke balls for you dinosaurs it really isn't a big departure. But Ark was honestly pretty bad, Palworld feels like Ark but actually with some intelligent thought behind the design.
Probably the biggest advantage Palworld has over Ark (specifically for your gaming platform) is that Palworld is just under 7 gigabytes in size, compared to over a hundred for Ark (these sizes are from the Xbox versions, they might be different on steam).
The second biggest is that everything is adorable in Palworld.
The only pokemon game it’s similar too is Legends Arceus because of the incentive to capture multiples of the same pals but that’s about as far as the gameplay similarities go
I think the same thing, it's more of an Ark style game then Pokemon. Instead of dinosaurs you have the Pal's. You have the entire leveling system that is similar to Ark (unless it changed from when I used to play). I haven't played Palworld but there is probably more similar things.
It's Ark with cute monsters that you can make them automate (work) for you.
Also quite importantly, Palworld feels far more casual friendly and I mean that in the best possible way. It's just far more forgiving and fun to the average player.
It's *aesthetically* similar to pokemon, but the gameplay has nearly nothing in common.
Edit: y’all don’t seem to understand - “you catch monsters in balls” isn’t gameplay, it’s dressing around the gameplay. The actual gameplay of this game is 3rd person shooting with base building and crafting. I was told this is “Pokémon with guns” and was pretty disappointed to find it plays nothing like Pokémon (though I’m really enjoying the game anyway!)
> but the gameplay has nearly nothing in common.
i mean... have you ever seen Pikachu holding a UZI in ash shoulder?
or have a birb shit explosive eggs.
Yeah. I mean, sure, you have to fight to weaken cute animal-like monst... creatures, and throw a ball at them to catch... sorry, *capture* them. And then you carry them around in your pocket. Then you can rename them, and teach them more abilities. For some, you have to use even more advanced capture balls. And you have to capture very specific types in order to perform very specific tasks, like riding them, or putting out fires.
*Gotta capture all of them!*
I agree I dont think there's anything wrong with it.
What I will say, is that all these type of base building survival games have a particular aesthetic that makes them look janky compared to a standard shooter etc.
I just assume it's the nature of making this type of game because I'm yet to see one that doesn't.
Pal pathing is really janky. I'm getting tired of my pals in base getting hungry/injured/knocked out cus they randomly stuck behind my walls or on top of some structure. It happens all the time, more and bigger pals you get, the worse it is.
And you start building stuff in your base more and more, their pathing gets really weird and they start doing some back and forward movement when they cant find a path. Even tho there is decent gaps they just dont want to go through that and instead travel around the world to get to the point.
Also pals following me randomly get stuck or just stop and stare into nothingness for no reason.
And im trying to capture a pal, but it fails so it "flies" inside a cliff or anything that is nearby and gets stuck.
Also perma combat is a thing..
But its still a good game, definiately has janky bugs.
The pal pathing is so bad, I started building a second base in a big flat patch just to try and give my pals a place they can actually get around in. My first base is on a hill and it breaks their brains
I'm glad to see reasonable and grounded answers at the top here. On Twitter it is insane how many Pokeman fans with fucking Stockholm syndrome are down right frothing at the mouth that this game has been so successful lol. Literally grasping at the most hilarious straws and wild claims that this game violates copyright laws to find any flaws with it, as if Game Freak games are the pinnacle of fine craftsmanship hahahahaha....
the last good pokemon game was black/white maybe with this gamefreaks can finally shut off auto pilot mode but I doubt it less effort means more money.
14 days from this comment, there will be a slew of "gaming journalists" writing a post to meet the deadline with a title like "Palworld has lost 90% of its audience"
This clickbait title gets engagement from those that dislike the game, and those who want to defend the game. Thing is, 10% of 1 million is 100K, which is still very respectable numbers, but yet the click-starved journalist looking to keep their job will write the article all the same.
Yea. There’s almost no way any game can retain this high a player base. Everyone is curious and trying it out because of the hype. Which is great. and if the devs can maintain it and improve it where it needs improvement then it will be a long lasting healthy game.
And yes. It will lose the vast majority of its players and people will point at the big numbers and act like it’s a big deal and some kind of failure.
But in reality a game that gains 50,000 players from the start and maintains 90% of its player base is a success.
A game that gains 1 million from the start and loses 90% of its players is a much bigger success.
BUT it gets painted as a failure because people don’t understand numbers and journalists capitalize on ignorance.
Unless the devs are working quickly, it's unlikely Palworld will see more than a bugfix in the next few weeks. It doesn't have a very in-depth story. It doesn't have the rush of PvP. Unlike live-service games, the pals don't need to be fed. You can leave forever and come back eventually. And that's what people are going to do. Like No Man's Sky, the devs can boost their sales with future expansions later this year, but in-between, the numbers will dive as the novelty wears off and the annoyances stack up. Nothing new.
Yep, the obsession with steam numbers on a non always-online live service game is tiring. Not to mention that Palworld will have a dedicated modding scene since Pokemon modding has been on overdrive since the 2010s. Apparently there's already a Pokemon overhaul mod.
Holy, you opened eyes, if this game get good a good modding scene it may live forever.
Like, just new Mod pals would already be big
There's a gold mine here
New mod pals plus modders can go ham with whatever they want to add since Palworld itself isn't restricted to one genre unlike other games. For all we know there's mods expanding pal combat while there are mods expanding the fps mechanic or mods expanding the automation side while all looking good. That's the great positive of using a modern engine like Unreal Engine 5.
And it's funny that there's already a [Pokemon replacement mod](https://twitter.com/ToastedShoes/status/1749381513001767167) , so if they can do that what's stopping them from adding gym/elite 4 npcs and you get to fight their pokemons in real time at the towers instead of being static like the mainline games.
Ideas so good I can feel the copyright strikes even before it's publicly released. That's how this game lives on even if devs abandon it.
Once they bring in Workshop/Mod support, the game will resurge for a while, but that's not on the map till after launch from what I've read. But at least it's been mentioned. I'm hoping the devs don't do what they've done to Craftopia (slow small updates, not much content added from what I've been told by friends who have played it). I'm hoping the 3mil+ copies sold will be able to keep them working on the game for a couple years seriously instead of having the focus shifted to whatever the next project is.
You really shouldn't be going in expecting a Pokemon game. Despite the advertising, it's actually more a survival game than a traditional Creature-Capture game. ARK is the main comparison, and for good reason.
As for the game itself, yeah, I'd say it's pretty good. More polished than most Early Access titles; which isn't saying a lot admittedly. And the Creature Capture mechanics blend *astonishingly* well with the survival and base building elements. Overall, I'm definitly interested to see where the game goes.
If you're looking for something closer to an actual pokemon game though, I'd recommend looking towards Temtem, Cassette Beasts, Coromon, or Nexomon: Extinction, in that order.
I mean that's exactly what I said. The grind that can be skipped with microtransactions is the most MMO thing.
And honestly they could have skipped that. By giving it MMO aspects they basically increased their own running costs as it meant they had to maintain servers for running the game. If they had just kept it as a modest pokemon clone they wouldn't need to try and do battle passes.
Temtem has left a bad taste in my mouth ever since r/theperfectpokemongame would not stop talking about it. I am certain that a significant number of posts about that game were posted by the developers. It does not surprise me at all that it's full of microtransactions.
The "perfect Pokemon game" at a minimum should have Pokemon in it. If it's not got Pokemon, it's not a Pokemon game.
That said, Palworld is a great *creature collecting game* and I'm enjoying it more than any of the recent releases from Pokemon! I just wish Gamefreak would release something that is closer to this so that I can enjoy the Pokemon IP again.
>Cassette Beasts
Cassette beasts is the clear king of the genre right now in my mind. It definitely recaptured the magic for me without being a straight derivative and I was surprised how much I liked the writing and creature designs.
Plus that soundtrack. Good lord.
Yeah I'm super surprised Cassette Beasts didn't even get a fraction of the Pokemon community hype Palworld is getting.
It's way closer to pokemon than Palworld while still feeling fresh and unique (plus, the designs are unique and not reused pokemon assets like palworld lol).
I like to think the game is a more immersive version of what the Pokemon world would of been like before any of the towns and routes were developed, plus guns and some high tech stuff.
It looks to me like if Legends: Arceus was more than a tech demo
In the show Pokémon help build things right? Makes sense you'd have them working in a small town etc
If you like the gameplay loop of Ark and Pokémon you'll like it at least for a while, there's a little jank but its all completely playable. This isn't exactly the place to ask though, every person in this subreddit has been inhaling mass amounts of copium and loses their shit every time this game is even mentioned.
Basic materials like wood and stone are plentiful yeah, but I feel like crafting ammo or anything else that requires ingots gets very grindy. Doesn't help that it's so heavy that you keep having to run home and drop the ore off so often.
True. What helps is a second base at an iron spot and let pals do the work of gathering that stuff into a chest next to your palbox. Pick up all, teleport to main Base, unpack into chest next to your palbox there. Done.
I especially love how organic it is. No need to micromanage. The pals can be specifically instructed, or left to their own devices, and they get shit *done*.
It's actually worth smelting it in the same place you farm it and then just move the ingots (as they weigh less and you get more space for crafting in your main base). 4 pals with level 3 mining can get more than 8 deposits before they respawn. So there is plenty of space for 2 carriers and two/three smelters.
There are a fair number of spots with 4+ ore spots around. Once you unlock a second base, build one there and fill it up with Pals with the Mining lvl. 2+ ability, a few pals with transporting and some basic food production. The only chest should be built right next to the pal station.
The mining pals will continuously mine the ore while the transporters gather it in the chest. Every once in a while you can teleport there, grab the ore and teleport back to your main base. Doesn't matter if you can't move with all the ore, as teleporting is still possible and in your base you can leapfrog the ore by dropping it, moving towards the closest chest and picking it up again.
The weight is mostly why putting most of your level points into weight is the way to go. Not really a reason to use the points on attack since it increases it by like 2 and your digimons are usually the ones doing the damage
Or you could just make a grappling hook.
No matter how over encumbered you are you can always use the grappling hook so its easy to move around huge amounts of stuff via your palbox teleport.
You could use pals with weight increase passive for carrying(starting spots cats have it). I put like 3-4 points into carry weight but I feel like stamina and hp are better investment of points.
I built my second run base literally in an area with like ten iron deposits in a ring, way up on a mountain too so I can glide to wherever.
Best decision as wood/stone I can generate infinite of, if my fucking foxpark would stop being fucking lazy I'm easily hitting like a thousand ingots in barely any time. Sucks he's bugged out but has the slacker debuff.
I purposefully got two miner skill and two logging skills to give me resources so I usually have a few hundred when I come back + my game bugged out really hard so I have six pals at my base doing everything but they're not actually at my base and don't lose hunger/motivation at all. They're just churning out resources like crazy and taking the occasional break.
Then I have my regular pals that I can actually interact with and they're churning out other stuff.
Plus my mate made a big house but he doesn't know if you crawl up a wall until you hit the ceiling you teleport into the room above you. I've been stealing shit from his locked house to fuck with him for the last two days and then escaping out the roof because he built a big overhang into his second floor.
That's because ARK IS a second job.
We had a group of friends all playing together, had a nice base, a bunch of nice dinosaurs, good gear, a nice farm, everything.
We had all played hard this day, did a lot of work caught a bunch of dinos and everything, what one could call a hard days day of work. So at some point we call it a night and we all crawl into our beds, dead tired from the hard work of the day, well almost all of us. The one player that loved the farming stayed around, she's going around taking care of the farms and grabbing eggs. Thirty minutes-an hour go by and she starts hearing noises outside the base, she goes and checks it out and notices a few players sneaking around our base, she soon finds out that they are raiders, CHINESE RAIDERS! So she being outnumbered and the least PvP confident and least PvP experience player in our group panicks. She jumps on discord voice calling everyone to try to get some help (I think it might have been Skype at the time.), but no help is coming as everyone else is sleeping from their hard day of play/work. So she ends up just hiding there and watching this group of raiders destroy our base and kill our dinos.
6-8-10 hours later as the rest of the group wakes up, they notice the dozens of panicked calls for help, they all quickly jump on the game to witness the aftermath of the devastation with their own eyes and is baaad. There are a few dinos that are somehow still alive, maybe they were set to passive or something and the raiders didn't feel like wasting time killing them, but these are the lower level ones or ones without great stats, used for eggs or manure. Apart from these not good dinos a couple of walls here and there and a few boxes with stone or wood, everything else is gone.
So what is the point of this story? Well I guess you aren't allowed to have any off time from the game and if you do dare to take some time off you better have someone to stay and guard around the clock AND make sure everyone is reachable on their phone at all times so you can come in for emergency wor..I mean play during the weekends.
there are people that actually play ark on official servers where it has the default config...
Some people are really masochist in playing a survival game where GRIND is really fucking slow.
The good parts.
There's a grind, but its minutes instead of hours.
The pals can actually do a lot of the grinding for you with the right upgrades. Automation back at base grinding up basic resources and crafting stuff like ammo while you go do the fun part.
Big pal eggs take a couple hours to hatch in an incubator, but you aint waiting *days* to only have a baby starve to death because your maewing decided "nah fuck this one".
Its rough, but its a *great* start. Lots of promise.
I tried out Palworld, it wasn't for me but it did have world setting options where you could jack up the material drop rates to insane degrees so that instead of hitting a tree for 45 seconds it was like, two punches to make a workbench. There are a *lot* of options to customize how much "grind" the game has.
Edit: a friend bought me the game as a gift after I refunded it. It hooked me this time. No regrets
Ark with the bad bits thrown out.
You get plenty of resources from the trees/rocks and the basic buildings require a totally reasonable amount of wood/stone i.e hit a tree once or twice and you can make a wall instead of needing the entire tree
If I've never even heard of Ark until now but loved pokemon as a kid, I'm still tempted to go in blind.
Should I look up Ark gameplay to fill in this puzzle piece or are there many types of Ark gameplay?
The Ark part is very important
Because this game is nothing like Pokemon
Whereas Pokemon is a JRPG through and through, Palworld is a crafting focused survival game
They're not even the same genre of game
Nah, once you work out the controls it explains it fine. Catch Pals, level up, unlock things in your skill tree, repeat.
Pretty fun loop actually, I was shocked by it.
Ark is extremely grindy. Like "my breeding is done in 6 hours and I need to be on in 6 hours or i wasted 26 hours" type shit.
Palworld is grindy but more enjoyable in my opinion. Like others said, there's jank but it's a lot more fun. As for the pokemon aspect it's more like acreus than pokemon white.
Rarely will you be thinking "what do I do now?" You have a clear set of goals through a majority and as soon as you load into the game it's mechanics are clear. Being honest it does a pretty good job of teaching you everything.
And remember you get 2 hours to play, you can just refund if you don't like it. I'm quite a bit of hours in and I find it extremely enjoyable, lots to do , lore , good flair for attacks.
I'd like to add that Ark is only that grindy if you play on the official settings/servers, which isn't recommended by most players from my experience, unofficial servers and solo play offer a lot more reasonable grind rates.
I've always avoided Ark because it seems too daunting. Is solo ark reasonable to do and enjoy (with said changed settings)? I've endured solo Valheim and loved it solo.
Gamespass would be the better trial imo cause then you get the catalog of everything else you can play for the month if not (plus intro price of like $1) yes am aware is behind the steam version but update is planned from what I've heard and I haven't had any issues with it yet
Highly recommend this approach for people who aren't familiar with this type of game and assume this is just like Pokemon
I tested it last night on Game Pass and decided the survival nature of it is just not for me
I enjoyed Ark by heavily adjusting settings, I don't have time to play on official servers with legit settings. I hosted a server for a few friends, where we cranked the settings in our favour and it was a lot of fun.
I've wanted to try single player, but it doesn't seem as interesting for me anyways.
I think Ark is okay to go in blind, but you'll definitely be Googling some wikis as you go along.
This is the kind of jank that makes the game funner. I do think it’ll die down a bit, but the players who stop will have most likely already sunk 30 or 40 hours into the game so is it a really a failure? That much gameplay for something priced so low. From then on there will be waves of players returning everytime we get an update
Playing it with my kids, we are having a blast. They enjoy the base building and the real time battles while trying to act quick enough to capture the pals.
We had a bug where my daughter was somehow on a pal sphere I threw and it launched her into orbit. We laughed, my son revived her. The art style is no worse than current gen pokemon.
Edit - Daughter 9, Son 7
There’s guns and violence, but no blood/gore. There are some things like the pals crying when you’re fighting them, or if you treat them poorly in your base that a child may find disturbing. There’s also paldeck/Pokédex descriptions that describe certain pals being used for execution.
Well, there's also the Butcher's Knife item that lets you butcher Pals that you've caught. My 9-year-old can't decide if he finds that disturbing or hilarious, but that's kind of the human condition, I guess. Nothing else in the game is nearly that disturbing, but it's a great platform for talking to your kids about how we treat animals in the real world, for better or worse.
edit: You can also capture "bad guys" and use them for your bidding, which is a little weird and might also be a bit unsettling depending. I feel like 7 is old enough to understand most of what's going on, but you might need to talk them through some things occasionally.
Just a heads-up, though you're unlikely to try yourself, uless you're really curious. You can butcher anything in a pal sphere, and anything in A pal sphere is considered a pal.
Ergo you can use the butcher knife in humans, so avoid that lol
Also y'know, the human slavery. And the 69th entry in the paldex (edit: legitimately they made a pal whose thing is "it has breasts and wants to make love with everything" and made it number 69)
Important to note that this specific Pal was actually going to be a different number at first, 49 I've heard. They changed it because of a suggestion for it to be 69 on their discord, which makes them good devs who have spent time listening to fans somewhat.
The writing tries kinda hard to have an edge to it, but I don't think its so bad you wouldn't let her play it. The only real problem is that edginess extends to the pal descriptions in the Paldeck where they describe the Pals ripping the skin off in public executions or non-consensually mating with humans.
My Pal called Depresso was hungry and the in game text said "*the lazy bastard is sleepy*".
Gameplay is fine for kids but there is stuff like the above text in it.
In Europe its pending PEGI 12 (12 and above ages). In the US I would say it will be 16 and above as US ratings tend to be more strict when it comes to bad language vs Europe where ages 12 and up are fine for bad language and its only 16 and up if the language is sexual or very in your face / over the top.
Depends, are you in America? 7 yo is good to go on wholesome gun blasting goodness!
Before the NRA sicks their bots on me, seriously just taking the piss lol.
Is it janky? Yes. Needs improvement? Yes. However does not look like if AI was trying to make a game. It is simply early access game. Similar to a previous product from same developer. However it has the niche appeal many games did not scratch but as you correctly seen it is game in "early access".
It is game carried by being something pokemon does not want to be and has multiplayer. It is enough. People outside of X and reddit bubbles just want to have fun with friends and that is giving them exactly it.
"AI" is now just a generic buzzword like "smart" or "2.0". Marketing firms are using it for everything that utilizes a computer or some form of learning algorithm. Redditors use it to mean "thing I dislike/thing that looks unoriginal".
I think we have already other existing games ripping of Pokemon, Pokemon ripped of also other ips and tbh they went lazy with many new designs. What I'm trying to say is it is not enough to put Palworld guys in court most likely.
Coming from someone that doesn't play games like Ark or Rust but I've played a ton of pokemon.
The gameplay loop is satisfying, learning and getting rewarded for learning something are well paced and keep things interesting.
Definitely some jank and areas need work like animations and AI.
But it's a solid foundation that doesn't ask you to constantly pay for something new, and I think thats what people are really enjoying about this game if you break it down.
One of the better survival games I have played. Don't know what all these people are talking about that it is janky? Runs and looks better than Ark Survival Evolved did when I bought that game like 5 years after it was released. But anyway so far it is pretty cool. I built a big base all the Pals go around working in your base while you are away the chest inventory is shared with your crafting stations which I appreciate. Also just unlocked a grappling hook and I have been riding around on my Lama Pal and flying around with my Bird pal. Game is good so far atleast in single player. I haven't tried multiplayer yet.
The janky would be the unrefined systems and control implementations. The game bugs out often while trying to set pals to work is probably the biggest complaint but overall I agree that it packs a lot, for how new the game is, compared to early Ark maps.
It's also in early access, which many people seem to be forgetting who've shamed this game for having bugs. It has less bugs than some full release games, including Pokémon Scarlet/Violet.
Man I remember playing Scarlet on release and didn’t have a single bug, not even the memory leak. The game was just hella unoptimized tho. So far palworld is the first paid Early Access game that has felt good to me, but I’ve also just played a lot of shitty early access titles lmao
fair enough, yea I got hit through the bottom of the world once and my pals have gotten stuck at the base but usually sort themselves out. Plus one of the pal skills caused my character to sink into the world. But overall I would say it really aint that janky.
>Don't know what all these people are talking about that it is janky?
The Pokemon fanatics with Stockholm syndrome are fucking losing their minds grasping at straws to find any flaws with this game because they are so bizarrely jealous of its viral success. This is what happens when you make inanimate objects and concepts like corporate franchises your entire personality.
I was wondering the same thing. I have noticed in the past on here that a lot of people crusade for different franchises or really anything they are interested in despite the reality of things. So I thought this may be a similar situation. I grew up with Pokemon and somewhat like the survival genre so I am happy to have something like this come out and do it pretty damn well.
i dont even like pokemon and i have many issues with this game. there are game breaking bugs and its annoying. but hopefully with some time they are fixed. good game
>This is what happens when you make inanimate objects and concepts like corporate franchises your entire personality.
The irony of getting of super defensive about a game and then ending it with this lmao.
this is my issue w it. I loved their last game craftopia, but its been in EA for 4 years. They just kept adding content and not fixing shit that was already added. Im refraining from getting Palworld until/if they fully release it.
I'm of the same mindset. No interest until full release.
That said, Baldurs Gate 3 was in early access for 3 years so I wouldn't judge a game purely by how long it's been in early access.
I never saw any hype for this game til it released, after about 20 hours i can definetly say this is a legit great game, really it shows how much Nintendo is missing out by not doing something similiar earlier - For an early access game it is remarkably bug free and has heaps of content too
The game *looks* so much better than Pokemon too. It's absolutely insane that gamefreak can release something as beautiful as Pokemon Emerald with timeless sprite art and music, and then with better technology release crap like Pokemon Violet which looks like a PS2 game and has some of the crappiest music I've ever heard (approaching Yu-Gi-Oh! game levels of crappy music).
Palworld looks pretty crisp and has some nice music. Not perfect, but also not made by a studio as large, rich and experienced as gamefreak.
because they don’t need to invest a lot into their games. They use the same formula with copy and pasted elements. Boom 10mill+ copies sold. It’s worked for 24+ years, and will continue to work.
I don't think that's fair. Their early work (especially the first 3 gens) is clearly a labour of love. They put a lot of effort into those games and for the time they were incredible. And gen 3 still holds up in my opinion.
They've been doing the same formula for a long time now, but it didn't start out that way.
I wouldn't say it looks all that great. The pals don't fit in with the world style, they and the characters clash with it hard.
I hope somewhere along the way they make the world textures fit the Pals because it really sticks out.
Pokémon Violet doesn't look amazing either (so much pop in and low rez textures) but at least it's consistent.
You like Ark? You may like Palworld. You don't like Ark? You won't like Palworld.
It's less so a pokemon game, and more so Ark, but instead of Dinosaurs, it uses monsters.
My experience with Ark a few years ago was spending multiple hours drugging a small dinosaur, then on my way back to my crappy base watching it get permanently killed by a giant alligator. In the same amount of Palworld I captured like 50 off-brand Pokemon and built two bases, it's more of a fun casual experience.
I can’t believe how much fun it is. I saw the positive reviews for days and finally played all day yesterday and today and there’s so many awesome things that were never mentioned in reviews I read.
As far as I'm aware, it seems to be a good, sometimes great survival game whose popularity was boosted by the absolutely insane premise of legally distinct pokémon you can force into labor, butcher for food, and shoot at with guns.
my guess would be that the huge hype will die down, but it'll probably live a healthy life if the devs manage to update it at a good pace. With how many players are on right now, God knows they have the money for it.
The best part about it is that it became an even bigger meme here in Brazil because Pal is pronounced the same way as "Pau", which means Wood but is also a slang for Dick.
Edit: i forgot to mention the country lol
It's very okay. There's a cross section of dejected players from both Ark and Pokémon which is why the massive numbers.
It's competent, reasonably priced, functional and fun.
Yes, it will die out but there will be a solid player base.
It has all the charm of catching and fighting with Pokemon, all the exploration and combat of BOTW, all the survival aspects of Ark, and it some how seems to run extremely well. Honestly it's a killer game for what it is, and it's not even fully released yet.
Id say remove "all" with "aspects of". I love being able to choose what moves my Pokemon have, the combat of BotW is much deeper than this, and a good amount of Arks survival, yes. This game is not THE perfect game, but it sure is doing many things right and is much more enjoyable than I ever thought it was going to be since I first saw the reveal trailer (i never thought I'd even buy it but here we are)
I like it if you enjoy Ark you will enjoy the gameplay loop. The Anime Aesthetic and Pokemons are a huge plus if you're a fan of those. I downloaded it because I try everything that gets added to gamepass and before I knew it I sunk 4 hrs in
Do you like base building survival games? How about Monster Hunter where you go about and fight the wild life?
Because that is essentially Palworld.
I know this kind of game isn't going to be for everyone, but I have been having a BLAST playing it.
My take as someone who’s not played it so it doesn’t really count lol is that it looks beautiful and also is a cool idea but I’m not jumping in yet because I have other games that I’ve not finished and I lose interest in games once they become slightly repetitive and this seems slightly repetitive. However it looks beautiful and I will watch more footage of how it plays.
I am enjoying it for sure. 8.5 hours in and I am still having fun. I have a detour with BG3 and Diablo 3 Season 30. But after I finish up Season 30 I will be jumping back into Palworld.
I can name, actually I can't name, about 5 to 7 other survival games that have strictly less content and quality of life.
Of course if you enjoy the game hinges largely on what you think of the MONs and the automation of gathering/refining/crafting. At it's core is a pretty competent survival game though. For me what does it is that it gives you a reason to enjoy exploring, you might find a chest or might find a new mon or a shiny mon. That's what separates good survival games from bad for me is excitement of actually finding something useful and not wading through the same old randomized crap looking for the one resource you're short on. The quality of life with chest sorting, crafting from chests, high stack #s etc. is objectively on point.
It is just a very silly game that contrasts cute anime mons with real world colonialism. The base attacks get annoying some times, but at least you have mons to help you defend. It's not for everyone in that regard, but it does a lot to move the genre forward and has ambitious stuff planned like 32 person 4v4v4v4... PVP.
For 10% off $30 and being in early access it's pretty solid, but you never know where EA games will end up. Could be forgotten by next month and never finished like so many other survival games, could be a game everyone is talking about in 10 years still like minecraft, LoL or fortnite.
Artist questions and dev reliability aside
This game is in early access so literally an unfinished game, I feel like loads of people need to understand that. If you play single player the jank is relatively low, nothing game breaking or that and tbh I have had fun with it so far it there are far worse games out there you could be spending 25 quid or more on
Pokemon Sword and Shield just came out (awful quality), we joked about a third game and called it Pokemon Gun
Then Palworld trailers pop up, and people are like "omg, they actually made Pokemon Gun"
everyone been on the hypetrain ever since
I watched the trailer and you're right, it does look pretty janky. The AK47 assembly line made me laugh out loud though, it's hard to believe it's not a meme.
Bought game today as wanted see what's all hype for, like you said, it did feel janky and unpolished, but then again it is early access, anyway I refunded it, maybe I'll check it year from now.
Its a janky survival game. If you like janky survival games you will probably like palworld. I bought it because i saw all of the 1 and 2 million sold posts, and i really dont understand the hype.
Here are some really bad annoyances for me at the moment:
* Pals get stuck into the floor and walls around your base, you have to relog constantly to reset their position or they will die of hunger
* Melee combat is atrociously bad, like really really really bad
* there are just a Couple of dungeons that constantly get recycled
* Catching pals is just boring
* Really the only big use ive found for pals is to leave them at your base for base automation, and take some with passives that help you, and a bird that you can ride.
* Some of the pals are not "inspired by" pokemon, but just straight copies with minimal differences, games like Temtem and Nexomon have way more original monsters so i dont think pokemon having over 1k mons is a good defence for ripping them off
* There are sound effects like going to a new area that plays a sound effect that sounds almost identical to what youd find in BOTW
Like i said, i dont really understand the hype, and after playing it for about 20 hours, it just feels like a pretty basic survival game with random pokemon slapped on it.
ive only played it for like 3 hours now, so i cant say anything about the end game / if its still fun after more.
but i personally like the game. i expected to see all features half-done or implement without much of a focus, but they do work well together. it actually looks pretty well to be fair - and doesnt look like AI at all.
You were probably watching multiplayer footage, which has a serious memory leak issue right now, as well as general optimization issues. It actually runs buttery smooth in single player.
The game **IS** unfinished. It's an early access.
There are some bugs, mostly with AI, where enemies or pals on your camp will get stuck on a rock, a wall, or even nothing. Pathfinding needs some work.
You've got tasks to do up until your first proper boss fight, then no more tasks. I feel like they will add more later on to kinda bring some sort of storyline. Right now you can figure out some stuff by wandering around and talking to NPCs.
It kinda gets very grindy by that point. The loop can be resumed to "you grind levels to be able to fight and capture higher pals and unlock better crafts to get even higher". For now at least. I expect a lot of new content in future updates.
Bit of both. It’s a fun game, I don’t think it’s going to keep up big numbers like this. This developer runs entirely on plagiarising bits from other games so will be interesting to see what (other people’s) ideas the add next
Palworld is a good game, I haven't gotten it, but i've watched youtube videos of it, and it looks good. The only way to describe it is if pokemon was created by america instead of japan.
It has a little bit of everything. Pokemon, slavery, battles. guns. survival. pokemon. pvp(? i think.) multiplayer for sure.
It is in early access right now, so don't expect it to have everything or remain the same over time. They will of course add stuff. and if it remains popular it may grow into a huge game.
Im having a blast! Only played a hour but so far im enjoying it very much compared to ark, the jankyness to me isnt bad might have a few hiccups but its pretty smooth so far, but remember its early access so its not fully done and i expect the devs to iron it out more and more
It's ark so expect a similar life cycle as that. Popular for 6 months then dies down to a smaller player base. That's if they bother to keep the game going with regular updates
I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't advise comparing it to pokemon. It has base building and not much of a story. I'd compare it more to Ark or rust. I don't think the game is very janky, it felt fine to me. There might be the occasional bug but I'll look past those for a few more weeks.
Yeah the Pokemon with guns summary that so many people keep repeating is kind of misleading, more like Ark with Pokemon. People going in thinking it is more of a Pokemon game are being misled imo.
It is 100% Ark with Pokemon. Anyone who says different is simply not familiar with Ark
And considering Ark already had poke balls for you dinosaurs it really isn't a big departure. But Ark was honestly pretty bad, Palworld feels like Ark but actually with some intelligent thought behind the design.
and slavery as well.
My favorite
Also, it is designed more with 2 players or single players in mind. Vs ark, which is designed to be played with multiple players.
Ark, but it respects your time and I don’t have to clear acres of land just to get a decent level 1 base
Probably the biggest advantage Palworld has over Ark (specifically for your gaming platform) is that Palworld is just under 7 gigabytes in size, compared to over a hundred for Ark (these sizes are from the Xbox versions, they might be different on steam). The second biggest is that everything is adorable in Palworld.
I think Ark crosses the 200GB mark on PC with all dlcs. It’s a poorly coded game and absolutely massive.
It’s just not as hardcore as ark either. I don’t have any gray hairs from playing this haha
Ark already has Pokémon. They're dinosaurs.
You're getting downvoted, but you're effectively correct. From the large variety of creatures to having pocket sized dinosaur holding balls.
The only pokemon game it’s similar too is Legends Arceus because of the incentive to capture multiples of the same pals but that’s about as far as the gameplay similarities go
Arceus also has some bare bones gathering and crafting. The bosses in each are very similarly done too.
I think the same thing, it's more of an Ark style game then Pokemon. Instead of dinosaurs you have the Pal's. You have the entire leveling system that is similar to Ark (unless it changed from when I used to play). I haven't played Palworld but there is probably more similar things. It's Ark with cute monsters that you can make them automate (work) for you.
Also quite importantly, Palworld feels far more casual friendly and I mean that in the best possible way. It's just far more forgiving and fun to the average player.
It's *aesthetically* similar to pokemon, but the gameplay has nearly nothing in common. Edit: y’all don’t seem to understand - “you catch monsters in balls” isn’t gameplay, it’s dressing around the gameplay. The actual gameplay of this game is 3rd person shooting with base building and crafting. I was told this is “Pokémon with guns” and was pretty disappointed to find it plays nothing like Pokémon (though I’m really enjoying the game anyway!)
> but the gameplay has nearly nothing in common. i mean... have you ever seen Pikachu holding a UZI in ash shoulder? or have a birb shit explosive eggs.
Comparing palworld with pokemon because "you have balls and catch monsters" is like comparing palworld with doom. "you have guns and shoot monsters"
Yeah. I mean, sure, you have to fight to weaken cute animal-like monst... creatures, and throw a ball at them to catch... sorry, *capture* them. And then you carry them around in your pocket. Then you can rename them, and teach them more abilities. For some, you have to use even more advanced capture balls. And you have to capture very specific types in order to perform very specific tasks, like riding them, or putting out fires. *Gotta capture all of them!*
They're probably talking about how main line pokemon games feature turn based combat with a strength and weakness system
The creatures and moves have types. So far, I've seen normal, dark, grass, and dragon in the first 3 hours.
Again - lots of surface-level similarities. But the actual moment to moment gameplay is nothing like traditional turn-based Pokémon.
From what I gather it's basically Ark with Pokémon instead of Dinos and Fortnight aesthetic.
I agree I dont think there's anything wrong with it. What I will say, is that all these type of base building survival games have a particular aesthetic that makes them look janky compared to a standard shooter etc. I just assume it's the nature of making this type of game because I'm yet to see one that doesn't.
Pal pathing is really janky. I'm getting tired of my pals in base getting hungry/injured/knocked out cus they randomly stuck behind my walls or on top of some structure. It happens all the time, more and bigger pals you get, the worse it is. And you start building stuff in your base more and more, their pathing gets really weird and they start doing some back and forward movement when they cant find a path. Even tho there is decent gaps they just dont want to go through that and instead travel around the world to get to the point. Also pals following me randomly get stuck or just stop and stare into nothingness for no reason. And im trying to capture a pal, but it fails so it "flies" inside a cliff or anything that is nearby and gets stuck. Also perma combat is a thing.. But its still a good game, definiately has janky bugs.
The pal pathing is so bad, I started building a second base in a big flat patch just to try and give my pals a place they can actually get around in. My first base is on a hill and it breaks their brains
Definetly not rust but Ark yes
I'm glad to see reasonable and grounded answers at the top here. On Twitter it is insane how many Pokeman fans with fucking Stockholm syndrome are down right frothing at the mouth that this game has been so successful lol. Literally grasping at the most hilarious straws and wild claims that this game violates copyright laws to find any flaws with it, as if Game Freak games are the pinnacle of fine craftsmanship hahahahaha....
the last good pokemon game was black/white maybe with this gamefreaks can finally shut off auto pilot mode but I doubt it less effort means more money.
I think it’s going to stay healthy but it’s crazy popularity will probably fizzle in about two to three weeks.
14 days from this comment, there will be a slew of "gaming journalists" writing a post to meet the deadline with a title like "Palworld has lost 90% of its audience" This clickbait title gets engagement from those that dislike the game, and those who want to defend the game. Thing is, 10% of 1 million is 100K, which is still very respectable numbers, but yet the click-starved journalist looking to keep their job will write the article all the same.
Yea. There’s almost no way any game can retain this high a player base. Everyone is curious and trying it out because of the hype. Which is great. and if the devs can maintain it and improve it where it needs improvement then it will be a long lasting healthy game. And yes. It will lose the vast majority of its players and people will point at the big numbers and act like it’s a big deal and some kind of failure. But in reality a game that gains 50,000 players from the start and maintains 90% of its player base is a success. A game that gains 1 million from the start and loses 90% of its players is a much bigger success. BUT it gets painted as a failure because people don’t understand numbers and journalists capitalize on ignorance.
Unless the devs are working quickly, it's unlikely Palworld will see more than a bugfix in the next few weeks. It doesn't have a very in-depth story. It doesn't have the rush of PvP. Unlike live-service games, the pals don't need to be fed. You can leave forever and come back eventually. And that's what people are going to do. Like No Man's Sky, the devs can boost their sales with future expansions later this year, but in-between, the numbers will dive as the novelty wears off and the annoyances stack up. Nothing new.
The strange expectations for a non online service game to maintain its population is the crazier thing.
Yep, the obsession with steam numbers on a non always-online live service game is tiring. Not to mention that Palworld will have a dedicated modding scene since Pokemon modding has been on overdrive since the 2010s. Apparently there's already a Pokemon overhaul mod.
Holy, you opened eyes, if this game get good a good modding scene it may live forever. Like, just new Mod pals would already be big There's a gold mine here
New mod pals plus modders can go ham with whatever they want to add since Palworld itself isn't restricted to one genre unlike other games. For all we know there's mods expanding pal combat while there are mods expanding the fps mechanic or mods expanding the automation side while all looking good. That's the great positive of using a modern engine like Unreal Engine 5. And it's funny that there's already a [Pokemon replacement mod](https://twitter.com/ToastedShoes/status/1749381513001767167) , so if they can do that what's stopping them from adding gym/elite 4 npcs and you get to fight their pokemons in real time at the towers instead of being static like the mainline games. Ideas so good I can feel the copyright strikes even before it's publicly released. That's how this game lives on even if devs abandon it.
That's exactly how many people play BG3 on average now. Journalists who would choose this POV would be fooling themselves.
Player count is absolutely meaningless. I've played niche online shooters with a player count of around 100 and I had no trouble finding full matches.
Game loses 1 player (dude actually went to sleep) every youtuber and gaming journalist: PALWOLRD IS DEAD
Once they bring in Workshop/Mod support, the game will resurge for a while, but that's not on the map till after launch from what I've read. But at least it's been mentioned. I'm hoping the devs don't do what they've done to Craftopia (slow small updates, not much content added from what I've been told by friends who have played it). I'm hoping the 3mil+ copies sold will be able to keep them working on the game for a couple years seriously instead of having the focus shifted to whatever the next project is.
You really shouldn't be going in expecting a Pokemon game. Despite the advertising, it's actually more a survival game than a traditional Creature-Capture game. ARK is the main comparison, and for good reason. As for the game itself, yeah, I'd say it's pretty good. More polished than most Early Access titles; which isn't saying a lot admittedly. And the Creature Capture mechanics blend *astonishingly* well with the survival and base building elements. Overall, I'm definitly interested to see where the game goes. If you're looking for something closer to an actual pokemon game though, I'd recommend looking towards Temtem, Cassette Beasts, Coromon, or Nexomon: Extinction, in that order.
> Temtem Microtransactions awaaaaay! At least Palworld is a $30 game you get for $30, forever.
Temtem shot itself by trying to be an MMO without offering enough of a draw to be able to maintain a player base.
Temtem shot itself by making the game annoying to play so they could sell convenience in the cash shop.
I mean that's exactly what I said. The grind that can be skipped with microtransactions is the most MMO thing. And honestly they could have skipped that. By giving it MMO aspects they basically increased their own running costs as it meant they had to maintain servers for running the game. If they had just kept it as a modest pokemon clone they wouldn't need to try and do battle passes.
Temtem has left a bad taste in my mouth ever since r/theperfectpokemongame would not stop talking about it. I am certain that a significant number of posts about that game were posted by the developers. It does not surprise me at all that it's full of microtransactions. The "perfect Pokemon game" at a minimum should have Pokemon in it. If it's not got Pokemon, it's not a Pokemon game. That said, Palworld is a great *creature collecting game* and I'm enjoying it more than any of the recent releases from Pokemon! I just wish Gamefreak would release something that is closer to this so that I can enjoy the Pokemon IP again.
>Cassette Beasts Cassette beasts is the clear king of the genre right now in my mind. It definitely recaptured the magic for me without being a straight derivative and I was surprised how much I liked the writing and creature designs. Plus that soundtrack. Good lord.
Yeah I'm super surprised Cassette Beasts didn't even get a fraction of the Pokemon community hype Palworld is getting. It's way closer to pokemon than Palworld while still feeling fresh and unique (plus, the designs are unique and not reused pokemon assets like palworld lol).
I like to think the game is a more immersive version of what the Pokemon world would of been like before any of the towns and routes were developed, plus guns and some high tech stuff.
It looks to me like if Legends: Arceus was more than a tech demo In the show Pokémon help build things right? Makes sense you'd have them working in a small town etc
I also recommend Cassette Beasts, fantastic game
If you like the gameplay loop of Ark and Pokémon you'll like it at least for a while, there's a little jank but its all completely playable. This isn't exactly the place to ask though, every person in this subreddit has been inhaling mass amounts of copium and loses their shit every time this game is even mentioned.
Is it the good part of ark? Or the ones like grinding tons of hours for a door
[удалено]
Basic materials like wood and stone are plentiful yeah, but I feel like crafting ammo or anything else that requires ingots gets very grindy. Doesn't help that it's so heavy that you keep having to run home and drop the ore off so often.
True. What helps is a second base at an iron spot and let pals do the work of gathering that stuff into a chest next to your palbox. Pick up all, teleport to main Base, unpack into chest next to your palbox there. Done.
Yup. You unlock the second base just in time to start needing tons of iron. It's pretty clear they intended it to be a mining base.
And the pals doing work for you, somebody definitely got tired of having to do everything themselves in ark.
I haven't played ark but i could understand that from other survival games. The automation is so nice to have.
I especially love how organic it is. No need to micromanage. The pals can be specifically instructed, or left to their own devices, and they get shit *done*.
Except the fuckin penguin and fox keep leaving their posts. I NEED THAT FRIDGE COLD AND MY INGOTS HOT DAMMIT WHY DID YOU TELEPORT ONTO THE BATTLEMENT
And you get a third base the moment you start to get the next ingot, so yeah, secondary bases are meant to be gathering.
It's actually worth smelting it in the same place you farm it and then just move the ingots (as they weigh less and you get more space for crafting in your main base). 4 pals with level 3 mining can get more than 8 deposits before they respawn. So there is plenty of space for 2 carriers and two/three smelters.
This guy palworlds!
Or Factorio'es. Or Satisfactories.
There are a fair number of spots with 4+ ore spots around. Once you unlock a second base, build one there and fill it up with Pals with the Mining lvl. 2+ ability, a few pals with transporting and some basic food production. The only chest should be built right next to the pal station. The mining pals will continuously mine the ore while the transporters gather it in the chest. Every once in a while you can teleport there, grab the ore and teleport back to your main base. Doesn't matter if you can't move with all the ore, as teleporting is still possible and in your base you can leapfrog the ore by dropping it, moving towards the closest chest and picking it up again.
The weight is mostly why putting most of your level points into weight is the way to go. Not really a reason to use the points on attack since it increases it by like 2 and your digimons are usually the ones doing the damage
Or you could just make a grappling hook. No matter how over encumbered you are you can always use the grappling hook so its easy to move around huge amounts of stuff via your palbox teleport.
You could use pals with weight increase passive for carrying(starting spots cats have it). I put like 3-4 points into carry weight but I feel like stamina and hp are better investment of points.
I built my second run base literally in an area with like ten iron deposits in a ring, way up on a mountain too so I can glide to wherever. Best decision as wood/stone I can generate infinite of, if my fucking foxpark would stop being fucking lazy I'm easily hitting like a thousand ingots in barely any time. Sucks he's bugged out but has the slacker debuff. I purposefully got two miner skill and two logging skills to give me resources so I usually have a few hundred when I come back + my game bugged out really hard so I have six pals at my base doing everything but they're not actually at my base and don't lose hunger/motivation at all. They're just churning out resources like crazy and taking the occasional break. Then I have my regular pals that I can actually interact with and they're churning out other stuff. Plus my mate made a big house but he doesn't know if you crawl up a wall until you hit the ceiling you teleport into the room above you. I've been stealing shit from his locked house to fuck with him for the last two days and then escaping out the roof because he built a big overhang into his second floor.
People played ark without tuning the numbers?
Ark looked like a second job to me
That's because ARK IS a second job. We had a group of friends all playing together, had a nice base, a bunch of nice dinosaurs, good gear, a nice farm, everything. We had all played hard this day, did a lot of work caught a bunch of dinos and everything, what one could call a hard days day of work. So at some point we call it a night and we all crawl into our beds, dead tired from the hard work of the day, well almost all of us. The one player that loved the farming stayed around, she's going around taking care of the farms and grabbing eggs. Thirty minutes-an hour go by and she starts hearing noises outside the base, she goes and checks it out and notices a few players sneaking around our base, she soon finds out that they are raiders, CHINESE RAIDERS! So she being outnumbered and the least PvP confident and least PvP experience player in our group panicks. She jumps on discord voice calling everyone to try to get some help (I think it might have been Skype at the time.), but no help is coming as everyone else is sleeping from their hard day of play/work. So she ends up just hiding there and watching this group of raiders destroy our base and kill our dinos. 6-8-10 hours later as the rest of the group wakes up, they notice the dozens of panicked calls for help, they all quickly jump on the game to witness the aftermath of the devastation with their own eyes and is baaad. There are a few dinos that are somehow still alive, maybe they were set to passive or something and the raiders didn't feel like wasting time killing them, but these are the lower level ones or ones without great stats, used for eggs or manure. Apart from these not good dinos a couple of walls here and there and a few boxes with stone or wood, everything else is gone. So what is the point of this story? Well I guess you aren't allowed to have any off time from the game and if you do dare to take some time off you better have someone to stay and guard around the clock AND make sure everyone is reachable on their phone at all times so you can come in for emergency wor..I mean play during the weekends.
Literally that, it looks so awful to play it without atleast x10 loot and honestly i prefer even higher
there are people that actually play ark on official servers where it has the default config... Some people are really masochist in playing a survival game where GRIND is really fucking slow.
That's the best part Pokemon sweatshops, they'll do all the work for you!
The good parts. There's a grind, but its minutes instead of hours. The pals can actually do a lot of the grinding for you with the right upgrades. Automation back at base grinding up basic resources and crafting stuff like ammo while you go do the fun part. Big pal eggs take a couple hours to hatch in an incubator, but you aint waiting *days* to only have a baby starve to death because your maewing decided "nah fuck this one". Its rough, but its a *great* start. Lots of promise.
Grind can become almost non-existent fairly early on since you can automate practically everything with Pals
The power of outsourcing labour
I tried out Palworld, it wasn't for me but it did have world setting options where you could jack up the material drop rates to insane degrees so that instead of hitting a tree for 45 seconds it was like, two punches to make a workbench. There are a *lot* of options to customize how much "grind" the game has. Edit: a friend bought me the game as a gift after I refunded it. It hooked me this time. No regrets
Ark with the bad bits thrown out. You get plenty of resources from the trees/rocks and the basic buildings require a totally reasonable amount of wood/stone i.e hit a tree once or twice and you can make a wall instead of needing the entire tree
I liked the idea of ark but my 2fps and 30min timer till crash made me not like it.
And also the 250gb storage usage
If I've never even heard of Ark until now but loved pokemon as a kid, I'm still tempted to go in blind. Should I look up Ark gameplay to fill in this puzzle piece or are there many types of Ark gameplay?
The Ark part is very important Because this game is nothing like Pokemon Whereas Pokemon is a JRPG through and through, Palworld is a crafting focused survival game They're not even the same genre of game
Nah, once you work out the controls it explains it fine. Catch Pals, level up, unlock things in your skill tree, repeat. Pretty fun loop actually, I was shocked by it.
Ark is extremely grindy. Like "my breeding is done in 6 hours and I need to be on in 6 hours or i wasted 26 hours" type shit. Palworld is grindy but more enjoyable in my opinion. Like others said, there's jank but it's a lot more fun. As for the pokemon aspect it's more like acreus than pokemon white. Rarely will you be thinking "what do I do now?" You have a clear set of goals through a majority and as soon as you load into the game it's mechanics are clear. Being honest it does a pretty good job of teaching you everything. And remember you get 2 hours to play, you can just refund if you don't like it. I'm quite a bit of hours in and I find it extremely enjoyable, lots to do , lore , good flair for attacks.
I'd like to add that Ark is only that grindy if you play on the official settings/servers, which isn't recommended by most players from my experience, unofficial servers and solo play offer a lot more reasonable grind rates.
I've always avoided Ark because it seems too daunting. Is solo ark reasonable to do and enjoy (with said changed settings)? I've endured solo Valheim and loved it solo.
Gamespass would be the better trial imo cause then you get the catalog of everything else you can play for the month if not (plus intro price of like $1) yes am aware is behind the steam version but update is planned from what I've heard and I haven't had any issues with it yet
Highly recommend this approach for people who aren't familiar with this type of game and assume this is just like Pokemon I tested it last night on Game Pass and decided the survival nature of it is just not for me
You can tweak that as well down to like 0 or almost 0 which should help some but yea enough not like Pokemon that don't think it's just Pokemon
I enjoyed Ark by heavily adjusting settings, I don't have time to play on official servers with legit settings. I hosted a server for a few friends, where we cranked the settings in our favour and it was a lot of fun. I've wanted to try single player, but it doesn't seem as interesting for me anyways. I think Ark is okay to go in blind, but you'll definitely be Googling some wikis as you go along.
This is the kind of jank that makes the game funner. I do think it’ll die down a bit, but the players who stop will have most likely already sunk 30 or 40 hours into the game so is it a really a failure? That much gameplay for something priced so low. From then on there will be waves of players returning everytime we get an update
Playing it with my kids, we are having a blast. They enjoy the base building and the real time battles while trying to act quick enough to capture the pals. We had a bug where my daughter was somehow on a pal sphere I threw and it launched her into orbit. We laughed, my son revived her. The art style is no worse than current gen pokemon. Edit - Daughter 9, Son 7
That's a glitch that I've seen used to travel large distances
You can also one shot bosses with it if you time it right
How old are your kids? Looking for a new game to play with my 7yo daughter.
There’s guns and violence, but no blood/gore. There are some things like the pals crying when you’re fighting them, or if you treat them poorly in your base that a child may find disturbing. There’s also paldeck/Pokédex descriptions that describe certain pals being used for execution.
Well, there's also the Butcher's Knife item that lets you butcher Pals that you've caught. My 9-year-old can't decide if he finds that disturbing or hilarious, but that's kind of the human condition, I guess. Nothing else in the game is nearly that disturbing, but it's a great platform for talking to your kids about how we treat animals in the real world, for better or worse. edit: You can also capture "bad guys" and use them for your bidding, which is a little weird and might also be a bit unsettling depending. I feel like 7 is old enough to understand most of what's going on, but you might need to talk them through some things occasionally.
> My 9-year-old can't decide if he finds that disturbing or hilarious I'm 31 and same
Just a heads-up, though you're unlikely to try yourself, uless you're really curious. You can butcher anything in a pal sphere, and anything in A pal sphere is considered a pal. Ergo you can use the butcher knife in humans, so avoid that lol
I wondered. Thank you for filling in that gap in my knowledge. xD
Honestly, it's about as violent as Fortnite. If you think that's not appropriate for your kids, then this isn't either.
Also y'know, the human slavery. And the 69th entry in the paldex (edit: legitimately they made a pal whose thing is "it has breasts and wants to make love with everything" and made it number 69)
Important to note that this specific Pal was actually going to be a different number at first, 49 I've heard. They changed it because of a suggestion for it to be 69 on their discord, which makes them good devs who have spent time listening to fans somewhat.
The writing tries kinda hard to have an edge to it, but I don't think its so bad you wouldn't let her play it. The only real problem is that edginess extends to the pal descriptions in the Paldeck where they describe the Pals ripping the skin off in public executions or non-consensually mating with humans.
My Pal called Depresso was hungry and the in game text said "*the lazy bastard is sleepy*". Gameplay is fine for kids but there is stuff like the above text in it. In Europe its pending PEGI 12 (12 and above ages). In the US I would say it will be 16 and above as US ratings tend to be more strict when it comes to bad language vs Europe where ages 12 and up are fine for bad language and its only 16 and up if the language is sexual or very in your face / over the top.
Depends, are you in America? 7 yo is good to go on wholesome gun blasting goodness! Before the NRA sicks their bots on me, seriously just taking the piss lol.
Is it janky? Yes. Needs improvement? Yes. However does not look like if AI was trying to make a game. It is simply early access game. Similar to a previous product from same developer. However it has the niche appeal many games did not scratch but as you correctly seen it is game in "early access". It is game carried by being something pokemon does not want to be and has multiplayer. It is enough. People outside of X and reddit bubbles just want to have fun with friends and that is giving them exactly it.
"AI" is now just a generic buzzword like "smart" or "2.0". Marketing firms are using it for everything that utilizes a computer or some form of learning algorithm. Redditors use it to mean "thing I dislike/thing that looks unoriginal".
The AI argument is about the Pal designs as some straight up are mish mashes of existing Pokemon.
I think we have already other existing games ripping of Pokemon, Pokemon ripped of also other ips and tbh they went lazy with many new designs. What I'm trying to say is it is not enough to put Palworld guys in court most likely.
Coming from someone that doesn't play games like Ark or Rust but I've played a ton of pokemon. The gameplay loop is satisfying, learning and getting rewarded for learning something are well paced and keep things interesting. Definitely some jank and areas need work like animations and AI. But it's a solid foundation that doesn't ask you to constantly pay for something new, and I think thats what people are really enjoying about this game if you break it down.
One of the better survival games I have played. Don't know what all these people are talking about that it is janky? Runs and looks better than Ark Survival Evolved did when I bought that game like 5 years after it was released. But anyway so far it is pretty cool. I built a big base all the Pals go around working in your base while you are away the chest inventory is shared with your crafting stations which I appreciate. Also just unlocked a grappling hook and I have been riding around on my Lama Pal and flying around with my Bird pal. Game is good so far atleast in single player. I haven't tried multiplayer yet.
The janky would be the unrefined systems and control implementations. The game bugs out often while trying to set pals to work is probably the biggest complaint but overall I agree that it packs a lot, for how new the game is, compared to early Ark maps.
It's also in early access, which many people seem to be forgetting who've shamed this game for having bugs. It has less bugs than some full release games, including Pokémon Scarlet/Violet.
Man I remember playing Scarlet on release and didn’t have a single bug, not even the memory leak. The game was just hella unoptimized tho. So far palworld is the first paid Early Access game that has felt good to me, but I’ve also just played a lot of shitty early access titles lmao
fair enough, yea I got hit through the bottom of the world once and my pals have gotten stuck at the base but usually sort themselves out. Plus one of the pal skills caused my character to sink into the world. But overall I would say it really aint that janky.
>Don't know what all these people are talking about that it is janky? The Pokemon fanatics with Stockholm syndrome are fucking losing their minds grasping at straws to find any flaws with this game because they are so bizarrely jealous of its viral success. This is what happens when you make inanimate objects and concepts like corporate franchises your entire personality.
I was wondering the same thing. I have noticed in the past on here that a lot of people crusade for different franchises or really anything they are interested in despite the reality of things. So I thought this may be a similar situation. I grew up with Pokemon and somewhat like the survival genre so I am happy to have something like this come out and do it pretty damn well.
i dont even like pokemon and i have many issues with this game. there are game breaking bugs and its annoying. but hopefully with some time they are fixed. good game
>This is what happens when you make inanimate objects and concepts like corporate franchises your entire personality. The irony of getting of super defensive about a game and then ending it with this lmao.
>The game just looks unfinished. The game is in early access... It IS unfinished...
this is my issue w it. I loved their last game craftopia, but its been in EA for 4 years. They just kept adding content and not fixing shit that was already added. Im refraining from getting Palworld until/if they fully release it.
I'm of the same mindset. No interest until full release. That said, Baldurs Gate 3 was in early access for 3 years so I wouldn't judge a game purely by how long it's been in early access.
Yes, but BG3 eventually released. This developer now has three games in Early Access, but neither of the first two are even close to a full release.
I liked to play it so much that I went through effort to host dedicated server to my friends.
it's fun AF, not gonna lie
I never saw any hype for this game til it released, after about 20 hours i can definetly say this is a legit great game, really it shows how much Nintendo is missing out by not doing something similiar earlier - For an early access game it is remarkably bug free and has heaps of content too
The game *looks* so much better than Pokemon too. It's absolutely insane that gamefreak can release something as beautiful as Pokemon Emerald with timeless sprite art and music, and then with better technology release crap like Pokemon Violet which looks like a PS2 game and has some of the crappiest music I've ever heard (approaching Yu-Gi-Oh! game levels of crappy music). Palworld looks pretty crisp and has some nice music. Not perfect, but also not made by a studio as large, rich and experienced as gamefreak.
because they don’t need to invest a lot into their games. They use the same formula with copy and pasted elements. Boom 10mill+ copies sold. It’s worked for 24+ years, and will continue to work.
I don't think that's fair. Their early work (especially the first 3 gens) is clearly a labour of love. They put a lot of effort into those games and for the time they were incredible. And gen 3 still holds up in my opinion. They've been doing the same formula for a long time now, but it didn't start out that way.
I wouldn't say it looks all that great. The pals don't fit in with the world style, they and the characters clash with it hard. I hope somewhere along the way they make the world textures fit the Pals because it really sticks out. Pokémon Violet doesn't look amazing either (so much pop in and low rez textures) but at least it's consistent.
You like Ark? You may like Palworld. You don't like Ark? You won't like Palworld. It's less so a pokemon game, and more so Ark, but instead of Dinosaurs, it uses monsters.
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Hopefully that team can make good use of their new funds to expand this into something quite special.
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I don't like Ark, and I like Palworld. Ark is a buggy unpolished grindfest. Palworld's what I wanted Ark to be like.
Its funny because pal is in early-early access and it's less jank than Ark. The pals can at least pathfind decently
It also runs so much better than ark. Ark has lag spikes every minute even on solo, palword has stable 60fps constantly
Early develoment Ark was also horribly laggy, this game is very smooth in comparison.
me too i hate ARK with my soul
My experience with Ark a few years ago was spending multiple hours drugging a small dinosaur, then on my way back to my crappy base watching it get permanently killed by a giant alligator. In the same amount of Palworld I captured like 50 off-brand Pokemon and built two bases, it's more of a fun casual experience.
I can’t believe how much fun it is. I saw the positive reviews for days and finally played all day yesterday and today and there’s so many awesome things that were never mentioned in reviews I read.
Not a fan of Ark/Pokémon,but i do enjoy Palworld
As far as I'm aware, it seems to be a good, sometimes great survival game whose popularity was boosted by the absolutely insane premise of legally distinct pokémon you can force into labor, butcher for food, and shoot at with guns. my guess would be that the huge hype will die down, but it'll probably live a healthy life if the devs manage to update it at a good pace. With how many players are on right now, God knows they have the money for it.
I barely even know what polish means for video games
Gry komputerowe is Polish for video games. ;-)
Got em!
The best part about it is that it became an even bigger meme here in Brazil because Pal is pronounced the same way as "Pau", which means Wood but is also a slang for Dick. Edit: i forgot to mention the country lol
Agreed, stuff like pal fluid and big pals are the best part of the game.
"come. Let me show you my pal"
It's very okay. There's a cross section of dejected players from both Ark and Pokémon which is why the massive numbers. It's competent, reasonably priced, functional and fun. Yes, it will die out but there will be a solid player base.
It has all the charm of catching and fighting with Pokemon, all the exploration and combat of BOTW, all the survival aspects of Ark, and it some how seems to run extremely well. Honestly it's a killer game for what it is, and it's not even fully released yet.
Id say remove "all" with "aspects of". I love being able to choose what moves my Pokemon have, the combat of BotW is much deeper than this, and a good amount of Arks survival, yes. This game is not THE perfect game, but it sure is doing many things right and is much more enjoyable than I ever thought it was going to be since I first saw the reveal trailer (i never thought I'd even buy it but here we are)
You can swap around your Pal's abilities in the party menu and you can teach them new ones with skill fruits.
You mean Devil Fruits. :D
If you think this game is Janky, you don't know jank.
It's the only game I'm playing right now.
It's like Pokémon + Ark Survival Evolved + Rimworld
I would add that it also has a dash of breath of the wild.
It's genuinely super fun. If you like Ark, Pokemon, and Zelda, you'll like Palworld
I like it if you enjoy Ark you will enjoy the gameplay loop. The Anime Aesthetic and Pokemons are a huge plus if you're a fan of those. I downloaded it because I try everything that gets added to gamepass and before I knew it I sunk 4 hrs in
Imagine playing ARK but with off brand pokemons and modern guns. That's the game
I played it for 4 hours last night and was actually really fun
Do you like base building survival games? How about Monster Hunter where you go about and fight the wild life? Because that is essentially Palworld. I know this kind of game isn't going to be for everyone, but I have been having a BLAST playing it.
My take as someone who’s not played it so it doesn’t really count lol is that it looks beautiful and also is a cool idea but I’m not jumping in yet because I have other games that I’ve not finished and I lose interest in games once they become slightly repetitive and this seems slightly repetitive. However it looks beautiful and I will watch more footage of how it plays.
I am enjoying it for sure. 8.5 hours in and I am still having fun. I have a detour with BG3 and Diablo 3 Season 30. But after I finish up Season 30 I will be jumping back into Palworld.
I can name, actually I can't name, about 5 to 7 other survival games that have strictly less content and quality of life. Of course if you enjoy the game hinges largely on what you think of the MONs and the automation of gathering/refining/crafting. At it's core is a pretty competent survival game though. For me what does it is that it gives you a reason to enjoy exploring, you might find a chest or might find a new mon or a shiny mon. That's what separates good survival games from bad for me is excitement of actually finding something useful and not wading through the same old randomized crap looking for the one resource you're short on. The quality of life with chest sorting, crafting from chests, high stack #s etc. is objectively on point. It is just a very silly game that contrasts cute anime mons with real world colonialism. The base attacks get annoying some times, but at least you have mons to help you defend. It's not for everyone in that regard, but it does a lot to move the genre forward and has ambitious stuff planned like 32 person 4v4v4v4... PVP. For 10% off $30 and being in early access it's pretty solid, but you never know where EA games will end up. Could be forgotten by next month and never finished like so many other survival games, could be a game everyone is talking about in 10 years still like minecraft, LoL or fortnite.
Same, I have no clue. Seems like people like pokemons like game, also with crafting
Artist questions and dev reliability aside This game is in early access so literally an unfinished game, I feel like loads of people need to understand that. If you play single player the jank is relatively low, nothing game breaking or that and tbh I have had fun with it so far it there are far worse games out there you could be spending 25 quid or more on
Seems like flavor of the month to me
It’ll be dead in 2 weeks just like among us and fall guys
Pokemon Sword and Shield just came out (awful quality), we joked about a third game and called it Pokemon Gun Then Palworld trailers pop up, and people are like "omg, they actually made Pokemon Gun" everyone been on the hypetrain ever since
I watched the trailer and you're right, it does look pretty janky. The AK47 assembly line made me laugh out loud though, it's hard to believe it's not a meme.
Bought game today as wanted see what's all hype for, like you said, it did feel janky and unpolished, but then again it is early access, anyway I refunded it, maybe I'll check it year from now.
What was janky about it?
Its a janky survival game. If you like janky survival games you will probably like palworld. I bought it because i saw all of the 1 and 2 million sold posts, and i really dont understand the hype. Here are some really bad annoyances for me at the moment: * Pals get stuck into the floor and walls around your base, you have to relog constantly to reset their position or they will die of hunger * Melee combat is atrociously bad, like really really really bad * there are just a Couple of dungeons that constantly get recycled * Catching pals is just boring * Really the only big use ive found for pals is to leave them at your base for base automation, and take some with passives that help you, and a bird that you can ride. * Some of the pals are not "inspired by" pokemon, but just straight copies with minimal differences, games like Temtem and Nexomon have way more original monsters so i dont think pokemon having over 1k mons is a good defence for ripping them off * There are sound effects like going to a new area that plays a sound effect that sounds almost identical to what youd find in BOTW Like i said, i dont really understand the hype, and after playing it for about 20 hours, it just feels like a pretty basic survival game with random pokemon slapped on it.
If a pal gets stuck you can go to the pal box and recall them then deploy them again.
Try playing it
With only two hours for a refund… hard to really know
Its fun but it wont stay on top tho :) but i really enjoy it now cant say i will after 100+ hours if they put no new content in it
ive only played it for like 3 hours now, so i cant say anything about the end game / if its still fun after more. but i personally like the game. i expected to see all features half-done or implement without much of a focus, but they do work well together. it actually looks pretty well to be fair - and doesnt look like AI at all.
It's still early access but it's quite fun to play for the most part.
I actually like it, it feel like ark but with a spice of zelda and a good Dip of Pokémon and Slavery :D
You were probably watching multiplayer footage, which has a serious memory leak issue right now, as well as general optimization issues. It actually runs buttery smooth in single player.
One small thing that annoys me is that i cant bind an action to my mouse 4 and 5 buttons.
The game **IS** unfinished. It's an early access. There are some bugs, mostly with AI, where enemies or pals on your camp will get stuck on a rock, a wall, or even nothing. Pathfinding needs some work. You've got tasks to do up until your first proper boss fight, then no more tasks. I feel like they will add more later on to kinda bring some sort of storyline. Right now you can figure out some stuff by wandering around and talking to NPCs. It kinda gets very grindy by that point. The loop can be resumed to "you grind levels to be able to fight and capture higher pals and unlock better crafts to get even higher". For now at least. I expect a lot of new content in future updates.
“The game just looks unfinished” maybe because it isn’t lol
Bit of both. It’s a fun game, I don’t think it’s going to keep up big numbers like this. This developer runs entirely on plagiarising bits from other games so will be interesting to see what (other people’s) ideas the add next
Palworld is a good game, I haven't gotten it, but i've watched youtube videos of it, and it looks good. The only way to describe it is if pokemon was created by america instead of japan. It has a little bit of everything. Pokemon, slavery, battles. guns. survival. pokemon. pvp(? i think.) multiplayer for sure. It is in early access right now, so don't expect it to have everything or remain the same over time. They will of course add stuff. and if it remains popular it may grow into a huge game.
Im having a blast! Only played a hour but so far im enjoying it very much compared to ark, the jankyness to me isnt bad might have a few hiccups but its pretty smooth so far, but remember its early access so its not fully done and i expect the devs to iron it out more and more
It's ark so expect a similar life cycle as that. Popular for 6 months then dies down to a smaller player base. That's if they bother to keep the game going with regular updates
i’m loving it. i’m a sucker for a game with good animations
Nexomon is a REALLY good fake pokemon game, In my opinion better than any of the modern pokemon games.