Palworld

Palworld
Gotta blast (and catch) 'em all!
Genre(s): Action RPG Monster Taming Survival Third Person Shooter Platform(s): Microsoft Windows Xbox Series X/S Xbox One PlayStation 5 Release Date: Janurary 19, 2024 (early access) September 24, 2024 (PS5) Engine: Unreal Engine 5 Developer(s): Pocket Pair Publisher(s): Pocket Pair Country: Japan

Palworld is a black comedy, open-world, monster-taming, survival action RPG developed and published by Pocket Pair. It launched in early access on Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One worldwide on January 19, 2024. The game is also ported onto the PlayStation 5 on September 24, 2024.

Why It's a Blast

1. To get the Pikachu out of the ball first: the concept of a Pokémon clone with guns is an extremely interesting and darkly hilarious idea. In fact, people quickly gave it a memetic nickname, "Pokémon with guns" because of this.
2. Innovative combat system which involves you battling Pals with weapons (including guns and spears) and your own Pals.
   • It can also be really challenging with stronger enemies constantly keeping you on your toes.
3. Absolutely terrific sense of dark humor in which almost everything (Paldeck entries, Pal animations, and especially ragdoll physics) is filled to the brim with extremely funny moments.
   • In a similar fashion of the Grand Theft Auto series and the Postal series, it often satirizes real-life issues such as sweatshop labor, animal cruelty, slaughter by butchering (albeit censored and bloodless in this game despite the wet slicing sound), poaching, black market sales, and criminal assault, all of which many people find tasteless.
   • In fact, the whole game itself is considered as a satirical parody of Pokémon and its countless clones (like Digimon, Nexomon, Temtem, etc.)!
4. Over 100 Pals to catch and collect.
5. Despite some of the Pals' monster designs coming off as rip-offs (especially of existing Pokémon), some of these designs are either cool, adorable or just plain hilarious. Notable examples include Lamball, Chillet (despite strongly resembling Furret), Anubis, and Mossanda.
   • Some of the human characters also have some interesting character designs akin to the Trainers in Pokémon's main series.
6. Unlike the infamous Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, Palworld has excellent technical performance despite its early access status.
7. Depending on the Pal species, you can either use them as mounts or even weaponizing them against your foes (like using a Foxparks as a flamethrower, for instance).
8. Exploring the huge, open world is more fun and rewarding than how it is in Scarlet & Violet, all thanks to how you can traverse using mounts and how smooth its framerate is most of the time.
9. The ability to craft items and build bases, a la Minecraft, and it's quite involved.
   • You can deploy your Pals to do all the dirty work for you or work along with them when crafting items, cooking, etc.
   • Heck, you can even make useful "Pal Gear" for your Pals, not just gear for yourself.
10. Great music throughout the game, especially the ones for boss battles and stronger Pal battles.
11. Multiplayer is a blast to play with other players, what with guilds and co-op.
12. Pocket Pair promised more new features to be added in the future.
13. The game is fully moddable, which includes a minimap and the ability to fly without losing stamina.
14. Its recent Sakurajima update brings more new content, Pals, and a new boss character, as well as quality-of-life improvements, which makes it feel a lot like DLC.
    • The best part about this update is that it feels like Palworld is receiving free DLCs. Sound familiar?
15. Overall, its a gigantic improvement over Pokémon Scarlet & Violet in every way, as well as a wonderful love letter to fans of not just open-world games in general, but also monster-taming games (especially Pokémon).
    • Even better, some fans hoped this game would help Game Freak open their eyes and fix all the mistakes they've made with Scarlet & Violet and hopefully make the recently announced Pokémon Legends: Z-A and/or the yet-to-be-announced Gen 10 entries better than ever and save the Pokémon main series as a whole.

Bad Qualities

IMPORTANT NOTE (and do NOT ignore this): Despite allegations of plagiarism in terms of monster designs, please refrain from harassing Pocket Pair, let alone sending death threats to them.

1. Due to the game currently being early access, there's a good chance that you'll encounter bugs and crashes in the game (this is especially noticeable in caves/dungeons). Fortunately, the developers are updating the game with patches to fix the problems.
2. Many of the Pals faced tremendous controversy for blatant plagiarism, with the infamous ones being Univolt (which is a recolored version of Zebstrika, despite its usefulness for traversing), Verdash (which is a cross between a Leafeon and a Cinderace), Fenglope (which looks like Cobalion), and especially Grizzbolt (which is obviously a recolor of Zangoose and Totoro from My Neighbor Totoro).
3. Some of the Pals you'll encounter (or try to catch) can be extremely frustrating to deal with, even on the easiest setting. This is especially a problem when dealing with more difficult raid events (in which enemies invade and attempt to destroy your base).
4. The Xbox version of the game is very poorly received by gamers and is considered a inferior port due to crappy optimization, terrible graphics, bad sound quality, and generally suffering more problems than what the PC version did despite getting updates.

Reception

Though its announcement initially faced mixed views, Palworld received extremely positive reception from gamers and Pokémon fans alike upon release, as many see it as an improvement over Pokémon Scarlet & Violet (as mentioned above). However, the game came under fire for alleged plagiarism in terms of monster designs, resulting in toxic haters sending death threats to the makers of the game.

Despite the controversy, the game sold extremely well, with 8 million copies sold in the first six days of early access, eventually rising to over 20 million copies sold as of February 19, 2024 (with the PC version selling more units than the Xbox version). It's also the second-most played game on Steam, having reached over 2 million concurrent on that platform for two weeks.

Trivia

• Due to the Pals' similarities to existing monster from the Pokémon series, this spawned a trend of crossover fan art of both franchises, which escalated into an internet meme.
• The game grew in popularity in Brazil due to the pronunciation of the word "pal" sounding like "pau", which means "wood" in Porteguese that's also considered as a sexual innuendo, resulting in gamers and journalists making puns about it.
• A tweet from Pocket Pair's community chief Bucky hints at that PlayStation ports of this game will be made in the future.

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