Palworld - Casual Gaming Review
Palworld
This game was developed and published by PocketPair.
Think of taking a community builder like Tribes: Primal Builder, a catch and battle game like Pokemon, and a survival game like Ark and merging them all into one.
This game is hot right now with lots of both positive and negative vibes. The Steam charts show how loved the game is, while Pokemon Fanboys are going nuts with copyright claims. (Where were you guys when someone made a Pokemon Minecraft mod Pixelmon though?)
Of course with all the claims people are comparing shapes, colors, and animals with each other. I have even seen memes comparing Monster Rancher to Pokemon, while others mention Digimon. Come on guys everyone is allowed to make their own ducks, horses, deer, etc. Pokemon don't own all the animals in the world.
Gameplay
Now I have been playing on PC myself but one of the people I play with also plays on Xbox. They have done nothing but complain about the bugs and glitches they have encountered on Xbox. Between ground being quicksand that you just fall through the world, to just general lag problems. So I hope you have a PC if you are looking to play this. (There is a soon but not known update that is supposed to come to Xbox)
How the game works starts with, you waking up on this island (it's speculated you are dead and this is the afterworld.) This is after of course trying to make your character as thicc as you can. The level-up system is very similar to Ark. You have technology points to learn new things to make, like stations, armor, weapons, tools, things for your pals, and some other stuff. You also get stat points where you can improve your work speed, health, attack power, weight, and stamina. It's suggested by a few people to put stats just mainly on health, but also some on weight. Some items boost both health and attack, like your armor and there are two assesorie slots.
Base building
One of the first things the game asks you to do is to make a workbench where you can make basic tools as well as balls to catch your pals.
With making the tools you can mine rocks, chop trees, and mine palirum.
You get a base station where you can access all the pals you caught, assign some for work, and also level your base. It's important to place it in a good spot as space is limited. Your pals will only work within that highlighted space. If you place anything outside of the blue area your building will decay, so tell your friend/or yourself to change those settings.
There are a lot of different stations you'll need and areas for your pals to do work too. So you need to make sure there is space in front of each station, so your pals can help. Some areas need even bigger spaces depending on the size of the pals you use. A lot of the water-type serpents get stuck while trying to water crops. Then the assembly lines can't be put too close to each other or the pals won't be able to work on the lines.
Once you level up your pal terminal you'll be able to build more than one base, so utilize that to your advantage.
Raids are fun, they can catch your things on fire, knock out your pals, and break your stations. Yeah super fun. The raids can be NPCs, pals, or a combination of the two.
Pals
There are a wide range of pals you can get. Between catching, hatching, and breeding you have a lot in store for yourself.
Pals have different abilities, passives, skills, and elements. You might end up catching many of the same pals before you get the passives you want, which multiple passives can be on one pal the most I have seen was four, while you can end up with positive, or negative ones. Sometimes you don't get any passive at all. You can hover over the passive to see what it does.
Now I have noticed that as my pal levels up its attacks change, which I wish it would ask me if I wanted them to because it's annoying to go to attack something and it is something you aren't used to. You can find skill fruit to add attacks of your choice to the pals.
Now each pal also has a partner skill, some of those are more for pals you keep at base like for Vixy you can improve their dig skill where they dig up balls, gold, and arrows in the ranch. While for something like a Blazehowl, you would improve their riding ability. Some even improve attacks when you have them out.
There are a few different types of pals, some having two types. Electric, ground, water, fire, ice, dark, and neutral. (I think are all of them)
Adventure
As you wander around you are going to find a wide range of pals and other things on your adventures.
Linkmunk statues can be collected and used to imporve your catch rate, you can find them all over the islands.
Eggs can randomly be found on the map, along with other items like flowers, mushrooms, berries, and even chests. Some chests you can open right away while others need keys. The keys funny enough can be found in the chests you can just open.
Random NPC can be found. There are thugs, merchants, officers, just lots of guys. All of which you can catch just like your pals, but that's bad. On another random note if you catch a merchant you can use them at your base, but there is no way to feed them so pull them out, use it, and put them back in. (You might be able to put them in a cage I have no tested this yet) Some of the NPC have base camps you can raid to save a caged pal making it your own in the process.
There are bosses all over the place, some in dungeons, some in caves, some out in the open, and others in towers. These guys will drop some good stuff, like ancient parts which you need to for a lot of things. The caves will also have chests with accessories that drop as well as other things.
Some materials can only be found in certain places too like quartz, ore, coal, and sulfur. So be strategic in your base locations.
Thoughts
I am so totally not addicted to this game. While I'm not on it 24/7 because I'm an adult with kids I am on it a few hours a day.
As I've played I have seen areas I wish I would have built, but that has to do more with not having explored the map yet.
The most annoying part is when you run out of stamina, I just feel there isn't enough. Even with turning the server to give more it feels like it doesn't do much. I am glad there are custom settings for sure tho, like ark I don't want to wait forever to wait for an egg to hatch.
Pals get stuck a lot, they get stuck inside of things, somehow outside closed bases, under things, and they even get stuck out in the open without touching anything. So you have to very often put them into the box and bring them back out.
It's also annoying when you want them to do a certain task and they do everything but that task despite picking them up and throwing them at that thing. I wish you could set each pals intervals and percent to do that task. If the crusher needs to be done, set that priority over watering crops, or setting the furnace a priority over lighting the torches around the base. I was hoping there was a command center but all I've found was something to just make them work harder.
There is a lag when playing multiplayer, depending on where everyone is it could be worse. It will hit everyone like a wave. Which is kind of funny depending on how many you are playing everyone yelling lag at the same time.
Final thoughts
The pals are adorable, and I've always been a fan of survival games, so this merge of some of my favorite games together of course became an instant favorite. I'm waiting to get a server myself until they introduce cross-platform. I want to be able to play with Xbox players despite all the problems it seems like they are facing. The next question of course would be is it going to go to other consoles as well? I'm also interested in what the PVP settings are going to be like. I would like to keep mine turned off, and maybe turn them on for events or something. I'm not sure how servers are set up, if there are console commands or not but that would be interesting. Maybe designated PVP areas could be set up, or battle arenas.
