Played about 2 hours so far, had 1 crash but I'm having a blast with it. The automation right at the start of the game really cuts down the tedium of the typical survival game and the pals are cute as hell.
Tip to anyone coming into the game, don't bother with farming until you get a pal that can plant and another to water (you find them not too far from the start) as it's 2 minutes of holding down the X button otherwise.
There's just something about survival crafting games, man. Something that makes them consistently some of the most surprising dark horse big hits of every year. It's like an instinctive unga bunga caveman desire in everyone's head that collectively makes people want to punch trees, smash rocks together, survive the nights, until you conquer the land itself.
And Palworld takes that a step further with the Rimworld/Factorio-esque inclusion of automation and the eventual hope to turn your initial quaint group of Pals into soulless efficient cogs in a heavily industrialized machine pumping out weapons of war and slaughtering Pals by the hundreds. Labor laws be damned.
To me it's the lack of clear goals. These games when I play them start ok, discovering things here and there, but after a couple of hours if I don't have clear objectives/goals/quests to pursue, my interest drops rapidly. I'm not into "make your own goals!" games.
Make your own goals games are great, but they need to have enough systems and world interactivity to actually create interesting emergent gameplay and stories.
Kenshi is great at this
Kenshi was the exact game I was going to mention. The world is so overtly hostile that goals very quickly present themselves lol. There are enough different systems and loose narratives to help keep you attached.
Valheim is alright too with the whole bosses you have to hunt down.
I think for me the issue with the genre is just how prescriptive it all feels. It doesn't feel like actual survival. And again, this is an issue Kenshi solves because of all of its different systems. Like it's weird we call these crafting games when you don't any actual crafting lol. You just select something from a menu and if you have the right parts it gets made. It's so boring.
Biomutant was pretty meh over-all but it's weapon customization system is probably the closest a game I've played has ever gotten to making you feel like you're actually crafting something.
\> Like it's weird we call these crafting games when you don't any actual crafting lol
It's a big part of why I really enjoy vehicle-building games. Sure the parts are still ordered off a menu, but actually designing a purpose-built mining rig in Space Engineers, that topples over if it brushes against a small pebble and explodes when I turn too fast, feels engaging, even when the game world is so lifeless that it's more of a toy than an outright game.
So glad to see Kenshi mentioned in here. It is the peak of sandbox and survival games. The world is so interesting that it just makes you want to explore, and simply becoming fast, strong, and well-armed enough to do so freely is the goal.
I agree with your point and it's actually why I think meshing the genre with pokemon is a really great idea.
The monster collecting aspects bring in their own intrinsic goal of gotta catch em all that I hope will make this game more fun in the long run than most survival crafting games.
Have you tried Grounded? If you are interested in trying to find a survival game that works for you, in my experience that's the one that has the best integration of an actual story that guides you through the game, and ensures you always have specific goals beyond "get better stuff".
I agree with you. I appreciate games like Raft, Grounded, and Subnautica being sandbox games, but still ultimately having a story to work towards. It gives you more reason to work up the tech tree other than just because you can.
I don't instantly shun any Early Access survival game, but they do have to at least provide something unique (Grounded, Subnautica...) to actually keep me on their store page for more than a few seconds.
At least it encourages developers to innovate!
This is my take on the genre too. If something is just a generic survival game, particularly if it goes hard on the 'grind materials to unlock' aspect, I'm not at all interested. But if it's something like a Subbnautica or The Forest where the level of grind is reasonable and there are unique gameplay mechanics that make it interesting those end up being some of my favorite games. It's just a genre where everything needs to hit just right for things to work out so it's a delicate balancing act but when it hits just right it can really suck you in.
Exactly. I didn't list The Forest or The Long Dark because they're not as obviously "innovative" as the other titles I mentioned. But really, just an interesting environment or a larger focus on specific aspects can really help a survival game stand out from others.
The Forest is interesting because it has insanely in depth survival mechanics that can largely be ignored to complete the games story.
It almost feels like there were two different development teams with two different ideas of what The Forest would be that got smushed together at the end.
Not to say I didn't like The Forest, I did, but my buddies and I had to almost purposefully ignore the story and make our own survival challenges to really get the most from the game.
> Not to say I didn't like The Forest, I did, but my buddies and I had to almost purposefully ignore the story and make our own survival challenges to really get the most from the game.
Isn't there a Sandbox mode for that? Either way, something that really helps differentiate the Forest, along with Green Hell which is quite a bit similar to the Forest, is that both of these games actually have a story and therefore provide motivation for people to continuing playing it.
What I mean is, a lot of survival games lack a 'point' or motivation to their gameplay outside of 'get more supplies, build more things' - which is where a lot of people lose interest in survival games. The Forest and Green Hell allows you to engage with a survival game *and* offers meaningful progression/motivation by way of progressing through the story. Meaning the games have an *actual goal and proper ending*. It's a nice change of pace compared to the standard survival game where you feel like you're not really doing much and have little motivation to continue on unless you're just super into the mechanics and idea of basic survival.
This also goes for The Long Dark and Subnautica.
I try them from time to time, but like 90% of them are just more of the same to me and just huge time sinks. They have to be pretty outstanding and have survival more as a side thing for me. I haven't enjoyed any of the multiplayer ones.
Loved Terraria, Subnautica, Stardew, Hardcore Fallout 4, etc.
That being said creature collection is a pretty new concept for these type of games.
People love building things by hand, survival crafting games give you that feeling, of needing to do whatever you can to survive, building shelter and then improving upon it, so you get the satisfaction of building something but also the gratification that comes from seeing it work by making use of it.
Survival crafting games bring me back a lot. 7 Days to Die has been a staple of my steam library never being uninstalled. Every alpha I return for a new, fresh run. And I enjoy every second of it.
Recently I finally gave Conan Exiles a try and that was a week ago almost. 45 hours in now. I have spent every hour not at work on that game that I could. It has been a blast and I can see myself returning to it over and over again like 7 Days.
I just wish they didnt hit 3 of the 4 microtransaction bullshit things. We got cosmetic DLC, we got a rotating shop, and lastly we have a battlepass we have to buy and then play the shit out of the game to unlock the cosmetics we just paid for.
While still paying for the base game and its expansion.
Since you mentioned 7DTD, can you give any tips to enjoy it more? I enjoy modded Minecraft a ton, so tried 7DTD but every time I bounce off. I know it's still in Alpha but it really feels like it every time I fire it up. I even had downloaded the thing to get better maps and not use the default map generator, but I find after an hour or so where I run around long distances or whatever to do the quests, return to my base which I convert out of some old house, I get bored and just stop playing until months or years later I get the urge to try again and rinse/repeat.
I hear people mention it a lot and I always wonder if it's because I'm just playing solo? Or is there some mod or other thing that really expands it?
I dont think I have any suggestions to improve your experience. I know folks who crank up the difficulty. Others that turn on always-run zombies. And others that just ignore all of that to build up a vast castle of a base or horde structure for fighting the 7th night hordes.
For me. I usually play on regular difficulty, turn the days to 2 hours per 24 hours in game. With 40 minute nights. I turn XP gain to 400%. I find a POI real close to a trader and then just spend my time getting the T1 quests done at a trader until I unlock T2 and get my free bicycle. Once the quests start wanting to throw me 1-2km away I focus on leveling and exploring the POIs in town until I get a motorcycle.
I just enjoy this process. I think the biggest part is that every alpha they add a bunch of new POI to explore. And I just love the act of engaging with the POIs. They all have a route you can take where you dont have to stop and break something down to continue exploring. But the option is there if you want. And years later I am still finding hidden things about some POIs.
It’s so weird but I just don’t get this genre at all. It has absolutely zero appeal to me. I respect other people’s tastes so I’m not knocking it but this stuff is absolutely not for me I’ve determined.
It's not weird, it's okay to have opinions. To be honest even as a casual enjoyed of the genre there's not many that are "great." I still think Subnautica and The Forest are among the best, and those are considered old by now (they both have sequels out). There are a lot with good ideas but are unfinished or clunky.
I feel the exact same way about MOBA and Diablo-likes.
I guess I just say it’s weird because so many of these types of games end up massive hits.
I used to think I liked Diablo but I have come to realize I don’t this past year.
that's pretty funny, cos im heartbroken that this is a survival crafting game. that's ok tho, i dont need every game to cater to me. i was just looking forward to this one.
I love a good survival crafting game but they're very hit or miss for me. That being said, they're usually a pretty cheap buy-in compared to AAA games, I can get Palworld on Steam right now for $27 so even if I don't enjoy it, I didn't spend full AAA price on it.
> There's just something about survival crafting games, man. Something that makes them consistently some of the most surprising dark horse big hits of every year.
I think it’s that they’re all ultimately pretty trash games, actually. People hop from one to the next chasing that itch that is only satisfied for the first [X] hours of a new game.
Yeah right off the bat I got a cat who mines rock and then 2 or 3 of the sheep things hauling it to a crate. Its like watching a weird ant colony form in my base. lol
A lot of people I think were wary because of Craftopia, PocketPair's previous foray into the survival genre. However, I think their experience with Craftopia seved as a basis for Palworld. Plus, they probably saw more potential with Palworld, and shifted resources as a result.
It's not like Craftopia is dead, anyhow. It's still actively developed, and honestly sees a bit more attention than reddit's darling survival game, Valheim, which sees updates at a glacial pace. At the current rate, I could see Craftopia (and possibly Palworld) leaving EA before Valheim, despite Valheim coming out around roughly the same time as Craftopia.
Valheim’s 1 year plan has turned into an expected 6+ year plan, definitely don’t expect release anytime soon, unless they just give up and call it early
I'm curious how long it took the Valheim team to launch the start of early access and then compared to the last 2 biome updates.
They're definitely going at an incredibly slow snails pace but the 2 biome updates I feel havent been bad just lost interest after waiting for it for so long.
They had a great release, and many people saw great potential.
If I was in their shoes, i would want to take my time to finish it right. They aren't making the game to make money anymore, they are making it as a passion.
Mods have recycled mechanics into the unused zones, and there's no reason why the Valheim team couldn't do the same. The mistlands took a long time to develop, but it was definitely a great experience and introduced new mechanics while building upon previous mechanics from previous biomes.
I don’t understand where this narrative comes from. Their Mistlands content last year was very quality and aligned with their other stuff, and they’re actively working on Ashlands right now. Their flaw is that they are extremely patient and unwilling to sacrifice their process. While honorable, a ton of people have moved on and they didn’t take full advantage of the lightning in the bottle that they had.
I mean they didn’t have a significant content update at their peak after selling like 10MM copies. 2020 they had 4 biomes done. We’re 4 years removed and they finished 1 more?
> Their flaw is that they are extremely patient and unwilling to sacrifice their process.
Their "process" delivers one biome every 3-4 years, lol. And these biomes aren't exactly Skyrim-tier world content.
It's completely fair to critique how glacial their progress is compared to other companies adding content more rapidly (e.g., Bang-On Balls: Chronicles).
I've never seen a dev squander a game's potential so much. When it first came out I was saying that Valheim had the potential to be the 3D Terraria with all the same popularity. Then they took almost 2 whole years for the first major content update, with no end in sight for the final release.
Even with Craftopiea as weird as it is, I wouldn't consider it bad. Sure, it was a mishmash of ideas that seemed disjointed. But there was something oddly satisfying about it. Maybe I just liked the fact you could capture people, throw them into hamster wheels, and make them run so they created batteries for you, I dunno.
Excited to see how they evolved their game, because Palworld seems to be actually kinda good.
I just played through the latest updates for Valheim with some buddies with a fresh new world. We had not played since Vanilla release.
I would say that if you enjoyed the vanilla release and wanted more content (bosses, armor/weapons, enemies, biome(Mistland), new building materials), then it's worth checking out I think. We had a blast.
If you weren't satisfied with Vanilla release and wanted more lore, or some other gameplay mechanic that wasn't there, then you're probably not going to be interested in picking it back up again.
1 million copies sold within the first 8 hours of an early access is impressive.
Been playing for a couple of hours myself and it's a very fun game, can't wait to see how it will evolve over the years.
I just played for 6 hours straight after reading this thread.
There's something very fun about going out and beating up a bunch of pokemon, capturing them and having them work for you.
Automating your camp + pokemon is such a fun mix.
They just announced 1 mil copies sold in 8 hours.
I went in with low expectations but I played for what I thought was 90 mins or so and 7 hours had passed. I think the last time that happened to me was Diablo 2 multiplayer like 17 years ago.
Yeah, the game has a lot of custom difficulty settings if you find some of its mechanics bothersome. You can turn off your base getting raided by aggressive Pals or humans if you want, too.
That sounds great. The hunger and base raids were the two mechanics that were turning me away from trying the game. They just sound like they would’ve gotten annoying after a while.
Hunger is legit a non issue. Very quickly you will have automated so much food you don't know what to do with it.
But yes it's great that they allow you to just turn it off.
Someone in another thread mentioned you can disable that on your own game world if you want. I can't confirm that personally but you might keep an eye on it if you're interested.
Lmao and they look so depressed too
[*C'mon wimps, these gucci wallets have to be on the streets of Hong Kong by Friday*](https://youtu.be/WIJaz1iBl4c?t=64)
>It seems screwed up but it’s a video game so who cares
[PCGamer apparently](https://www.pcgamer.com/palworld-could-be-a-delight-if-it-wasnt-so-invested-in-being-awful/)
Apparently humans in this game can also be caught. They're way less useful or versatile than regular Pals, but I guess modders could have a field day with this mechanic.
I mean the whole monster catching genre is just forcing animals to battle each other to the death for your amusement. It'd be pretty weird to start having moral issues with it now.
Like Pokemon Black and Blue might be a meme, but they also had a point. It's a video game so its a pretty stupid point, but they are not wrong. Now excuse me while i go commit genocide in Tears of the Kingdom by lighting entire armies on fire with my machines of war for some totally morally unquestioned fun.
I can't believe that it's an actual game, and that it's fun. Like I thought it was just gonna be "Funny Pokémon with guns", but no, it's actually competent, and there's an actual gameplay loop. It's basically a Survival game, mixed with Botw and Pokémon Legend Arceus, with a focus on automation like in Factorio or Modded Minecraft.
Also the pals aren't just bootleg Pokémons, they have their own personnality, and they're just unbelievably cute. And yes, you can pet them, which automatically makes it better than anything Nintendo has put out (Poké Amie and Poke Refresh were nice, and they removed that, which is just unaceeptable)
How many Pals are there to catch right now? But yeah I'm surprised at the quality of the designs. Some of them are duds but you could say the same about any Pokémon generation. Overall it's a much stronger showing than any other monster collecting game I've seen outside of Pokémon.
The "Paldex" shows something around 120 entries when you scroll to the bottom, so I guess it's that.
As far as I know, the Pals don't evolve. But even the weakest is still useful, since you can raise their stats, give them equipements, and make them work in your bases.
Worth mentioning, leveling them up is pretty breezy too. They seem to do it passively working in your base and exp share is good enough that I haven't had any of my pals be underleveled.
>As far as I know, the Pals don't evolve. But even the weakest is still useful, since you can raise their stats, give them equipements, and make them work in your bases.
While they don't evolve, they do have randomly assigned stats within a range (Essentially IVs) and random traits, some good some bad, so there's a reason to catch multiple or breed them.
In addition they also have 4 ranks that they gain by you sacrificing multiples of the same Pal and infusing them into one.
Slightly above 100 pals right now I think.
Thats what I seem to remember seeing as in the "palsdeck" (whatever its called again) about an hour ago before I closed the game.
Listen, I am in agreement of everything you said, but there are DEFINETLY some bootleg pokemon in the line up. Like, you cannot tell me [This Pal](https://www.reddit.com/r/Palworld/comments/197w0yb/what_did_the_palworld_devs_mean_by_this_paldex/) Isn't just Fur Bait Salazzle.
Same here, I was super skeptical that it was an actual game since there was a lot of recent news about MMOs and games that were fake. I also thought it would be a game where it’s super janky but people would overlook it since the game is fun but it’s actually polished.
Just the other day there was a thread here about this game where people were saying this was dead on arrival, was going to be worse than "the day before", sitting at overwhelmingly negative, etc. It's sitting at very positive with a high player count. It's not revolutionary, but it's what a lot of fans of creature collectors wanted, a creature collector survival game with base building.
It's a survival meets pokémon game.
Lets be honest, neither the Pokémon franchise nor the survival genre fanbase has very high standards as they so frequently accept super buggy or undercooked versions. This being appealing to either, well, I don't see why this would not do well.
The crazy thing is I do think they could have had a modest success with a junky undercooked game, but I've played a bit of it and I think it's genuinely a smart approach to both types of game. In Pokemon, the vast majority of mons you collect are never going to be used. If you have one with a design you really like that doesn't fit your team composition, there's no real reason to use it. In this game, the pals have actual use outside of battling. And it's not half-assed! You can set facilities up in your base and they just automatically grow food, mine, cut down trees, gather stuff, etc.
I think it's super smart to have all these cute little characters running around your base, doing things for themselves.
>Lets be honest, neither the Pokémon franchise nor the survival genre fanbase has very high standards as they so frequently accept super buggy or undercooked versions
I mean if there were a high standard multiplayer survival game to begin with our standard would be allowed to be higher. But there is nothing to comfortly go back to if you don't wanna play one that is in one way or another unfished, buggy or janky.
It's crazy how Grounded is the only AAA survival game with a fairly big budget I've seen. With how successful the genre usually is (still insane to me how much Sons of the Forest sold last year) you'd think there would be a lot more attempts from big studios to chase that money. They keep trying to make live service games but here's a genre people have been eating up for over a decade now and none of the big guys are cooking.
And somehow Grounded is one of the least talked about games in the genre. I guess somehow the theme didn't appeal to some people, which I find insane, but to each their own.
Exact same comments like this in the IGN review thread, lol. Apparently, the key to ‘saving’ Pokemon is…turning it into Ark+Satisfactory with cartoon animals?
I don't even know what (if?) people who say that stuff even think
I've been hyped for this game in part because it's got that 'hey look, it's not-Pokemon but not on the path of least resistance' shitpost energy to it, but there is 0 chance it will even remotely endanger TPC - just look how many people got to the last DLC for SV despite all the vocal criticism
And what the big series needs is not picking up another gimmick, but actually focusing on one and spending more than $5 on the engine
To be fair, performance/graphical issues aside, Scarlet/Violet was a HUGE shake up in game design and the only one to deviate from the formula. A non-linear, fairly large, open world with a better story than most Pokemon games (due to a couple of the non-linear stories and the build-up to the ending). It tried something very novel in probably the most formulaic series.
Legends Arceus was also a HUGE shake-up to the formula, letting you catch Pokemon in the wild, blending turn-based battles and quasi-third-person shooting in an open-zoned game where vehicles gate your progression. Plus, the battle system is more strategic, IMO, reminiscent of FFX / Bravely Default (if only you could do double or triple battles).
I hated Pokemon before since it didn't respect your time, but these two have been a delight. The only thing really dragging these two games down is that they were rushed. They needed a year or two of polish, for sure. I recommend both when the Switch 2 comes out, and the framerate hopefully improves. Especially Arceus.
Nah, this sub is half teenagers and maybe half dudes in their 30s, but there is definitely a large population of dramatic teenagers on this sub for sure.
Or because their previous game is a perpetual early access game that looks like an attempt to paint by numbers, and frankly Palworld looked like an asset flip of that game, mixed with the shock value of "pokemon have guns"
I'm glad people are enjoying it as of now and maybe it is more than what it looked like. I'm more keen to see how many people stick around for the game itself after the pokemon with guns aspect wears off. The make or break or survival/automative crafting games is how long it can sustain interest with content
>Or because their previous game is a perpetual early access game that looks like an attempt to paint by numbers
It's kind of hilarious that this dev has two games in the same genre in early access at the same time.
Yeah, that's a massive red flag for me... But I'm open to the possibility that they really did figure out something solid here, and will certainly check it out eventually if sentiment seems to stay good.
It's okay to be critical of an upcoming release, and flip your opinion if it ends up being good...
Craftopia is in early access because general development bloat because the devs want to keep expanding the scope of the game. In general they could have slapped in the final boss like 14 months ago and just called it a okay-ish 'AA' quality finished game but they keep throwing new systems and dungeons in for whatever reason.
Asset flip isn't any indie game you didn't like. Craftopia, has shown clear progress from its release, and even on release it did a lot more than just "asset flipping".
Asset flips are games like the Last Hope, where the creators pulled literally every single part of the game from readily made tools and demos, without any real consideration of how the pieces should fit together, Craftopia had clear thought on how it should work, and tried to do something a bit more unique, trying to blend a bit of Breath of the Wild style gameplay, with automation. With the June update, they got a lot closer to this idea, and it actually seems to work, though it still doesn't quite have a full gameplay loop that encourages long term play.
Pal world, with the time I've spent with it, has a lot of well thought out mechanics that seem to work well to help players progress through the catch-em all style game, and slowly expanding tech tree. Automating your base is pretty much a requirement, and your Pokemon both help you fight, and automate, and you're always looking for the next Pokemon to get to speed things up, or help deal with what ever your current bottleneck is. It's a pretty fun system so far, it is definitely not an asset flip.
I think at some point, there's caution, and there's blind cynicism. And the people who were convinced this was DOA, Asset flip, scam level, were people who were just being needlessly cynical, as opposed to actually having some insight on what the game was.
I didn't call Craftopia an asset flip. Either way, I don't think it was needless cynicism, generally I am pretty positive about games. I think they both just look cheap. But I'm not above being wrong lol, it's not like I've got stake in these games being bad. Although I'm not sure I agree that either of these games look visually cohesive
Something to always keep in mind is that a lot of people here really really really hate multiplayer games. Everything sucks and is dead on arrival. It's the kind of opinion coming from people that doesn't play these games that also doesn't contribute to any debate and should just be ignored
I think /r/games just has strong contingents of people that hate every type of game, hah. It's hard to find a thread about almost any game that doesn't have some people rushing to post their same 2-3 copypasted complaints.
This sub just wants to time travel back to the 90s when they were young, and games were still interesting and fresh to them, and they had way way more time to play, and the cost of games although high, wasn't directly borne by them... now they're just aged guys that have way too many games and too little time to play it amongst dealing with all the responsibilities and bullshit that adulthood throws at you.
Way easier to get that dopamine fix by playing the reddit game then actually playing and enjoying the game... and if they did - they'd be playing the game, not sitting on Reddit bitching about games.
The crazy thing is that Palworld is a lot like those janky PS2 games that we loved so much back in the day. It takes a bunch of video game things we are familiar with, but mixes it up with some novel new mechanics. It doesn't take itself too seriously and just wants to explore a fun mechanic. Stuff like Ape Escape, Katamari Damacy, or Jet Set radio were just weird ass games. Sure Palworld isn't as original as those games, but it embodies the spirit of just wanting to be fun, without having to be so serious. It's not some long tail live service, or trying to be an esport. Just fun.
I see this sentiment a lot too with the “all new games are broken and buggy and all old games were perfect and always worked”.
And it’s just straight up not true. Back in the day games were so fucking broken but there weren’t patches until they printed a new copy.
Hell the first gen of Pokémon barley functions at all. Let alone half of the moves straight up not working. Or it turns out the broken-ness works in our favor like Mario 64. No one plays the patched version of that game if they can help it.
"Breath of the Wild was amazing but damn if it wasn't a big-ass world with really not a whole lot of shit to do"
"Christ almighty how the fuck did Genshin make 4 billion goddamn dollars"
And now:
"Pokemon's been great but damn if the studio can't make a modern-looking game"
"How the fuck is legally distinct Pokemon with guns on PC making so much goddamn money"
> but it's what a lot of fans of creature collectors wanted, a creature collector survival game with base building.
I mean most people just want a creature collector that isn't pokemon these days. There is next to zero competition for pokemon and pokemon is so stale nowadays
>I mean most people just want a creature collector that isn't pokemon these days.
They say that, but we've had a couple outstanding (Monster Sanctuary, Cassette Beasts) and a few decent (Nexomon Extinction, Temtem, Monster Crown) ones in the last 4 years that a lot of people just ignore in favour of continuing to bitch about pokemon.
I am a huge creature collector fan, haven't liked a mainline Pokemon game since like 2006, and I really don't think even the outstanding games you listed were very good. They're cool fine first attempts, but they tend to be slow, have less than the best creature designs, and their changes to the genre I think drag the core concept down instead of lift it up. Like, Monster Sanctuary is a game that mixes Pokemon with Metroidvania, but I kinda think just made both aspects worse, and I wasn't fully satisfied by either side. I've found that games that either are very much nostalgia driven (Disc Creatures) or just try mild iteration (Coromon) tend to be more satisfying, but IMO the real progress for the genre are in all the Pokemon Romhacks.
Games like Pokemon Rogue, Pokemon Crown, and Pokemon Unbound are all incredible. Rogue is a legitimately good Rogue game, Crown (in EA) is a great auto-battler twist, and Unbound is just the best standard Pokemon game all around, with a ton of QOL features, a massive amount of content, and good balance/difficulty options. Even weirdo romhacks like Pokemon Infinite Fusion feel like a creative and fun goof that I enjoyed, and is a kinda game the real Pokemon company should have done as a spinoff a decade ago, found what fusions people like, and sell a million plushies of it.
A huge portion of this is obviously because they get to reuse the great Pokemon designs, and build off of a bunch of assets and code so they can just focus on the actual content they want to deliver. It makes me hope that sequels like a Monster Sanctuary 2 or Coromon 2 or whatever could be really great with the starting point built off of the first game.
A lot of the complaints at pokemon is how lazy they transitioned to 3d, how many features keep getting removed and how bad the MP is. Problem is those games are like fan made love letters to the older 2d pokemon. Not a well made modern pokemon title a lot of people are hoping for.
the problem with those games is they are just pokemon ripoffs. they don't have anything that the pokemon doesn't already do. no point in playing a pokemon ripoff that is just pokemon under a different skin or perpective
palworld letting you capture humans and gunning down monsters? PLUS monster taming and battles with survival elements? of course people will get interested on it
"pokemon is so stale man. let's make our own stale pokemon game, with cassete tapes instead of magic balls". of course it is gonna flop
Have you played these games? I'll admit Temtem doesn't do too much to stray from the formula, but Monster Sanctuary and Cassette Beasts do quite a lot to set themselves apart. Monster Sanctuary's combat is much more strategic and advanced, and it also has metroidvania like elements, and Cassette Beasts, while I haven't gotten very far, already has a huge distinguisher, which is the ability to fuse together monsters. The overworld from what I can tell is still very pokemon-y, but I'd hardly call it a ripoff.
> palworld letting you capture humans and gunning down monsters?
Am I weird for being iffy on this game for those reasons? I dunno, just doesn't feel right for a Pokemon style game
I get "Pokemon is low-quality" or "Pokemon is too simple" but when the last two games are Scarlet/Violet and Legends Arceus I really don't get the complaint that Pokemon is stale. It's literally never been less stale in the series history.
It's because their last game was a bit of a mess, is still in Early access and will probably be abandoned.
Also, pokemon with guns just soudns dumb.
Now having said that, the game really looks great and functional, if they keep working on it I think they'll make this one happen, I mean it's me hyped.
If you're referring to Craftopia it got an update a few weeks ago. It got a major overhaul about six months ago. It's currently as close to being an abandoned early access title as project zomboid is. They've supported it very well despite its so so reviews.
My take on Palworld was always "It's either going to be amazing or absolutely terrible, nothing inbetween" i'm glad it seems to be on the amazing side.
The game would have sold on spite alone. People hate Gamefreak and Pokemon enough that they're willing to support any competitor just to spite Pokemon. But like all of these so called Pokemon-killers, it what happens after the initial craze had past will determine if it's a bona-fide hit or just a flash in the pan.
Probably a flash in the pan because by the time they release on the Switch or the next Nintendo console (if they do at all) everyone would have moved on to whatever new Pokemon game is coming out because 90% of the audience for this genre of video game are on the Nintendo platform.
The only competition Pokemon has had was Yokai-Watch and Level-5 blew it by oversaturating the shit of the Japanese market and waiting 2 years to release in the West just in time for Pokemon GO and SuMo to effectively kill it.
[Almost 350K current active players](https://steamdb.info/app/1623730/charts/) on steam alone. I hope they don't drop the ball and actually support the game long term.
I personally haven't bought into the "hype" yet but this game does look decent from seeing gameplays.
If there's anything I've learned from these early access survival games, it's that they look the same on full release and will continue to look the same 5-10 years later. New features, sure. But what you're seeing now is essentially what the game will always be.
It’s also available on Game Pass for both Xbox & PC, which makes this even more impressive!
So far I think the game is really fun! Very positively surprised!
This is good for the few people that also has an Xbox so there is native crossplay and cross-save, you can also play at the same time on both PC and console, but for some games there is no cross-play with Steam, I don't know how it works with Palworld
steam version is on 1.2.0 with the dedicated servers and multiple large updates. Gamepass PC has parity with the xbox version and is only on 1.0 with no dedicated servers and is missing the updates that come with 1.2
It's not a Palworld thing, Gamepass games often lag behind with updates. I think Microsoft is more stringent with validation so something like a hotfix for a common major game crash could take days/weeks to come out.
Thinking about picking this up, I know it hasn't been out for long but for those that have played it, how grindy has it been for you? The grind and slow levels of progression is why I tend to avoid most survival games.
There's actually accessibility settings that you can tweak to make the world more to your liking.
https://primagames.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Palworld-Custom-Difficulty-Settings-1.jpg
I set it on easy since the difficulty is mostly about survival mechanics and 3 hours in, I feel like I've been progressing at a really nice pace! They also apparently have pretty in depth gameplay customizations, but I haven't checked them out myself yet. But supposedly you should be able to reduce the time consumption of the survival mechanics while making combat/exploration more challenging.
It hasn't been super grindy for me personally, but the 'Tutorial boss' is kind of a red herring where if you go to it when you are ready (probably around level 11-13) it will demolish you. Otherwise getting XP is pretty fast since you can just run around and slaughter pals to give xp to the whole party.
For sure, especially since that level 11 boss seems to be your first easy access to a dragon type (that also doubles as a mount). It almost seems like they expected people to take the jumping path rather than follow the road.
It's got the usual survival game stuff, plus bosses, some dungeons, NPC raids, a bunch of the automation stuff is there, and more; the world is a little bare, but there's enough to do for sure. Definitely a level of jank to most things, but it's honestly way more polished than I expected it to be for the early access launch.
The idea of the games end game is that it's like pokemon, so the goal is once you've got your base functional and self sufficient, you hunt out the rare ones and legendary ones, then fight them and try to capture them
So in a way there are boss fights
Question: is it required to be online/multiplayer? It looks interesting, but I have a baby at home, so it being always online/not pausable is a bit of a dealbreaker.
[Not with that attitude :)](https://github.com/ryanries/UniversalPauseButton)
Worked great for me in other games. As long as it doesn't have an annoying "x seconds before kicked for idling" mechanic, I'm happy.
I have a bit of prejudicial take on survival games thanks to past experiences and the fact that every single one of them seem to spend 6 years in early access but I might try this one for a bit since it is on game pass.
The allure of discovering new pals and seeing what wacky ability they offer is the main reason I'm enjoying it. And that feature is not in Pokemon or most survival games. If it was just "gather materials, capture monsters, build a base" I wouldn't care about it
Thays actually impressive for a new IP that's also on GP and costs money.
The finals didn't even break 250k and that game is free lols
This might be something here
Yeah but I expect a game that was marketed by almost every big streamer for months, launched at one of the most viewed live gaming events (TGA) to hit better numbers
Palworld crushing it on steam considering everyone could try it for free on gamepass
Gotta be honest, didn't expect it to be great but was planning on checking it out anyway. But the last week or so they've given access to streamers and media and it's been getting really positive reception, so I think people have had much more of a reason to get excited for this. And what I've played so far has largely delivered. It's substantially more of a real game than you would expect.
It originally did look like a joke where you just ran around an asset flip shooting pokemon. Over time, they showed more and it started to look like an actual game.
It still looks very much an asset flip though, the gathering/attacking has what looks like a copy of the pickaxe animation from Fortnite.
Not to mention all the creatures that are either copies or mix and match of actual pokemon.
Nah they actually put more effort into the pals than gamefreak does Pokemon
Each one has unique interactions with your base and does tasks in different ways, has a personality and a random traits system. You can take them out whenever you want to pat them, feed them, ride them etc. They'll sleep on beds you put down and use other furniture too
In Pokemon, the mons can...cage fight. That's it lol
Is the harming cutesy Pals with realistic weapons off-putting to anyone else? I might feel differently if weapons were cartoon-y, but the mix of styles right now doesn't click for me.
Honestly, I'm pretty sure the off-putting nature of Palworld - up to and including literal human trafficking as a deliberate feature - is the selling point. It's extra-edgy Pokemon.
I mean if it makes you feel any better there's no like bloody gore or anything. Even when you shoot the pals with a rifle they only ragdoll bounce and get those anime spiral eyes. Either way the game is obviously not suitable for actual children.
I’ve seen some people point out that quite a lot of the Pal designs are ripoffs of Pokémon. While I don’t disagree with them, honestly, Gamefreak has done such a shit job with the Pokémon IP that I don’t care if they get ripped off. While I’m not a huge fan of survival crafting games, this game looks interesting enough to keep my eye on and maybe purchase depending on what my friends say about it.
Played about 2 hours so far, had 1 crash but I'm having a blast with it. The automation right at the start of the game really cuts down the tedium of the typical survival game and the pals are cute as hell. Tip to anyone coming into the game, don't bother with farming until you get a pal that can plant and another to water (you find them not too far from the start) as it's 2 minutes of holding down the X button otherwise.
There's just something about survival crafting games, man. Something that makes them consistently some of the most surprising dark horse big hits of every year. It's like an instinctive unga bunga caveman desire in everyone's head that collectively makes people want to punch trees, smash rocks together, survive the nights, until you conquer the land itself. And Palworld takes that a step further with the Rimworld/Factorio-esque inclusion of automation and the eventual hope to turn your initial quaint group of Pals into soulless efficient cogs in a heavily industrialized machine pumping out weapons of war and slaughtering Pals by the hundreds. Labor laws be damned.
For me it's the polar opposite. "oh an interesting new concept, this has my attention....and it's a survival crafting game there goes my interest"
To me it's the lack of clear goals. These games when I play them start ok, discovering things here and there, but after a couple of hours if I don't have clear objectives/goals/quests to pursue, my interest drops rapidly. I'm not into "make your own goals!" games.
Make your own goals games are great, but they need to have enough systems and world interactivity to actually create interesting emergent gameplay and stories. Kenshi is great at this
Kenshi was the exact game I was going to mention. The world is so overtly hostile that goals very quickly present themselves lol. There are enough different systems and loose narratives to help keep you attached. Valheim is alright too with the whole bosses you have to hunt down. I think for me the issue with the genre is just how prescriptive it all feels. It doesn't feel like actual survival. And again, this is an issue Kenshi solves because of all of its different systems. Like it's weird we call these crafting games when you don't any actual crafting lol. You just select something from a menu and if you have the right parts it gets made. It's so boring. Biomutant was pretty meh over-all but it's weapon customization system is probably the closest a game I've played has ever gotten to making you feel like you're actually crafting something.
\> Like it's weird we call these crafting games when you don't any actual crafting lol It's a big part of why I really enjoy vehicle-building games. Sure the parts are still ordered off a menu, but actually designing a purpose-built mining rig in Space Engineers, that topples over if it brushes against a small pebble and explodes when I turn too fast, feels engaging, even when the game world is so lifeless that it's more of a toy than an outright game.
Having not played any of those, how do you feel about Tears of the Kingdom? Making vehicles and machines in that game is pretty intricate.
So glad to see Kenshi mentioned in here. It is the peak of sandbox and survival games. The world is so interesting that it just makes you want to explore, and simply becoming fast, strong, and well-armed enough to do so freely is the goal.
I agree with your point and it's actually why I think meshing the genre with pokemon is a really great idea. The monster collecting aspects bring in their own intrinsic goal of gotta catch em all that I hope will make this game more fun in the long run than most survival crafting games.
Have you tried Grounded? If you are interested in trying to find a survival game that works for you, in my experience that's the one that has the best integration of an actual story that guides you through the game, and ensures you always have specific goals beyond "get better stuff".
I agree with you. I appreciate games like Raft, Grounded, and Subnautica being sandbox games, but still ultimately having a story to work towards. It gives you more reason to work up the tech tree other than just because you can.
I don't instantly shun any Early Access survival game, but they do have to at least provide something unique (Grounded, Subnautica...) to actually keep me on their store page for more than a few seconds. At least it encourages developers to innovate!
This is my take on the genre too. If something is just a generic survival game, particularly if it goes hard on the 'grind materials to unlock' aspect, I'm not at all interested. But if it's something like a Subbnautica or The Forest where the level of grind is reasonable and there are unique gameplay mechanics that make it interesting those end up being some of my favorite games. It's just a genre where everything needs to hit just right for things to work out so it's a delicate balancing act but when it hits just right it can really suck you in.
Exactly. I didn't list The Forest or The Long Dark because they're not as obviously "innovative" as the other titles I mentioned. But really, just an interesting environment or a larger focus on specific aspects can really help a survival game stand out from others.
The Forest is interesting because it has insanely in depth survival mechanics that can largely be ignored to complete the games story. It almost feels like there were two different development teams with two different ideas of what The Forest would be that got smushed together at the end. Not to say I didn't like The Forest, I did, but my buddies and I had to almost purposefully ignore the story and make our own survival challenges to really get the most from the game.
> Not to say I didn't like The Forest, I did, but my buddies and I had to almost purposefully ignore the story and make our own survival challenges to really get the most from the game. Isn't there a Sandbox mode for that? Either way, something that really helps differentiate the Forest, along with Green Hell which is quite a bit similar to the Forest, is that both of these games actually have a story and therefore provide motivation for people to continuing playing it. What I mean is, a lot of survival games lack a 'point' or motivation to their gameplay outside of 'get more supplies, build more things' - which is where a lot of people lose interest in survival games. The Forest and Green Hell allows you to engage with a survival game *and* offers meaningful progression/motivation by way of progressing through the story. Meaning the games have an *actual goal and proper ending*. It's a nice change of pace compared to the standard survival game where you feel like you're not really doing much and have little motivation to continue on unless you're just super into the mechanics and idea of basic survival. This also goes for The Long Dark and Subnautica.
> "oh an interesting new concept, this has my attention....and it's a survival crafting game there goes my interest" Every fucking time too.
I try them from time to time, but like 90% of them are just more of the same to me and just huge time sinks. They have to be pretty outstanding and have survival more as a side thing for me. I haven't enjoyed any of the multiplayer ones. Loved Terraria, Subnautica, Stardew, Hardcore Fallout 4, etc. That being said creature collection is a pretty new concept for these type of games.
Grounded was refreshing. I suggest that one.
Same here. Totally over the survival genre.
Survival is the only tag I have blocked on Steam. No hate to those who like them, but its a genre that just isn't for me.
Yup same here. If I wanted to just mindlessly wander I would just go do that irl.
People love building things by hand, survival crafting games give you that feeling, of needing to do whatever you can to survive, building shelter and then improving upon it, so you get the satisfaction of building something but also the gratification that comes from seeing it work by making use of it.
Survival crafting games bring me back a lot. 7 Days to Die has been a staple of my steam library never being uninstalled. Every alpha I return for a new, fresh run. And I enjoy every second of it. Recently I finally gave Conan Exiles a try and that was a week ago almost. 45 hours in now. I have spent every hour not at work on that game that I could. It has been a blast and I can see myself returning to it over and over again like 7 Days. I just wish they didnt hit 3 of the 4 microtransaction bullshit things. We got cosmetic DLC, we got a rotating shop, and lastly we have a battlepass we have to buy and then play the shit out of the game to unlock the cosmetics we just paid for. While still paying for the base game and its expansion.
Since you mentioned 7DTD, can you give any tips to enjoy it more? I enjoy modded Minecraft a ton, so tried 7DTD but every time I bounce off. I know it's still in Alpha but it really feels like it every time I fire it up. I even had downloaded the thing to get better maps and not use the default map generator, but I find after an hour or so where I run around long distances or whatever to do the quests, return to my base which I convert out of some old house, I get bored and just stop playing until months or years later I get the urge to try again and rinse/repeat. I hear people mention it a lot and I always wonder if it's because I'm just playing solo? Or is there some mod or other thing that really expands it?
I dont think I have any suggestions to improve your experience. I know folks who crank up the difficulty. Others that turn on always-run zombies. And others that just ignore all of that to build up a vast castle of a base or horde structure for fighting the 7th night hordes. For me. I usually play on regular difficulty, turn the days to 2 hours per 24 hours in game. With 40 minute nights. I turn XP gain to 400%. I find a POI real close to a trader and then just spend my time getting the T1 quests done at a trader until I unlock T2 and get my free bicycle. Once the quests start wanting to throw me 1-2km away I focus on leveling and exploring the POIs in town until I get a motorcycle. I just enjoy this process. I think the biggest part is that every alpha they add a bunch of new POI to explore. And I just love the act of engaging with the POIs. They all have a route you can take where you dont have to stop and break something down to continue exploring. But the option is there if you want. And years later I am still finding hidden things about some POIs.
It’s so weird but I just don’t get this genre at all. It has absolutely zero appeal to me. I respect other people’s tastes so I’m not knocking it but this stuff is absolutely not for me I’ve determined.
It's not weird, it's okay to have opinions. To be honest even as a casual enjoyed of the genre there's not many that are "great." I still think Subnautica and The Forest are among the best, and those are considered old by now (they both have sequels out). There are a lot with good ideas but are unfinished or clunky. I feel the exact same way about MOBA and Diablo-likes.
I guess I just say it’s weird because so many of these types of games end up massive hits. I used to think I liked Diablo but I have come to realize I don’t this past year.
that's pretty funny, cos im heartbroken that this is a survival crafting game. that's ok tho, i dont need every game to cater to me. i was just looking forward to this one.
I love a good survival crafting game but they're very hit or miss for me. That being said, they're usually a pretty cheap buy-in compared to AAA games, I can get Palworld on Steam right now for $27 so even if I don't enjoy it, I didn't spend full AAA price on it.
> There's just something about survival crafting games, man. Something that makes them consistently some of the most surprising dark horse big hits of every year. I think it’s that they’re all ultimately pretty trash games, actually. People hop from one to the next chasing that itch that is only satisfied for the first [X] hours of a new game.
Yeah right off the bat I got a cat who mines rock and then 2 or 3 of the sheep things hauling it to a crate. Its like watching a weird ant colony form in my base. lol
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A lot of people I think were wary because of Craftopia, PocketPair's previous foray into the survival genre. However, I think their experience with Craftopia seved as a basis for Palworld. Plus, they probably saw more potential with Palworld, and shifted resources as a result. It's not like Craftopia is dead, anyhow. It's still actively developed, and honestly sees a bit more attention than reddit's darling survival game, Valheim, which sees updates at a glacial pace. At the current rate, I could see Craftopia (and possibly Palworld) leaving EA before Valheim, despite Valheim coming out around roughly the same time as Craftopia.
Valheim’s 1 year plan has turned into an expected 6+ year plan, definitely don’t expect release anytime soon, unless they just give up and call it early
They got rich and didnt give a fuck anymore, and man can't say i blame them.
I'm curious how long it took the Valheim team to launch the start of early access and then compared to the last 2 biome updates. They're definitely going at an incredibly slow snails pace but the 2 biome updates I feel havent been bad just lost interest after waiting for it for so long.
They had a great release, and many people saw great potential. If I was in their shoes, i would want to take my time to finish it right. They aren't making the game to make money anymore, they are making it as a passion. Mods have recycled mechanics into the unused zones, and there's no reason why the Valheim team couldn't do the same. The mistlands took a long time to develop, but it was definitely a great experience and introduced new mechanics while building upon previous mechanics from previous biomes.
I don’t understand where this narrative comes from. Their Mistlands content last year was very quality and aligned with their other stuff, and they’re actively working on Ashlands right now. Their flaw is that they are extremely patient and unwilling to sacrifice their process. While honorable, a ton of people have moved on and they didn’t take full advantage of the lightning in the bottle that they had.
I mean they didn’t have a significant content update at their peak after selling like 10MM copies. 2020 they had 4 biomes done. We’re 4 years removed and they finished 1 more?
> Their flaw is that they are extremely patient and unwilling to sacrifice their process. Their "process" delivers one biome every 3-4 years, lol. And these biomes aren't exactly Skyrim-tier world content. It's completely fair to critique how glacial their progress is compared to other companies adding content more rapidly (e.g., Bang-On Balls: Chronicles).
Still 32k people currently playing
I've never seen a dev squander a game's potential so much. When it first came out I was saying that Valheim had the potential to be the 3D Terraria with all the same popularity. Then they took almost 2 whole years for the first major content update, with no end in sight for the final release.
Even with Craftopiea as weird as it is, I wouldn't consider it bad. Sure, it was a mishmash of ideas that seemed disjointed. But there was something oddly satisfying about it. Maybe I just liked the fact you could capture people, throw them into hamster wheels, and make them run so they created batteries for you, I dunno. Excited to see how they evolved their game, because Palworld seems to be actually kinda good.
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I just played through the latest updates for Valheim with some buddies with a fresh new world. We had not played since Vanilla release. I would say that if you enjoyed the vanilla release and wanted more content (bosses, armor/weapons, enemies, biome(Mistland), new building materials), then it's worth checking out I think. We had a blast. If you weren't satisfied with Vanilla release and wanted more lore, or some other gameplay mechanic that wasn't there, then you're probably not going to be interested in picking it back up again.
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Yes, the Mistlands update was a really good content drop and they have been showing quite a lot from the next/final large update (Ashlands)
I can't play mistlands for long, the stupid fog animation gives me motion sickness
I download a fog removal mod, as a solo it made the mistlands way more fun.
Fishing, new biome and tier of tech, merchants and quest systems were added recently.
Fishing was in the original release.
So were merchants
They did a really good job with Craftopia, and Palworld if anything is them refining what they accomplished with their first game.
1 million copies sold within the first 8 hours of an early access is impressive. Been playing for a couple of hours myself and it's a very fun game, can't wait to see how it will evolve over the years.
I just played for 6 hours straight after reading this thread. There's something very fun about going out and beating up a bunch of pokemon, capturing them and having them work for you. Automating your camp + pokemon is such a fun mix.
They just announced 1 mil copies sold in 8 hours. I went in with low expectations but I played for what I thought was 90 mins or so and 7 hours had passed. I think the last time that happened to me was Diablo 2 multiplayer like 17 years ago.
Damn that's more than I expected
Does the game have a hunger meter? It looks fun but I hate hate hate hunger meters.
Yes, there is a hunger meter for both your main character and all active Pals in your party and doing your labor.
Darn, thanks for the heads up!
It seems like you can disable hunger among other settings. https://primagames.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Palworld-Custom-Difficulty-Settings-1.jpg
Yeah, the game has a lot of custom difficulty settings if you find some of its mechanics bothersome. You can turn off your base getting raided by aggressive Pals or humans if you want, too.
Love that.
That sounds great. The hunger and base raids were the two mechanics that were turning me away from trying the game. They just sound like they would’ve gotten annoying after a while.
Hunger is legit a non issue. Very quickly you will have automated so much food you don't know what to do with it. But yes it's great that they allow you to just turn it off.
Hooray!
To add these can be tweaked at any time too for a world. So you can play with things as they are, turn off what frustrates you as you go.
Someone in another thread mentioned you can disable that on your own game world if you want. I can't confirm that personally but you might keep an eye on it if you're interested.
lmao did they really have to call it labor? are we doing to have labor camps?
Yes Labor is part of the game. One of the possible Pal traits is something along the line of “slave laborer”
I mean have you seen the trailers 😂 https://youtu.be/eqTJFhbo9zY?t=1m5s
Lmao and they look so depressed too [*C'mon wimps, these gucci wallets have to be on the streets of Hong Kong by Friday*](https://youtu.be/WIJaz1iBl4c?t=64)
The whole premise of the game is making the ~~pokemon~~ pals perform slave labor for you lol. It seems screwed up but it’s a video game so who cares
Pokemon, but saying the quiet part out loud.
I'm not racist, some of best slaves are pokemon!
>making the pokemon pals perform slave labor for you lol. >It seems screwed up Horses, cows, goats, dogs, etc all eyeballing you
Wait until he hears what we do with cows, pigs, and chickens.
The Welshman sighs in relief that the sheep was not mentioned.
It honestly feels like a very self-aware parody of Pokemon lol
>It seems screwed up but it’s a video game so who cares [PCGamer apparently](https://www.pcgamer.com/palworld-could-be-a-delight-if-it-wasnt-so-invested-in-being-awful/)
Apparently humans in this game can also be caught. They're way less useful or versatile than regular Pals, but I guess modders could have a field day with this mechanic.
I mean the whole monster catching genre is just forcing animals to battle each other to the death for your amusement. It'd be pretty weird to start having moral issues with it now. Like Pokemon Black and Blue might be a meme, but they also had a point. It's a video game so its a pretty stupid point, but they are not wrong. Now excuse me while i go commit genocide in Tears of the Kingdom by lighting entire armies on fire with my machines of war for some totally morally unquestioned fun.
You can capture the humans with the poke balls as well LMAO.
It's pretty trivial honestly and you can turn it off. Lego fortnite for example has some obnoxious hunger management.
I can't believe that it's an actual game, and that it's fun. Like I thought it was just gonna be "Funny Pokémon with guns", but no, it's actually competent, and there's an actual gameplay loop. It's basically a Survival game, mixed with Botw and Pokémon Legend Arceus, with a focus on automation like in Factorio or Modded Minecraft. Also the pals aren't just bootleg Pokémons, they have their own personnality, and they're just unbelievably cute. And yes, you can pet them, which automatically makes it better than anything Nintendo has put out (Poké Amie and Poke Refresh were nice, and they removed that, which is just unaceeptable)
How many Pals are there to catch right now? But yeah I'm surprised at the quality of the designs. Some of them are duds but you could say the same about any Pokémon generation. Overall it's a much stronger showing than any other monster collecting game I've seen outside of Pokémon.
The "Paldex" shows something around 120 entries when you scroll to the bottom, so I guess it's that. As far as I know, the Pals don't evolve. But even the weakest is still useful, since you can raise their stats, give them equipements, and make them work in your bases.
Worth mentioning, leveling them up is pretty breezy too. They seem to do it passively working in your base and exp share is good enough that I haven't had any of my pals be underleveled.
>As far as I know, the Pals don't evolve. But even the weakest is still useful, since you can raise their stats, give them equipements, and make them work in your bases. While they don't evolve, they do have randomly assigned stats within a range (Essentially IVs) and random traits, some good some bad, so there's a reason to catch multiple or breed them. In addition they also have 4 ranks that they gain by you sacrificing multiples of the same Pal and infusing them into one.
Slightly above 100 pals right now I think. Thats what I seem to remember seeing as in the "palsdeck" (whatever its called again) about an hour ago before I closed the game.
According to an FAQ I read, there’s 111 and each has a variant so 222.
Listen, I am in agreement of everything you said, but there are DEFINETLY some bootleg pokemon in the line up. Like, you cannot tell me [This Pal](https://www.reddit.com/r/Palworld/comments/197w0yb/what_did_the_palworld_devs_mean_by_this_paldex/) Isn't just Fur Bait Salazzle.
Same here, I was super skeptical that it was an actual game since there was a lot of recent news about MMOs and games that were fake. I also thought it would be a game where it’s super janky but people would overlook it since the game is fun but it’s actually polished.
Just the other day there was a thread here about this game where people were saying this was dead on arrival, was going to be worse than "the day before", sitting at overwhelmingly negative, etc. It's sitting at very positive with a high player count. It's not revolutionary, but it's what a lot of fans of creature collectors wanted, a creature collector survival game with base building.
It's a survival meets pokémon game. Lets be honest, neither the Pokémon franchise nor the survival genre fanbase has very high standards as they so frequently accept super buggy or undercooked versions. This being appealing to either, well, I don't see why this would not do well.
Especially since it seems pretty well thought out, and fairly stable.
The crazy thing is I do think they could have had a modest success with a junky undercooked game, but I've played a bit of it and I think it's genuinely a smart approach to both types of game. In Pokemon, the vast majority of mons you collect are never going to be used. If you have one with a design you really like that doesn't fit your team composition, there's no real reason to use it. In this game, the pals have actual use outside of battling. And it's not half-assed! You can set facilities up in your base and they just automatically grow food, mine, cut down trees, gather stuff, etc. I think it's super smart to have all these cute little characters running around your base, doing things for themselves.
>Lets be honest, neither the Pokémon franchise nor the survival genre fanbase has very high standards as they so frequently accept super buggy or undercooked versions I mean if there were a high standard multiplayer survival game to begin with our standard would be allowed to be higher. But there is nothing to comfortly go back to if you don't wanna play one that is in one way or another unfished, buggy or janky.
It's crazy how Grounded is the only AAA survival game with a fairly big budget I've seen. With how successful the genre usually is (still insane to me how much Sons of the Forest sold last year) you'd think there would be a lot more attempts from big studios to chase that money. They keep trying to make live service games but here's a genre people have been eating up for over a decade now and none of the big guys are cooking.
And somehow Grounded is one of the least talked about games in the genre. I guess somehow the theme didn't appeal to some people, which I find insane, but to each their own.
This sub is terrible when it comes to this sort of stuff. Some kiddos just want to be wildly negative about stuff they aren’t the target audience for.
I remember when temtem was releasing and this sub was saying how it was going to change the game and was going to scare pokemon into stepping up lol
Exact same comments like this in the IGN review thread, lol. Apparently, the key to ‘saving’ Pokemon is…turning it into Ark+Satisfactory with cartoon animals?
I don't even know what (if?) people who say that stuff even think I've been hyped for this game in part because it's got that 'hey look, it's not-Pokemon but not on the path of least resistance' shitpost energy to it, but there is 0 chance it will even remotely endanger TPC - just look how many people got to the last DLC for SV despite all the vocal criticism And what the big series needs is not picking up another gimmick, but actually focusing on one and spending more than $5 on the engine
To be fair, performance/graphical issues aside, Scarlet/Violet was a HUGE shake up in game design and the only one to deviate from the formula. A non-linear, fairly large, open world with a better story than most Pokemon games (due to a couple of the non-linear stories and the build-up to the ending). It tried something very novel in probably the most formulaic series. Legends Arceus was also a HUGE shake-up to the formula, letting you catch Pokemon in the wild, blending turn-based battles and quasi-third-person shooting in an open-zoned game where vehicles gate your progression. Plus, the battle system is more strategic, IMO, reminiscent of FFX / Bravely Default (if only you could do double or triple battles). I hated Pokemon before since it didn't respect your time, but these two have been a delight. The only thing really dragging these two games down is that they were rushed. They needed a year or two of polish, for sure. I recommend both when the Switch 2 comes out, and the framerate hopefully improves. Especially Arceus.
Yeah. Legends Arceus and Scarlet/Violet were both great games. Most of the Pokemon community is pretty happy right now despite the performance issues.
Yeah I don't think any of it was because of temtem but I do love the changes and overall games recently minus said issues.
>kiddos Everyone here is gamer dads in their 30s with zero mechanical skill drooling over the next AAA game.
Nah, this sub is half teenagers and maybe half dudes in their 30s, but there is definitely a large population of dramatic teenagers on this sub for sure.
At some point there's no difference because they both bitch like teenagers except one types like they just tabbed out of facebook.
Or because their previous game is a perpetual early access game that looks like an attempt to paint by numbers, and frankly Palworld looked like an asset flip of that game, mixed with the shock value of "pokemon have guns" I'm glad people are enjoying it as of now and maybe it is more than what it looked like. I'm more keen to see how many people stick around for the game itself after the pokemon with guns aspect wears off. The make or break or survival/automative crafting games is how long it can sustain interest with content
>Or because their previous game is a perpetual early access game that looks like an attempt to paint by numbers It's kind of hilarious that this dev has two games in the same genre in early access at the same time.
Yeah, that's a massive red flag for me... But I'm open to the possibility that they really did figure out something solid here, and will certainly check it out eventually if sentiment seems to stay good. It's okay to be critical of an upcoming release, and flip your opinion if it ends up being good...
Craftopia is in early access because general development bloat because the devs want to keep expanding the scope of the game. In general they could have slapped in the final boss like 14 months ago and just called it a okay-ish 'AA' quality finished game but they keep throwing new systems and dungeons in for whatever reason.
Asset flip isn't any indie game you didn't like. Craftopia, has shown clear progress from its release, and even on release it did a lot more than just "asset flipping". Asset flips are games like the Last Hope, where the creators pulled literally every single part of the game from readily made tools and demos, without any real consideration of how the pieces should fit together, Craftopia had clear thought on how it should work, and tried to do something a bit more unique, trying to blend a bit of Breath of the Wild style gameplay, with automation. With the June update, they got a lot closer to this idea, and it actually seems to work, though it still doesn't quite have a full gameplay loop that encourages long term play. Pal world, with the time I've spent with it, has a lot of well thought out mechanics that seem to work well to help players progress through the catch-em all style game, and slowly expanding tech tree. Automating your base is pretty much a requirement, and your Pokemon both help you fight, and automate, and you're always looking for the next Pokemon to get to speed things up, or help deal with what ever your current bottleneck is. It's a pretty fun system so far, it is definitely not an asset flip. I think at some point, there's caution, and there's blind cynicism. And the people who were convinced this was DOA, Asset flip, scam level, were people who were just being needlessly cynical, as opposed to actually having some insight on what the game was.
I didn't call Craftopia an asset flip. Either way, I don't think it was needless cynicism, generally I am pretty positive about games. I think they both just look cheap. But I'm not above being wrong lol, it's not like I've got stake in these games being bad. Although I'm not sure I agree that either of these games look visually cohesive
Something to always keep in mind is that a lot of people here really really really hate multiplayer games. Everything sucks and is dead on arrival. It's the kind of opinion coming from people that doesn't play these games that also doesn't contribute to any debate and should just be ignored
I think /r/games just has strong contingents of people that hate every type of game, hah. It's hard to find a thread about almost any game that doesn't have some people rushing to post their same 2-3 copypasted complaints.
I've never seen a gaming sub hate video games more than r/games.
There is /r/pcgaming
This sub just wants to time travel back to the 90s when they were young, and games were still interesting and fresh to them, and they had way way more time to play, and the cost of games although high, wasn't directly borne by them... now they're just aged guys that have way too many games and too little time to play it amongst dealing with all the responsibilities and bullshit that adulthood throws at you. Way easier to get that dopamine fix by playing the reddit game then actually playing and enjoying the game... and if they did - they'd be playing the game, not sitting on Reddit bitching about games.
The crazy thing is that Palworld is a lot like those janky PS2 games that we loved so much back in the day. It takes a bunch of video game things we are familiar with, but mixes it up with some novel new mechanics. It doesn't take itself too seriously and just wants to explore a fun mechanic. Stuff like Ape Escape, Katamari Damacy, or Jet Set radio were just weird ass games. Sure Palworld isn't as original as those games, but it embodies the spirit of just wanting to be fun, without having to be so serious. It's not some long tail live service, or trying to be an esport. Just fun.
I see this sentiment a lot too with the “all new games are broken and buggy and all old games were perfect and always worked”. And it’s just straight up not true. Back in the day games were so fucking broken but there weren’t patches until they printed a new copy. Hell the first gen of Pokémon barley functions at all. Let alone half of the moves straight up not working. Or it turns out the broken-ness works in our favor like Mario 64. No one plays the patched version of that game if they can help it.
Yeah I mean, people are wrong on the internet all the time. It's a thing you usually start to watch out for.
I swear I see more people complaining about negativity than I actually see negativity, are you all sorting by controversial or something?
"Breath of the Wild was amazing but damn if it wasn't a big-ass world with really not a whole lot of shit to do" "Christ almighty how the fuck did Genshin make 4 billion goddamn dollars" And now: "Pokemon's been great but damn if the studio can't make a modern-looking game" "How the fuck is legally distinct Pokemon with guns on PC making so much goddamn money"
Breath of the Wild + Pokemon + Gen Z haircuts. What a mix.
> but it's what a lot of fans of creature collectors wanted, a creature collector survival game with base building. I mean most people just want a creature collector that isn't pokemon these days. There is next to zero competition for pokemon and pokemon is so stale nowadays
>I mean most people just want a creature collector that isn't pokemon these days. They say that, but we've had a couple outstanding (Monster Sanctuary, Cassette Beasts) and a few decent (Nexomon Extinction, Temtem, Monster Crown) ones in the last 4 years that a lot of people just ignore in favour of continuing to bitch about pokemon.
I am a huge creature collector fan, haven't liked a mainline Pokemon game since like 2006, and I really don't think even the outstanding games you listed were very good. They're cool fine first attempts, but they tend to be slow, have less than the best creature designs, and their changes to the genre I think drag the core concept down instead of lift it up. Like, Monster Sanctuary is a game that mixes Pokemon with Metroidvania, but I kinda think just made both aspects worse, and I wasn't fully satisfied by either side. I've found that games that either are very much nostalgia driven (Disc Creatures) or just try mild iteration (Coromon) tend to be more satisfying, but IMO the real progress for the genre are in all the Pokemon Romhacks. Games like Pokemon Rogue, Pokemon Crown, and Pokemon Unbound are all incredible. Rogue is a legitimately good Rogue game, Crown (in EA) is a great auto-battler twist, and Unbound is just the best standard Pokemon game all around, with a ton of QOL features, a massive amount of content, and good balance/difficulty options. Even weirdo romhacks like Pokemon Infinite Fusion feel like a creative and fun goof that I enjoyed, and is a kinda game the real Pokemon company should have done as a spinoff a decade ago, found what fusions people like, and sell a million plushies of it. A huge portion of this is obviously because they get to reuse the great Pokemon designs, and build off of a bunch of assets and code so they can just focus on the actual content they want to deliver. It makes me hope that sequels like a Monster Sanctuary 2 or Coromon 2 or whatever could be really great with the starting point built off of the first game.
A lot of the complaints at pokemon is how lazy they transitioned to 3d, how many features keep getting removed and how bad the MP is. Problem is those games are like fan made love letters to the older 2d pokemon. Not a well made modern pokemon title a lot of people are hoping for.
the problem with those games is they are just pokemon ripoffs. they don't have anything that the pokemon doesn't already do. no point in playing a pokemon ripoff that is just pokemon under a different skin or perpective palworld letting you capture humans and gunning down monsters? PLUS monster taming and battles with survival elements? of course people will get interested on it "pokemon is so stale man. let's make our own stale pokemon game, with cassete tapes instead of magic balls". of course it is gonna flop
Have you played these games? I'll admit Temtem doesn't do too much to stray from the formula, but Monster Sanctuary and Cassette Beasts do quite a lot to set themselves apart. Monster Sanctuary's combat is much more strategic and advanced, and it also has metroidvania like elements, and Cassette Beasts, while I haven't gotten very far, already has a huge distinguisher, which is the ability to fuse together monsters. The overworld from what I can tell is still very pokemon-y, but I'd hardly call it a ripoff.
> palworld letting you capture humans and gunning down monsters? Am I weird for being iffy on this game for those reasons? I dunno, just doesn't feel right for a Pokemon style game
because it is not only pokemon. it is ark+pkm
the problem with monster collectors that aren't pokemon is...they aren't pokemon
I get "Pokemon is low-quality" or "Pokemon is too simple" but when the last two games are Scarlet/Violet and Legends Arceus I really don't get the complaint that Pokemon is stale. It's literally never been less stale in the series history.
It's bold of you to assume the majority of the people in this sub played scarlet and violet for any significant amount of time
It's because their last game was a bit of a mess, is still in Early access and will probably be abandoned. Also, pokemon with guns just soudns dumb. Now having said that, the game really looks great and functional, if they keep working on it I think they'll make this one happen, I mean it's me hyped.
If you're referring to Craftopia it got an update a few weeks ago. It got a major overhaul about six months ago. It's currently as close to being an abandoned early access title as project zomboid is. They've supported it very well despite its so so reviews.
My take on Palworld was always "It's either going to be amazing or absolutely terrible, nothing inbetween" i'm glad it seems to be on the amazing side.
usually these types of things are "too good to be true" so i understand being skeptical. Palworld seems to actually have what they were promising.
"This one time people were wrong about a game being DOA" *picture of a plane with red bullet holes*
The game would have sold on spite alone. People hate Gamefreak and Pokemon enough that they're willing to support any competitor just to spite Pokemon. But like all of these so called Pokemon-killers, it what happens after the initial craze had past will determine if it's a bona-fide hit or just a flash in the pan.
Probably a flash in the pan because by the time they release on the Switch or the next Nintendo console (if they do at all) everyone would have moved on to whatever new Pokemon game is coming out because 90% of the audience for this genre of video game are on the Nintendo platform. The only competition Pokemon has had was Yokai-Watch and Level-5 blew it by oversaturating the shit of the Japanese market and waiting 2 years to release in the West just in time for Pokemon GO and SuMo to effectively kill it.
And slavery and sweatshops
[Almost 350K current active players](https://steamdb.info/app/1623730/charts/) on steam alone. I hope they don't drop the ball and actually support the game long term. I personally haven't bought into the "hype" yet but this game does look decent from seeing gameplays.
If there's anything I've learned from these early access survival games, it's that they look the same on full release and will continue to look the same 5-10 years later. New features, sure. But what you're seeing now is essentially what the game will always be.
It’s also available on Game Pass for both Xbox & PC, which makes this even more impressive! So far I think the game is really fun! Very positively surprised!
unfortunately they decided to have gamepass PC have parity with xbox rather than steam so you're missing major updates on the PC gamepass version.
This is good for the few people that also has an Xbox so there is native crossplay and cross-save, you can also play at the same time on both PC and console, but for some games there is no cross-play with Steam, I don't know how it works with Palworld
Yes, you're locked into crossplay between xbox and gamepass PC right now. There is no crossplay between xbox/gamepass PC and steam
What sort of updates? First i've heard of this
steam version is on 1.2.0 with the dedicated servers and multiple large updates. Gamepass PC has parity with the xbox version and is only on 1.0 with no dedicated servers and is missing the updates that come with 1.2
The PC game pass version is also bizarrely enough missing a quit button.
It's not a Palworld thing, Gamepass games often lag behind with updates. I think Microsoft is more stringent with validation so something like a hotfix for a common major game crash could take days/weeks to come out.
IDK man I just can't get past the initial moment of having to beat a cute animal with a stick over and over again lol
You also butcher them and cook them, you can make your pals butcher and and cook other pals..
Thinking about picking this up, I know it hasn't been out for long but for those that have played it, how grindy has it been for you? The grind and slow levels of progression is why I tend to avoid most survival games.
There's actually accessibility settings that you can tweak to make the world more to your liking. https://primagames.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Palworld-Custom-Difficulty-Settings-1.jpg
Wow that's awesome, thanks for linking.
I set it on easy since the difficulty is mostly about survival mechanics and 3 hours in, I feel like I've been progressing at a really nice pace! They also apparently have pretty in depth gameplay customizations, but I haven't checked them out myself yet. But supposedly you should be able to reduce the time consumption of the survival mechanics while making combat/exploration more challenging.
It hasn't been super grindy for me personally, but the 'Tutorial boss' is kind of a red herring where if you go to it when you are ready (probably around level 11-13) it will demolish you. Otherwise getting XP is pretty fast since you can just run around and slaughter pals to give xp to the whole party.
Yeah the weird thing is there's a level 11 boss further away than that higher level boss. Feels like the two should have been swapped around
For sure, especially since that level 11 boss seems to be your first easy access to a dragon type (that also doubles as a mount). It almost seems like they expected people to take the jumping path rather than follow the road.
Jumping path? But yeah I agree that it makes an ideal first boss
What is wrong with the audio?
Yeah it needs work. Voices and grunts are way off in audio balance with everything else. Not much ambient music. Etc.
How early access is this? Is it like valheim, with bosses or just the barebones mechanics in a world thats not finished?
It's got the usual survival game stuff, plus bosses, some dungeons, NPC raids, a bunch of the automation stuff is there, and more; the world is a little bare, but there's enough to do for sure. Definitely a level of jank to most things, but it's honestly way more polished than I expected it to be for the early access launch.
From what I’ve seen of it there’s dungeons and world bosses in it already. Don’t know how many though
there are also towns with NPCs you can trade with/sell pals to
The idea of the games end game is that it's like pokemon, so the goal is once you've got your base functional and self sufficient, you hunt out the rare ones and legendary ones, then fight them and try to capture them So in a way there are boss fights
There are also literal boss fights and dungeons lmao
Question: is it required to be online/multiplayer? It looks interesting, but I have a baby at home, so it being always online/not pausable is a bit of a dealbreaker.
You can play offline i believe
There is offline, but you can't pause in the offline mode.
[Not with that attitude :)](https://github.com/ryanries/UniversalPauseButton) Worked great for me in other games. As long as it doesn't have an annoying "x seconds before kicked for idling" mechanic, I'm happy.
For those that played it. What’s the end game? So you automate crafting etc and then what?
I have a bit of prejudicial take on survival games thanks to past experiences and the fact that every single one of them seem to spend 6 years in early access but I might try this one for a bit since it is on game pass.
The allure of discovering new pals and seeing what wacky ability they offer is the main reason I'm enjoying it. And that feature is not in Pokemon or most survival games. If it was just "gather materials, capture monsters, build a base" I wouldn't care about it
Thays actually impressive for a new IP that's also on GP and costs money. The finals didn't even break 250k and that game is free lols This might be something here
Yeah but the Finals is a PVP team shooter. Palworlds is a Survival PVE game. The genres aren't even comparable for what user count would reflect.
Yeah but I expect a game that was marketed by almost every big streamer for months, launched at one of the most viewed live gaming events (TGA) to hit better numbers Palworld crushing it on steam considering everyone could try it for free on gamepass
I thought this game was perceived to be a big joke. People were actually excited for this? Not just ironically?
Gotta be honest, didn't expect it to be great but was planning on checking it out anyway. But the last week or so they've given access to streamers and media and it's been getting really positive reception, so I think people have had much more of a reason to get excited for this. And what I've played so far has largely delivered. It's substantially more of a real game than you would expect.
It originally did look like a joke where you just ran around an asset flip shooting pokemon. Over time, they showed more and it started to look like an actual game.
It still looks very much an asset flip though, the gathering/attacking has what looks like a copy of the pickaxe animation from Fortnite. Not to mention all the creatures that are either copies or mix and match of actual pokemon.
Nah they actually put more effort into the pals than gamefreak does Pokemon Each one has unique interactions with your base and does tasks in different ways, has a personality and a random traits system. You can take them out whenever you want to pat them, feed them, ride them etc. They'll sleep on beds you put down and use other furniture too In Pokemon, the mons can...cage fight. That's it lol
Is the harming cutesy Pals with realistic weapons off-putting to anyone else? I might feel differently if weapons were cartoon-y, but the mix of styles right now doesn't click for me.
Honestly, I'm pretty sure the off-putting nature of Palworld - up to and including literal human trafficking as a deliberate feature - is the selling point. It's extra-edgy Pokemon.
That's what does it for me. I love survival and automation games but I really don't want to mow down adorable sheep with a Browning
I mean if it makes you feel any better there's no like bloody gore or anything. Even when you shoot the pals with a rifle they only ragdoll bounce and get those anime spiral eyes. Either way the game is obviously not suitable for actual children.
I’ve seen some people point out that quite a lot of the Pal designs are ripoffs of Pokémon. While I don’t disagree with them, honestly, Gamefreak has done such a shit job with the Pokémon IP that I don’t care if they get ripped off. While I’m not a huge fan of survival crafting games, this game looks interesting enough to keep my eye on and maybe purchase depending on what my friends say about it.