Gotta be honest, rockpapershotgun’s coverage of this game hasn’t gotten me very interested in this being anything other than a hyped flash in the pan but we’ll see
I had no intention of getting it after finding out it’s less like Pokemon with guns and more like Rust with Pokemon, but a friend got it for me a few days ago.
I am already bored. I never got into shit like Rust or Ark before, either. The loop is the same, except with the addition of capturing critters to use as laborers in your base or to help in combat; not the sole means of combat and relying on them sucks because you don’t command them like you do in Pokemon but like you would in Elder Scrolls with AI about as smart. You level up to learn new tech that ultimately just helps you do higher level areas or lower level areas faster.
I think with most players it is just going to be forgotten in a few months; but the people who really like Rust and Ark and things like that, will keep Palworld going a long time because it is, at least on a technical standpoint, better than those and does have quite a lengthy tech tree to unlock. Plus it’s cuter.
Literally the only thing I know about it is “pokemon with guns” and “it’s SOOOOOOOO popular! You should try it because it’s popular! READ HOW POPULAR THIS IS!”
i mean the good part about it is the survival aspect. it’s a pretty similar direction as ark except it’s actually playable (unlike ark). and it deviates from some other games like valheim enough for it to feel like a unique experience
the enslavement is just a neat bonus
right now it already feels like it had a lot more player-experience effort put into it than many already popular games (and way more than pokémon if that’s relevant lol), and even though it has some noticeable bugs and doesn’t have as much content as you might want, it definitely is something that feels like it has a lot of growth ahead of it. the mechanics on their own set up a good foundation for new additions ahead
the main thing that bugs me about it is some quality of life things, probably the biggest being storage management/sorting (god damn it this happens in every game i play) & not as much automation as i’d expect. if they made it so you could, i don’t know, link all your chests/storage nodes with some storage interface (maybe that pal computer that is already used for a lot of stuff), allowed you to assign which chests/chest slots pals can put which items in, allowed pals to take items from specific assigned chests to e.g. automatically craft certain proportions of items, etc. it’d make me want to play the game 100x as much. add a “factorio but with slaves” aspect to the game to appeal to a wider range of players, you know, even the minecraft redstoners might get in. basically adding a “storage & task management screen” would be sick
another thing is that i’ve found it really tedious to manage a large number of tasks/pals currently, which is why i mentioned “task management”, it’d be cool if you could easily manipulate priority/necessity to certain tasks and stuff
overall though they just need to focus on ironing out the bugs and then adding more content to the world to make it feel actually rewarding/interesting to explore (i guess this basically just means add more lore to the world, because it is severely lacking in story), and it’ll be an actually really worth-it game
Gotta be honest, rockpapershotgun’s coverage of this game hasn’t gotten me very interested in this being anything other than a hyped flash in the pan but we’ll see
I had no intention of getting it after finding out it’s less like Pokemon with guns and more like Rust with Pokemon, but a friend got it for me a few days ago.
I am already bored. I never got into shit like Rust or Ark before, either. The loop is the same, except with the addition of capturing critters to use as laborers in your base or to help in combat; not the sole means of combat and relying on them sucks because you don’t command them like you do in Pokemon but like you would in Elder Scrolls with AI about as smart. You level up to learn new tech that ultimately just helps you do higher level areas or lower level areas faster.
I think with most players it is just going to be forgotten in a few months; but the people who really like Rust and Ark and things like that, will keep Palworld going a long time because it is, at least on a technical standpoint, better than those and does have quite a lengthy tech tree to unlock. Plus it’s cuter.
Literally the only thing I know about it is “pokemon with guns” and “it’s SOOOOOOOO popular! You should try it because it’s popular! READ HOW POPULAR THIS IS!”
i mean the good part about it is the survival aspect. it’s a pretty similar direction as ark except it’s actually playable (unlike ark). and it deviates from some other games like valheim enough for it to feel like a unique experience
the enslavement is just a neat bonus
right now it already feels like it had a lot more player-experience effort put into it than many already popular games (and way more than pokémon if that’s relevant lol), and even though it has some noticeable bugs and doesn’t have as much content as you might want, it definitely is something that feels like it has a lot of growth ahead of it. the mechanics on their own set up a good foundation for new additions ahead
the main thing that bugs me about it is some quality of life things, probably the biggest being storage management/sorting (god damn it this happens in every game i play) & not as much automation as i’d expect. if they made it so you could, i don’t know, link all your chests/storage nodes with some storage interface (maybe that pal computer that is already used for a lot of stuff), allowed you to assign which chests/chest slots pals can put which items in, allowed pals to take items from specific assigned chests to e.g. automatically craft certain proportions of items, etc. it’d make me want to play the game 100x as much. add a “factorio but with slaves” aspect to the game to appeal to a wider range of players, you know, even the minecraft redstoners might get in. basically adding a “storage & task management screen” would be sick
another thing is that i’ve found it really tedious to manage a large number of tasks/pals currently, which is why i mentioned “task management”, it’d be cool if you could easily manipulate priority/necessity to certain tasks and stuff
overall though they just need to focus on ironing out the bugs and then adding more content to the world to make it feel actually rewarding/interesting to explore (i guess this basically just means add more lore to the world, because it is severely lacking in story), and it’ll be an actually really worth-it game
Katharine’s review today steps back from that flash-in-the-pan take (and it wasn’t a good one).
No doubt there’s some empty calories here, though.