Palworld (2026)

I loved Palworld. Obviously, it is Pokémon with guns and carnage, but it has a certain addicting appeal in the way the resource gathering and crafting works.

In the glorious land of Palworld, you start with nothing after washing up on a beach. You punch your first tree and collect your first stone and catch your first level 1 Lamball. Soon, you craft a little stone axe, gather wood faster and build your first little cabin. You set your base and keep expanding it with new, unlocked buildings and decorations. In the end, you build a well-oiled base (or bases later on) that produces items on its own, leaving you time for your adventure and exploration.

The rest of the game is an endless loop of leveling up, catch Palls, upgrade stuff, unlock stuff and ultimately, craft your endgame gear and battle the strongest bosses in the game. You can craft special saddles to ride certain palls, craft weapons that your palls can use and create your very own production factories, including slave labor. Each Pal possess a special ability to help your base grow. Water Pals water your crops and rock grinders, Rock type Pals can mine and chop wood, Electrified Pals can Power your base etc.

You defend your base against the Syndicate thugs that are everywhere, you raid their camps for Pals and resources and eventually clear all the boss towers and search for legendary Pals in the far corners of the map. You collect 12 of each Pal for huge XP bonusses, keeping the game interesting.

The Graphics look gorgeous for a big open map like this, and the viewing distance is great. The animations are fluent, and the lighting is polished.

The music is also great. It sounds just like a better Pokémon theme and it when you hear the iconic boss music, you know that sh!t is about to get real, and a very strong Pal is lurking towards you from somewhere.

The controls take some time to get used to but are very fluent. It just works and responds perfectly.

There is a cruel and sadistic aspect to Palworld. Of course, it is not Pokémon, but sometimes it is hard to forget that this is not a child game. You can butcher your palls for resources, sacrifice them to create better versions, punish them with slave labor and three hours of sleep a day and even execute them to set an example for the other palls at the base.

The map is huge and features many different regions, each with their own biome, Palls and Boss Towers. There are also some Wildlife Preserve Island with special Pals that are heavily guarded.

There are a lot of items, chests, points of interest and goodies to be collected in the world. Searching for them and collecting the junk you need is oddly satisfying and keeps you playing.

Although I really like the game, there is one special note that I must make for the endgame. When you want to craft the best gear in the game, it is only logical that it costs a lot of resources. The problem is that the time it takes for sh!t to be produced, is absolutely horrendous. You want to create 30 rockets for a big battle ahead and need to wait 20 real life minutes for it to complete. The only thing I see when firing a homing rocket at a boss, is 2 minutes of my life that flies through the air every time. The same (even worse) goes for Legendary spheres. After 10 lightyears you crafted 5 of them, I throw them at a Pal, miss, and see 10 minutes of my pathetic life thrown to waste in the abys, just like my hopes and dreams. But the absolute worst part is the Oil Rig. You need a lot of oil for special metals later on, and besides the immense costs of the Oil Rig itself, the time, power and effort it takes to produce 10 barrels for example, is insane. It is faster to search for chests in the wild, airdrops or raid the newly added Oil Rig, assuming the Death Star Laser does not burn you to ash first.

Another problem is the terrible AI of the Pals. When assigning them to task, they often fail to register on a certain job, simply walk away, abandon their post after producing a single item, and just do not get their priorities straight. Many times, I started the production of 500 Assault Rifle ammo for example, knowing that it would takes years to complete. I assigned 4 (healthy) Handiwork palls to the assembly line, went on a glorious conquest on the other side of the map and when I returned 40 real life minutes later, not one single bullet had been produced and all the assigned palls where just transporting f*cking berries and tomatoes.

But the base principal of the game and the rewarding experience overall makes it worth it.

The game is still being updated, and new content comes out every once in a while. New towers are being added, new challenges and new areas to explore.

I would surely recommend this game to everyone.

I was going to hold off on reviewing this until I'd finished the available content, but with my gaming laptop in repair I don't see myself getting to that anytime soon, so I'll just throw this out now with the caveat that I haven't played for longer than a handful of hours so far.

First impressions are: it's better than I expected, particularly considering I'm not really into survival/crafting-type games at all (with a few exceptions - Minecraft and Raft, though they feel as though they barely count, and Subnautica and The Forest kept my interest with their stories). It's not something I see myself devotedly playing or becoming a big fan of, but it's fun to play with a good group of friends, the graphics are clean, it has some good potential, and it kept me engaged for as long as I was on it.

The gameplay is still pretty rough, but that's probably a given with an Early Access title like this. I experienced a lot of bugs and glitches and just general awkward movement.

Re: the elephant in the room, I think to say there's no copying here would be to be in complete denial, especially considering how shameless a BOTW copy their last game was. A fair few designs in here are blatant rip-offs, some going as far as to have the Pokemon assets one-to-one copied but just flipped around or combined with others', so I'll be curious to see how that lawsuit pans out. I don't expect the game will be entirely taken down, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if they have to rework some designs and elements.

That said, there are also some nice unique (as far as I know) designs here. I'm cautious to give Palworld too much credit because I've seen claims the artist has stolen from Fakemon/fanart as well, so those 'unique' designs could be down to someone else, but I don't know enough about that to say for sure.

Gameplay-wise, it's not really much like Pokemon at all - I see a lot of comparisons to ARK, but I've never played that, so it mostly just reminded me of Rust. I leave the base-building up to my friends and pretty much just spend my time collecting Pals and exploring, and that works for me.

I'll keep up with it and I'm interested to see where the development goes, though I can also completely understand why this game is getting the criticism it is. I've also heard their other game had some incredibly bad practices and financial ethics, so I'm retaining some caution.

I hope updates add more of a storyline, and ideally I'd like to see more maps. It's the same world regardless of server, which I get, but it means once you've explored in one you don't have much left to see. Having more of a plot with relevant NPCs/locations etc. scattered around it might make it feel more interesting.

I tried playing this game as a single player and the early game was very fun. The pacing was perfect and everything. After a while, I started noticing the progression getting much slower and the game being much harder.

Like, there are two tower bosses that are impossible to beat in single player (maybe you can with 10000 hours of grinding the perfect loot and pals).

So If you wanna get this game, be ready to invite 3-4 friends to play along, cause 1-2 players is not enough for the whole package :3

I'm not saying the game is bad...

But it's not really my style to shoot cute monsters....... Or not cute ones and then being able to capture them.....

Probably if the game had been an online MMORPG version with lots of people to play with, I would have enjoyed it a lot more, especially because the game is VERY grindy.

So nothing, it didn't really appeal to me D:

Stage
I played Palworld for about 24 hours, on a dedicated server that I hosted, with two friends. We did not complete any aspect of this game. We did not catch everything there was to be caught, we did not finish all the boss battles. For the record, I am not a huge Pokémon fan. I have not played a Pokémon game since Yellow.

Pros

• Catching pals is fun as hell. The animations are great, and the feedback is really good.
• Pal combat (can) feel really good.
• I find the pals to be generally interesting in design.
• Playing with friends is fun.

Cons (aka why only 3 stars)

• The hate system is completely mismanaged. Even if the fight is nearly 100% pal v pal they'll occasionally get distracted by the player.
• NPCs are just bad. They don't add to the world.
• The world building in general needs a lot of work. It feels like the developer went into the unity asset store, saw something, and went "cool", before adding it to the map. Everything from cities, to the giant tree in distance, the world lack cohesion.
• Buggy, laggy, and breaks easily. I experienced falling through the world and I had a pal that if you used a certain skill it would warp to my nearby base and require an alt+f4 to fix, fought a couple bosses who did not even acknowledge we were in the arena.
• Pal move sets may need some more diversity (but it's really cool you can customize them).
• I have so many mixed feelings about the mount system. I think water mounts need more of a purpose, and air mounts should suffer more when they run out of stamina. I also think mounts of each type deserve their own slot that allows them to be called as mountable only. There are many fun pals and having to carry 1 or 2 slots for pals that you pretty much only use as a mount just felt wasteful.
• The current dungeon system is not good.
• The games fun factor for myself has major drop offs at about 25 hours, I didn't have any desire to continue.
• Base building areas are small. I'd like to say the number is too limited too, but I really felt this system wasn't deep enough to warrant large expansive bases.

Final Thoughts
Overall, I like the game, however, I feel like its universal praise is unwarranted and this game needs criticism. I'm fully empathizing with players who really wanted Nintendo to do this with Pokémon and add all of the polish that comes with it. This game is very much in early access and only time will tell if the game will become a polished game that defines a genre or if it will fall into obscurity in six months. With a large list of cons, why not an overall negative review? The Price. In a world of $70 unfinished, short, or boring games, at $30 this game is worth the cost of entry even in its current state. I would not recommend this game if the cost was above that. If you're on the fence, maybe even wait for a sale. I hope this game either finds its polish and really enhances almost every aspect or it lights a fire under Nintendo to make Pokémon games more exciting.

Palworld is a rare instance of a game coming completely from left field to dominate the video game zeitgeist. Everyone's heard the tagline: "Pokemon with guns." This quip doesn't properly impress the ridiculous level of bloat that drags this title down. Is this a monster catcher? Is this a multiplayer survival game? Is it an exploration-focused Zelda-like? Is it a base/resource management title?

It's all of the above. Each individual part of the game reminds me of another, better game. The monster-catching and combat mechanics just make me want to go play Pokemon Legends: Arceus. The rough base building mechanics make me want to go play Valheim. The exploration makes me want to go play Tears of the Kingdom. Hell, it even has the wanted system from Grand Theft Auto. No one element in Palworld stands out to me as being particularly well done.

But Palworld's redeeming value is that it does have a bit of an interesting loop. Things are rough at first--gathering resources is about as bland as I've ever seen in any game. But once you capture a few "Pals," you can assign them to basic building, gathering and maintenance tasks. As your base expands and gets more complicated, you have to manage which pals are assigned to your base, as each pal has different skillsets that enable them to perform certain tasks. This feeds the desire for exploring the world and finding new pals to expand and work your base.

Unfortunately, the Early Access experience is still way too rough for me to enjoy most of the time. It's a technical mess, with glitchy enemies and hopelessly bland world design. It also has extremely frequent crashes on the Steam Deck that make me question the playability of the game on the system. But I'm willing to give Palworld the benefit of the doubt that they may improve the game over time to trim the things that I don't like about it and make the core loop shine even more. I'll probably check it out in a year or so to see how things have developed.

There are droves of this type of game: an indie spin on a couple of formula.

1. This game is not Pokémon, it has many similarities and nods to Pokémon but it is very dynamic.

2. I can pick up my pals.

3. This game plays more like a survival game.

4. good system design to create an engaging gameplay loop, but definitely needs some exp tweaking.

5. still early access so jank as hell.

Title is sarcastic.

I understand if the game isn't your cup of tea because it's a survival/monster capture gimmick - it's a time sink after all - but some of the stuff said about this game is somewhat coming from a place of malice against it? I don't really care about Pokémon(tm) either way so this comes from purely an "I enjoy Palworld for what it is" place.

Take it as you will, I have no horse in either race since I haven't bought Palworld (GamePass ver. so the buggiest of them all) and I haven't played a mainline Pokémon game ever since HeartGold (only Pokémon Snap has a place in my heart, sorry).

The Game

The game is a super streamlined (more than Craftopia, in any case) survival game: you have your hand held until you beat the 1st Trainer - after that you have the basics to understand what to do. Crafting is streamlined and the technology tree is just about the same as ARK's. The translation JP to EN is decent and doesn't have the same problems as Craftopia's so that's a plus to it.

The graphics are also enjoyable to look at.

The Pals

Pals have all varying abilities they can use in or out of the fight: if assigned to their base, they will pick up the first job available that is within their skillset (Handywork, Grazing/Farming, Planting, Watering, Cooling, Electricity Generation, Smelting/Refining...) and you can check their info by pressing on a Pal (if in your team) or by pressing F in the Palbox to view their details. Every base bench or craft has a skill your Pals have and you can see its attribute by simply hovering over it.

Assigning Pals is hard as hell: you're supposed to lift them in your hand and slap them on their assigned resource but if they have more skills (such as Mining and Handywork) they will prioritize whichever without a pattern - I wish they'd streamline assignation process so it would be easier to work with them and have a streamlined base of operation.

The podium is useless: the Pals work normally at their own pace - the higher their sill, the faster is the process. The podium is supposed to allow you to overwork your Pals but there's no reason to neither there's any payoff as the only thing that will happen is a drain on SAN and Hunger that will make your life a living hell. Just let the Pals work in their own way and reposition them - if someone gets too low on SAN, simply lift them and put them in the hot tub.

I also never understood where people thought of the concept of "slavery" when it comes to the Pals: they get caught and get assigned a job, just as Pokémons did in iterations as early as Sapphire (Machamps being movers, Chansey's being nurses) and then afterwards in Galar, were you can use them to do odd jobs.

You can capture bosses and "lucky" (bigger, rarer) versions of Pals.

The Pal's Designs

I know the Twitter discourse: I've recently (a in a few minutes ago) seen an entire thread of supposed "plagiarism" and the only two I can concede are Decidueye - Robinquill (they're similar but one's a bird and the other is a dude), Salazzle - Lovander (an obvious joke on the fact that Salazzle's presence in the game leaned into an enormous amount of R34 pics in her err- honor?) and Ampharos - Emphidran - here's the link for full transparency.

I don't know if it's because Pokémons as a whole don't interest me as much as they did in the 90s but I felt like most of these can be chalked up to someone running a fakemon generator and taking obvious inspiration. I'm straying away from the whole AI debacle because there's no tangible proof besides "he said, she said" and I will actually get miffed at the whole "asset flip" that people are accusing the Devs of since the devs of Palword were well over their head with the development: here's some more info on that. The nitty gritty of it was that they got an artist who was refused by 100+ companies to design the Pals, a part-time cafeteria worker to make the guns animation and they had to swap from Unity to UE5 as they found someone who was more skilled in UE5's development than Unity.

Palworld has a lot of issues: one of them is the fact that, in the GamePass version, there are a lot of bugs, the game crashes and the Pals sometimes behave erratically and their AI has a moment of thought before actually doing what you need them to (like attacking an enemy).

The capture system needs a bit of work but you can tinker with the settings to make it easier or harder but it will still have problems with scaling: there's no indicator on when and where your standard Pal Spheres will stop working on high level enemies (I gauged something like level 15+ needs a Mega Sphere, 25+ needs a Giga Sphere - but maybe even earlier than 25, and 35-ish+ + is Hyper Sphere time) aside from trying to use one, wasting it and being told that it won't work.

All in all, though, the game is fun if you're into ARK-adjacent gameplay loop and it's undoubtly really fun to go around with friends.

I have less than 10 hours under my belt but (for now) I am done.

Palworld is a survival sim with a monster catcher RPG grafted on top. The survival bit is generic but fine and the way slavery (more on that later) is integrated is mechanically well done.

It is just a game so I am fine with it and appreciate how explicit they make "using" PALs to automate your grind, work your base, or assist you in battle. It does not sugarcoat the language.

When you capture a human it calls out the ethically dubious but it also has Slave stats for what the different PALs are good and bad at "assisting" in around your base. I feel like a lot of games have "helpers"; except for Conan Exiles; I have never seen them called slaves. I feel like some people might feel icky but I like that it forces that consideration, even if for me, it is just a game and I do not feel ethically compromised by playing it as intended.

Survival games are time sinks. Monster catchers' are time sinks. Only a certain sort of person would enjoy that. If you like those things this is worth a spin. My issue is I wouldn't say I like those and would only play them with friends.

I did that. It was annoying.

I played the entire game with a friend. The game does not scale for that. So because I have a more methodical play style. I was always behind. I never had the supplies I wanted because the zones are more PSO-like and kind of small and have fewer spawns/drops so I never had supplies to do what I wanted to do or meaningfully contribute.

My friend would hit all the base upgrades and I felt like I was just being dragged along. In Minecraft or Valheim you felt like a small part of a big world even in multiplayer but this feels like a bespoke single-player game they added multiplayer to.

There was never enough stuff to make 2 of everything so I was just the runt. And because there are no servers on the GamePass version currently, I could not even grind. I could only play when my friend was on and invited me to HIS world.

It was a small annoyance that kept getting bigger until I just had it and quit and uninstalled it.

To quickly talk about "Videogame Stuff", the PALs have very cute (and legally distinct) designs but the environments are pretty crude. The audio is very tinny and low-quality sounding. None of this would turn me off if I were into these types of games but it is noticeable.

In conclusion, fine but not my type of game and the only way I would enjoy it feels frustrating and has friction that made me bounce off it.

Edit: I get that you can "grind" more but that makes the progression loop feel grind-y in a way that would not be the same as a solo playthrough. The balance is off.