A new game has been released and it has already broken multiple records and became extremely popular over the course of the previous few days! It is called Palworld and as of the time of writing this article, it has sold over 8 million copies and gathered a lot of attention from gamers and Pokemon fans.
What is Palworld?
Contrary to the popular belief, Palworld is not “a pokemon-like game” like Temtem or Monster Sanctuary that are built on the foundation of the monster catching genre nor is it an official Pokemon game. It is also not a “Pokemon but with guns” game although some of the monsters in the game can equip guns. It is instead a survival game where you can gather materials to craft items, eat to satiate your hunger, build your own bases, level up and increase your statistics similar to games such as Ark or Valheim.
On top of that, you can additionally catch “Pals” who are the pocket monsters of this game. There are over 100+ Pals that you can catch and find in the wild on the many pre-made islands of Palworld. Your goal is to build your base, level your character and your base, increase your statistics and of course catch pals. However, there is a catch. You do not have to just befriend Pal and let them help you in fighting other pals (or humans for that matter). They will also help you with constructing your base and items, gathering building material and food as well. They also need to sleep, eat and rest as well. Some of them will allow you to ride them to traverse through the islands on land and in the air.
The many stretched controversies of Palworld
So how is this game controversial then? One of the first issues people point out is that the game “feels like a pokemon-rip off”, trying to capitalize on the likeness of designs and element of catching pokemons. Another is that the game is very similar to Ark in its UI design as well as the survival gameplay. The game also disturbed some players with the use of enslaving pals and even humans to force them to work in glorified sweatshops. The game even allows you to butcher them with a metal cleave to gain some food out of them.
Palworld also made many video game developers and video game journalists angry for how this game became extremely successful. The most popular claim is that the game feels cheap, like “an Unreal Engine 5 asset flip” type of game that is easy to make and that the game is too basic and not “deep”. Though it should not be surprising as many of these developers make AAA games which are known to be extremely difficult to make, cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce and years to publish, so their bias and frustration can be pretty understandable. This is also proven by the recent Insomniac leak as well as SONY/MICROSOFT legal case documentation where AAA games can cost from 80 million $ to even 300 million $, excluding the costs of hundreds of millions $ spent on marketing.
However, some went as far as to claim that Pals were made with AI tools because of how similar they are to Pokemon designs. Considering that the CEO of Pocketpair, the company behind Palworld, is a cryptocurrency entrepreneur and a fan of AI technology, including the generation of artwork through AI, this would not be surprising. Despite those claims, at the moment of writing the article there is no evidence of Pal designs being generated with AI.
Some person on X.com (formerly Twitter) decided to even fabricate the evidence that Palworld’s Pal designs are directly ripped-off from Pokemon designs by altering the Pals 3D models to make them fit 1:1 with Pokemon 3D models. In general, many Pokemon fans outright hate Palworld and wish that Nintendo company (the owner’s of the Gamefreak company that makes Pokemon games) took a action lawsuit against Pocketpair company. In fact, Nintendo already DMCI’ed a paywalled mod that replaced all the Pokemon 3D models and replaced the Palworld Pal 3D models. Additionally, during the writing process of this article, Pokemon Company released a statement about the recent situation as well. Additionally, some people are trying to scam players on official Palworld discord server so beware of that as well.
Early access impressions (January 2024)
Alright but what about the game, is it bad or good? I have played the game for a couple of hours and it is very fun. I really like making new stuff in my base, levelling up my character and my base, catching new pals and filling the paldeck with new information and models. The colourful visuals do makes the game pop more and I appreciate that the game runs fine on my PC and downloads only 20GB (technically requires 40 GB of free space). Which is a nice change from many popular games that focus on realistic visuals and take a lot of space, usually at least 100+ GB. Though I would have preferred if the developers optimized the game better and focused on that in the future as well.
However, I do have some issues with the game. It’s in “early access” which means that the game has bugs and has not reached the 1.0 version (as in finished) yet. There are issues with pathfinding in this game, if pals will carry an object such as wood, they will get stuck on different objects or constructions that you can build such as beds, campfires, boxes and such. From what I have experienced, they also cannot open doors which is very annoying and I decided to leave all my doors open instead until this problem is fixed.
There is surprisingly very little music and the one I keep hearing is the battle theme which is ok at best and irritating at worst. Which is why I simply turn on some lofi hip-hop compilations or just soundtracks from other games such World of Warcraft vanilla (referring to the original release of WOW, not the Classic release) during my playthrough.
There is also the weird stuff that happens right after the very first cutscene ends, where your custom character is shown on a beach and then it fades to black to only teleport you far away from the beach. I do not think it is a bug, it is likely intentional. I have seen youtubers playing the beginning of the game where they had the same situation.
There are not enough animations put into the game and the ones that game has are pretty basic, at least pals are very distinct and they have their own animations. There is also one more issue of the recommended settings which are very demanding in comparison to the minimum settings. I cannot personally test these specific graphical settings, but it seems like the recommended settings are too demanding and the game needs to be optimized by the developers.
There are also probably other issues I have not mentioned or things I forgot about but Palworld needs many patches and updates ahead.
Also, considering that the Pocketpair has a different big game under their portfolio Craftopia, which has been in early access since September 2020, Palworld likely will stay in EA for a few years at least.
What’s next to come and does the outrage matter?
The developers of Pocketpair have released a new roadmap for the Palworld which included bug fixes, pathfinding update as well as other improvements and new features to implement in the future. Given that they keep updating their other big game, Craftopia, and that they respond to the many current issues of Palworld, they will keep their word and keep improving the game. But does the outrage and the nature of the Palworld matter? Probably not in a negative way. The outrage seems to have worked against those who hate the game and wanted it taken down, since many people were more drawn to buying and playing Palworld than staying away from it. In other words, it is another case of a failed “boycott” that only boosted the popularity of the game.
The game has many issues, but many PC and Xbox players want to just play a fun game with catching fantasy monsters, especially considering that the developers just wanted to make the game people would like. Which tracks with the game’s gameplay and the way it was developed. Also, considering the trend of pushing realism and increasing the polygon count on 3D models in video games in the past decade, it also adds the appeal of playing something different and more simple than another AAA product.
That of course does not negate the issues the game has, the developers have to fix them and add new features in order to make the game better. In the end, likely the only thing that will matter in the end, is the amount of fun someone can have while playing the game.
The writer has purchased the steam version of the game by himself. You can also check Palworld on the Steam official page here.
