The pitch “Pokemon with guns” may be the worst idea I’ve ever heard. No, I don’t want to give Grookey an AK-47. But 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Palworld’s embarrassing marketing is the least of its worries. It tries to be Zelda without understanding what made 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Breath of the Wild work. It tries to be Pokemon while removing the tactical trainer battles. The creature designs are cute but, at best, completely uninspired and, at worst, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:complete Pokemon ripoffs. The survival mech🍨anics are overly simple and allegations of AI art are rife. But Palworld is so much fun.
I’ve been trying to work out exactly what makes Palworld so invigorating. I keep coming up blank. I’ve been asking myself why I spent two hours building a cool house to live in, manually harvesting wood and stone before my base was fully automated. I’ve got no idea, but I had a great time doing so. Building your base is satisfying in the same way that decking out your 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Animal Crossing island is, and filling it with cute pals feels like welcoming villagers, albeit villagers who are forc𓆏ed into indentured labour.
If you feel bad about cracking ⭕the whip🍨 on sheep and penguins, just wait until you get later into the game and start capturing rare merchants and other humans in Pal Spheres and force them to work in your gulag.
Base building and Pal capturing ⛄are the meat and potatoes of the early stages of Palworld, and they’re both satisfying. While crafting Pal Spheres is tedious and expensive, throwing them harkens back to Pokemon Legends: Arceus, and f𒊎eels great. It feels less great when you accidentally nick the left bumper and throw one into the aether, losing it forever.
Palworld feels like a survival-lite game. Harvesting resources is simple, if a little time-consuming. You’re never really lacking in anything that you can’t easily farm m𓆉ore of. You have a hunger metre, but berries are so weightless and abundant that you never need to cook. However, I never begrudge the survival mechanics, and in fact, they provide a more compelling gameplay loop than the encounter-battle-battle-bigger battle-encounter of regular Pokemon games.
Speaking of encounters, fighting wild Pals and hostile invaders feels good. It’s not great, a bit button mashy (or, in my case, sit behind a rock and let your Pa🉐ls go to town), but it’s exciting. You can dodge, shoot a bow and arrow, stab with a spear, or hop on your mount and run the heck away. It&rsquo🥃;s no Sekiro or Sifu – it’s not even Shadow of Mordor – but it’s good enough to keep you on your toes and not get tiresome.
The ꩲPals themselves are quite ♏cute, but I can’t help being disappointed in them. From not-Psyduck to not-Grookey to not-Lucario, the designs are incredibly uninspired. CEO of developer Pocket Pair, Takuro Mizobe, is an ardent supporter of AI and has bragged about putting Pokemon through AI filters before, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the same system produced these derivative designs. However, the implementation of the Pals is excellent.
Ghostly Daedream appearing in the fields of slaughtered Lamball is great environmental storytelling (if intentional), and the great, high-level Mammorest is a great motivator to level up in order to make an attempt to tame it. Its siꦦze is of great importance; it hulks over every other Pal, a formidable presence and deadly foe. When has a 🦹Pokemon ever felt really imposing in a main series game? Seeing these high-level foes in the starting area gives you something to aim for, and this is something Palworld does well. It entices you with promises of bigger and better Pals, more interesting locations on the horizon, and more, more, more as you level up.
Exploration is interesting, taking strong inspiration from recent Zelda entries but never quite managing that magic. Like I said, everything in this game is executed just about average. But fast travel points are freque💙nt and dying drops all your items on your grave, so you never feel punished for broadening your horizons or straying too far from the b🥀eaten path.
Nothing in Palworld is revolutionary. I’d go as far as to say most of it is blatantly copied from better games. It doesn’tဣ execute any of its mechanics with any semblance of excellence or panache. It’s a survival game for people who don’t really like survival games. It’s a Pokemon game for people who are getting bored of Pokemon. And that, in some Frankensteianian way, makes for an incredibly engaging concoction that has captured the fingers of m🦩illions, myself included.
