Is this game really that good or is it just massively overhyped? I watched a videogamedunkey video about it, and I know he overly satirizes things for humor, but it just didn’t look all that great.
It’s a very specific type of game. If you don’t like Rust, Ark, Raft, or any of those games like it Palworld probably isn’t for you. At least not until mods come out.
I’d put rust aside from other survival crafters because the challenge is pvp. Actually surviving alone in rust is easy and even boring. Though I also haven’t played palworld multiplayer yet, but you definitely shouldn’t jump into MP to start a game like this.
Palworld’s multiplayer is more cooperatively focused, not PvP focused like Ark and Rust. It’s fine to jump into MP on day 1.
Idk I don’t like Rust or Ark but I’m totally hooked to Palworld
I brought great shame to my family with the mods I installed in the future. Shame so embarrassing that it breaks causality.
Survival crafting games have always been extemely bare minimum effort by most studios. Look how well Ark did despite it being buggy garbage with dlcs. Palworld has almost everything you’d want from a survival crafting game and is 10x more polished than its competition. Dunkey highlights the bugs, which are definitely there, but for day 1 it is actually very well done and includes a lot of polish and QoL features that I would normally expect an early access game to add months after launch. I don’t know if he made a video from day 1 of ark or rust but it would be orders of magnitude worse than this. Also keep in mind this is the opposite of the type of game he usually plays.
Besides all that, it’s multiplayer and the core gameplay is simply fun.
It’s a very fun, silly, well-made game with a very addictive loop where you’re given a lot of small, easily achievable tasks that have you going: “one more and I’m done”.
On Sunday I played for 13 hours. I don’t know if they have a team of psychologists that found out how to make the game addictive, but the results speak for themselves.
It’s a fun and beautiful place to explore, full of vibrant colors and cute pals. Your base building is not boring because the boring resource gathering is automated by your pal slaves. It scratches optimization itches, and you also get raided which can result in hilarious outcomes that give you an opportunity to rebuild and organize your base more efficiently.
The main dev doesn’t seem capable of such well thought out tactics.
He has more of a “monkey see, monkey do” sort of approach to making games.
He just nailed it by jamming creature collection + survival. I love both and I’ve been addicted to the game. If this game doesn’t get more work done on it (from the devs or modders) these numbers will fall hard. It’s fun but it’s a quick high that will last a couple of weeks.
It’s a survival crafting game. It’s functional, but yeah, I think overhyped. Most people play for the novelty, and that covers for the boring gameplay.
That’s overly reductive. I don’t play it like a crafting game, I play it like a pokemon game and I’m having fun catching new pals while barely touching the base building.
You can do the same thing in Ark, that doesn’t change what it is lol
Ark is worse than Palworld, even just in terms of polish.
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In all fairness, the AI in Palworld is abysmal, too, but they at least acknowledge it (it’s one of the top items to fix in their roadmap), and it’s a just-released early access game, rather than a been-out-for-years title.
I’m having fun catching new pals while barely touching the base building.
/
people play for the novelty, and that covers for the boring gameplay.
Same difference
It’s really good in a “this has no business being good” kind of way, I really like it.
It’s incredible for early access and will be the game of the decade if the devs continue to polish and refine it. And if it doesn’t get sued for its similarities to Nintendo IPs, which I doubt will happen but is still possible.
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I took Pokemon Legends Arceus to 100%. I can firmly say Palworld has a better loop than PLA.
We were almost capped on Palworld and reset our server yesterday. I have spent over a dozen hours since our reset playing the game. I would have put PLA down permanently if I was almost done with the 100% dex and lost my save data. I am missing 2 achievements on Horizon Zero Dawn on steam for that exact reason.
Early access is fine if you look at the game as it is now instead of thinking about “what it will be”.
Agreed. The Early Access just tells me that they plan to make more content for the game, which is really exciting.
Don’t get me wrong, as-is it’s already very playable and fun. Worth the price by a long shot. I’m hopeful it will continue to improve but even if the company vanished tomorrow and left the game in its current state, I would be satisfied with my purchase.
Its pretty clear that the automation aspect was a little over sold in some of the trailers. In one trailer, two lines of cattiva are carrying iron bars from what appears to be a forge.
Pals won’t pull out of forges AFAIK. So it feels like they threw 2 stacks of iron behind the forge and recorded it as an automation demonstration.
I think I’ve spent the last 4 days not doing anything except trying to get the pal automation to be a little more controlled…
Yeah it would be cool to see something similar to the factorio logistics network for pals, crafting stations, and storage. Requesters, providers, and storage settings on inventory slots is all it would take
This sounds like SlaveWolrd than Pal lol. Lines of pals carrying resources like conveyor belts.
No the pals already do this by default, I just wish I could control which chests they use more finely
Probably something more like RimWorld would be it. Filters on boxes, task bar to tell your anubis to stop wasting time on mining and prioritize crafting, stuff like that.
For $25 it’s a pretty fun game.
I normally agree. In 99% of situations skip that early access and wait for, at minimum, fully supported Beta release after the major issues have been ironed out. This is that incredibly uncommon 1% that’s worth it. First Early Access title I have grabbed in years.
Removed by mod
It’s a game that should be terrible but is actually fun as hell.
It hits the sweet spot in different areas. You can tell it’s a bunch of ideas from other games stitched together. Its Ark but more accessible, with pokemon flavor, elden ring’s tough enemy in the newbie area, deep rock galactic pick your friend up off the ground, automation lightly inspired by factio. If you look closely it’s got dark humour in all of the Pal descriptions. It’s just broadly appealing and enjoyable If you don’t take things too seriously, or if you can find the humour in the fact that everything is extremely familiar and just slightly altered to avoid being sued into extinction. If you read the developer interview it’s pretty funny too, new daily flash drives as version control, he couldn’t get hired at a big studio and was super surprised that steam would let Just anyone publish anything. It feels like it shouldn’t exist
I’m also curious.
Everything about it looks like it copied a bunch of elements from other games and just seems very mediocre.
Not sure why people are so hyped about it.
yeah it seems like Genshin Impact copied Breath of the Wild, and Palworld copied Genshin Impact, and added Ark Survival Evolved (which copied Pokemon and Don’t Starve), and Valheim (which copied Minecraft and Fortnight)
(just speaking generally here, please don’t do a deep dive into how accurately these examples align)
I think it’s overhyped, but it’s not as if there’s nothing good there.
It’s goofy, it’s got those building and travel mechanics people like from other games, you can capture a cute/funny team of animals that people love from pokemon, it’s a good stream game with multiplayer which means lots of free publicity
I think it could be way better than it is, but it’s easy to see how it got to where it is.
Good is subjective. I don’t think I would like the game very much now, but me ten years ago probably would have put thousands of hours into it.
It’s overhyped, but it is a fairly good Breath of the Wild mixed with Pokémon with light survival game elements and base building. It’s nothing particularly new or special, but it is pretty good at being what it is, which is a weird combination of a bunch of existing things.
It’s not game of the year or anything, but it’s fine. I got bored after a while because there’s no real challenge to the game. It needs to have something pushing you to progress, and that really isn’t there at the moment.
It will depend on how (if at all) will they maintain the game, and how that will turn out. Some might be just buying extra copies and leaving it running on a backup toaster PC, just to stick it to Nintendo/wokes/artists/whatever. Most people seem to having fun with it.
Lmao this is a wild theory.
Culture war rots people’s mind, and many just wants to win either internet points, still have the “early age of console wars” mentality, don’t want to criticize the underlying systems, etc.
Yeah I highly fucking doubt that, bro.
Its enjoyable and I think it struck a right mixture of things got get popular
It’s good for a $30 survival game.
Huge world map to explore, a variety of different monsters to capture, bosses to work up to, automation that allows the more annoying parts of survival games to happen in the background as you explore, space to fiddle with the monster capture stuff through breeding and condensing.
A lot of people I know enjoy it for the shock value of pokemon-with-guns that you put into a sweatshop and then butcher, but you don’t have to do it that way and it can just be a not-pokemon game where your gardevoir helps you craft stuff.
Pokemon fans were so desperate for any kind of innovation instead of the same game over and over and over with worse pokemon designs. At this point the ai ripoffs feel more like pokemon than actual pokemon. An ice cream cone? Ice cube head penguin? Really gamefreak?
It is crazy. Not to mention all of the other attempts at the Pokémon “formula” have mostly just rehashed it. Cassette Beasts is the first I saw that really made some changes… And even they were slight. Digimon and Shin Megami Tensei are quite different but they’ve also been around for yonks.
I mean, a pile of sludge and a boulder with hands aren’t much better right?
Don’t forget keychain Pokémon and fridge Pokémon! Truly signs of wild imagination.
You don’t shoot pokemon. Period.
pixelmon with gun mods
Cobblemon is where it’s at these days.
huh?
It’s a different mod just like Pixelmon, but imo a lot better and a lot more charming than Pixelmon ever was.
is it closed?
Nope, fully open-source! You can find it here: https://modrinth.com/mod/cobblemon
What’s the other one?
pubg, at 3.2 million concurrent players 6 years ago.
Thanks. I’m not really a mainstream gamer anymore. I don’t even know what genre pubg is, heh.
It’s a Battle Royal, basically a big map that shrinks over time and if you are outside the “play area” you receive damage until you get inside again or you die.
PUBG introduced a brand new genre, which is why it was so popular at the time. Lots of games have popped up to copy it since then.
Pubg wasn’t the first. The crown for that is for H1Z1 or Z1 battle royale as it’s known these days. It was a dayZ clone with a stand alone battle royale version.
Even H1Z1 wasn’t the first if you include mods for Arma, minecraft, DayZ and probably more.
Super Bomberman from the SNES already had the concept of a looting, survival multiplayer game in a shrinking map.
Pubg standalone may not have been first, but in its mod form for arma i think it was the first. Someone less lazy can probably look up the specific dates
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There’s nothing new under the sun.
If you keep pointing at technicalities you’re going to find that not much of anything is original or a new idea. I think PUBG gets the credit.
This is a very shortsighted stance on this. It’s not a technicality. H1Z1 was released almost 2 years earlier.
It was, and will always be the first stand alone battle royale game.
You also underestimate the popularity of H1Z1 back in the day. The creator of PUBG was even a consultant there, before developing PUBG.
crying H1Z1 noises
nintendo did it to themselves, the one franchise they refused to innovate in
GameFreak makes the Pokémon games, not Nintendo.
are they owned by nintnedo? also makes sense cause in-house nintendo is always great
Nintendo owns a stake in the franchise, but doesn’t do the development
If you think Nintendo has no creative control over mainline Pokémon games, I have a bridge to sell you.
Can you elaborate on what you mean to say here?
Impressive
Very nice.
Now let’s see Paul Allen’s numbers.
The original Pokemon universe is limited because it’s “family friendly all ages”, and there’s so much depth to be had that fans want but can’t get. This is why Palworld is exceeding; it’s embracing themes that the original Pokemon universe can’t.
And just not vomiting up garbage games.
Arceus showed ambition, then did nothing to build on it or fix the bugs.
Scarlet and Violet did build on Arceus quite a bit as far as the open world and catching elements went, but they did not adopt a lot of the turn based combat changes.
S and V were somewhat hamstrung by poor optimization and performance at launch, and I believe this is the reason much of the landscape looks so sparse. I would love to see a breakdown on why Zelda’s two most recent entries can look so grand at such a large scale and still get solid frame rates on the Switch while S and V cannot. Is it because of the game engines being used or some other rendering process that is less optimal?
I am a huge Pokémon fan, and I’ll be the first to admit that TPC needs to get their crap together. They need to hire the best software engineers and developers they can get that are cohesive with their team, embrace new gameplay ideas, rework their combat system in a way that is innovative and fresh (turn based is nice for younger kids who are playing games for the first time, but there are many other turn based approaches that could offer a larger variety in tactics), and overall step up the grand scale and quality of their games. I would love to see a compelling story with voice acting that can be disabled, game systems that are easy to use but offer masterful depth, improved multiplayer experiences, and difficulty scaling in some fashion so I don’t feel like the game gets to a medium difficulty 5 times in the entire playthrough.
Making games that can be enjoyed by all ages is very tough at times, but TPC has the resources to revitalize Pokémon and see insane record sales. I love what they have done to transition to an open world game that can be played alongside a friend, but it’s time they take the quality of the game up to 11 and stop peddling us low quality, under-baked attempts at something that could be so grand. You can have the soap box back now. 😅
I hope TPC can figure it out. I’ve played every mainline release since Red/Blue and S/V just didn’t have enough for me to want to play.
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For anyone considering the game, there’s a relevant quote from the developer in one of their blog posts, that I think could help them decide whether it’s a game for them or not:
Although Pal World is a very interesting game, I would like to add one point: it is not at all suitable for players who prefer single-player games and want to enjoy the story, so please be aware of that. There’s almost no story, so those people won’t enjoy it. Fans of survival craft genres such as Minecraft and Valheim will enjoy this game.
I’m not a fan of survival games. Is Palworld that fun? I may give it a try. It’s on Game pass anyway.
Why not go watch a few live streams first?
Live streams are boring
What does that have to do with seeing if the gameplay looks fun? I mean, I suppose they could recommend some YouTube “let’s play” videos instead, but either way, watching someone play the game in a contiguous timeline is probably the best way to see if it looks fun.
French ones arn’t
ya they ar
Live streams are boring. Regardless of the language.
French is not a language, it’s a way of living
I’m predicting we’ll see even crazier numbers once the work week is over
I personally think we’re close to the high water mark, might see 2.5m, maaaybe 3 but I’m skeptical. You’ve seen most of what the game has to offer after 10 hours, and the jank + lack of story is sure to cause lots of people to bounce off of it pretty quickly. I think given some time it’ll improve, but by then you won’t get these crazy peak concurrent numbers.
After CSGO?
People still play pubg??
Not really, but that record number was set at the height of its release. I was told the number is really high because it took off in China, but it has me wondering why other games haven’t done the same. Does Steam no longer include or receive player counts from China? Are other games just not as big of hits there? I am specifically curious if Palworld has a large number of players in China.
Typically if they support China they have a separate version of the game to comply with regulations. For example, look up Chinese csgo.
Are there any metrics that also include GamePass players? Considering it’s included, I have to imagine that’s a sizeable chunk.
