Awesome. Game Freak needed some competition, they've been coasting for at least a decade.
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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I like Pokemon games for the adventure, turn based combat, and polished stable of monsters. Does palworld have those things?
adventure
uuuuh since G5 the Pokémon plots are rehashed and banalised as heck, and there's almost never any sensation of valuable risk or conflict to the plot. G6 literally makes the first arc of the plot "join this bunch of loser schoolers and do nothing".
Yeah I would like a better Pokemon game, not an fps survival with monsters. The idea is that people looking for a Pokemon game probably aren't simply looking for a collectible monster game, they want the things that are associated with Pokemon games.
Yeah I would like a better Pokemon game,
Don't we all.
For long I've dreamed of the heights Pokémon could reach if the mainline videogame production was handed over from a small indie company to a respectable developer with a better track record such as Camelot or CDPR.
Camelot can’t write themselves out of a paper bag. The Golden Sun games were good for their time, and had me hyped as a pre-teen, but let’s not delude ourselves into thinking the dialogue or story was actually good. Seriously, if you took off the portraits while characters were speaking, could you tell just by the way they talk who is who (besides Kraden, cuz that mofo likes to TALK)? Could you describe their personalities based on their dialogue, and not the character art? It’s part of why the third Golden Sun failed: it was just too generic, and they tried to stretch the little personality they could muster across 8 characters, just because the 2nd game had 8 characters, but it left them all feeling like hollow husks for the most part.
I’m not saying the games are bad, but there are definitely much better JRPG devs out there.
I like Pokemon for making me feel connected to my Pokemon, and for exploring the world with them.
Imo Palworld had those and does them even better.
Interesting, I thought they were more... disposable? But now that I think about it, in ark, you had your near and dear creatures and then you had the faceless workers.
They are as disposable as you want them to be. I personally try to take good care of my pals
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Honestly? I think they should be more disposable. You can do stuff like sell, butcher, overwork or fuse away your Pals (all of which are rather deliberate on the player's part), but I genuinely think if there was some threat of permadeath or having them stolen by the Syndicate baddies if you get sloppy, it would give the adventure a greater sense of threat/risk. People seek out Nuzlocke rules for a reason, and currently I find the options for dropping your items and Pals on death don't really make compelling gameplay sense (you just walk back and get them).
Setting/story-wise, Palworld supports that kind of thing so I figure it's most likely coming as an option eventually. The game is on track for some interesting things, and as half-baked as parts might seem now, it's already fairly fun. Definitely an addictive formula.
It's worth waiting to see where they take it if the journey and developing those bonds with the creatures are a big part of the draw for you. I doubt you'll get compelling turn based combat at any point, though.
no pal world is not at all a pokémon-like game. the adventure aspect is idk what to call it, the only adventure really is finding new pals for the first time. it's kind of like ark with some inspirations from BOTW mechanics but you throw some pokemon in there
it does have a good variety of pals but honestly the only thing that feels unique is the appearances/sizes and sometimes the modifiers they have. the actual movesets don't feel very emphasized
in my opinion the actual pal vs pal combat is pretty lackluster, it's definitely not the focus of the game (although using slave labour is a focus of the game)
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It's silly fun. No idea if it'll last, but I'm enjoying it.
Happiness is a dead lamball rolling down a cliff
All this time and I still feel horrid farming Lamballs. Why on earth is the fodder creature so damn cute?
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Their little death squeals fuel me
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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.
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I actually like it. It's kind of like ARK but mixed with Factorio/Satisfactory
It is missing too much to call it like factorio or even rimworld as you cant even set task priority or do much optimization, but it has the foundation and could certainly go that route with some major ai improvements.
My friends all call it Valheim, but with cute fluffy animals.
The ability to customize difficulty settings is also a big hit.
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.
Idk I guess I still didn’t get the vibe it was anywhere as special as the hype train is treating it. It honestly feels weirdly artificial for a hype train too.
I doubt a no name company would be pulling all this attention out of marketing alone. If it was this easy everyone would do it.
In all fairness, this is not a great game. It's a very derivative game whose only appeal is that it combines things in a way that hasn't been done much. Like many other hype trains of questionable quality, it just happened to scratch the right itch for the right people at the right time.
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This feels like a weird take if you haven’t even played it. Like, how would you know?
The game is flawed, but genuinely super fun, and has a ton going for it outside of “Pokemon with guns”. In a lot of ways it’s what I always wished Pokemon could be, at least in the ways it makes its monsters feel unique and like actual partners instead of battle slaves, which is ironic considering Palworld is the one with actual slavery.
You're getting downvoted, but I think there's something to this, even if it's not the whole story. The game had a robust presence unnaturally quickly on Tiktok and among streamers. This studio isn't big enough to have engineered a big campaign, but it's quite possible they did some small, targeted marketing and it really paid off.
Yeah but also I think the nature of viral content is just spinning out into chaos with the amount of AI generated content and bots. I am sure palworld deserves its popularity to an extent but it’s the velocity and utter completeness of palworld’s popularity that feels weird. At some level I think algorithms are heavily distorting cultural phenomena like this to be much more “winner takes all” in terms of popularity. It is not only how humans tend to act but it is also the most profitable way to monetize culture.
I've been seeing people mention "the game has been in development for 2 years" and all these trailers and stuff but... I didn't hear a thing until the game released, it exploded and now it's all I'm seeing.
Exactly. Cassette Beasts and various other indie games have made bigger rounds before.
The only reason Palworld got popular was because of clickbait youtubers
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It's surprisingly entertaining, but you might want to wait until it leaves early access if you're on the fence. It's very buggy and there's big aspects of the game that aren't filled out yet.
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All the people blaming "clickbait youtubers" or "AI bots" for this game blowing up are idiots. Its actually fun, it delivers a satisfying game loop that no pokemon game ever has, and it has support for multiplayer. It's big enough to explore a lot, has a deep tech tree to unlock, some pretty interesting base automation mechanics, and over 100 pokemon to discover and catch, and a surprisingly robust breeding system to unlock new pokemon instead of evolving. It's just FUN, and lots of games lately lack that. Despite it being buggy and early access, its very playable. I hosted a dedicated server and my friends and I can play together and explore and adventure and find bosses, and work on our base together. Haven't had a game that lets me do that in a long time.
The one thing I don't care much for in PalWorld is building structures (walled structures), it feels kinda janky and restrictive at the moment. Which it hasn't been a major part of the game so far, but it's one of the few things that's bothered me about it. Otherwise, it's been a breath of fresh air compared to Pokemon's recent outings.
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