Have you ever played ARK and asked yourself: “what if Gamefreak got it together and made a Pokemon survival game?” Well the developers at Pocketpair did and decided to make it themselves. Palworld is a survival team building game where you catch “pals” (monsters which are very similar to Pokemon) and use them to fight, farm materials, and run your base. I have played this game all the way to max level, beat every boss in it, and honestly? I loved almost every moment of it
First off, I do not normally like survival games, mainly because of the tedious grinding of getting materials. However, this game introduces a system where you can have your pals do the work for you. This is very derivative of ARK’s dinosaurs. Personally, I love that there are ways to get the grindy parts of the game automated, leaving me more time to explore and enjoy the other parts of the game. This also leads to the progression of the game feeling very smooth with little “stop” time.
What I really enjoyed about this game was the combat. Most survival games combat tends to be very clunky and uninspired. This game’s combat is extremely smooth, and in between the large amount of weapons and pals you can have fight alongside you, there is a consistent variety to an already satisfying feeling system.
Something that stood out to me is just how big this game is. I can count at least 10 times as I was exploring and just had to think to myself “holy sh*t, there’s more?”. There are so many different areas with unique environments, and pals.
A side note, as it would be a mistake not to mention it. There IS a main boss fight towards the end of the game that is absolutely LEGENDARY. Genuinely such a challenging, exciting, and cinematic fight.
One thing I would mention, as it is the one thing that really stood out to me as frustrating, is some of the late game materials and specifically how you acquire them. Towards the last 20 or so levels you run into a couple different items that are EXTREMELY time consuming to get. This may not seem too bad from a survival standpoint, however, in contrast to the smooth progression of the first 60 levels, it feels like chewing rocks.
Addressing the difficulty, The game was definitely on the easy side. I only really struggled with maybe 2 or 3 of the bosses in the game. Outside of that most things were not too challenging. I say this lightly, as it was not braindead easy, but a bit more challenge would have been nice.
Another point I would like to touch on is, outside of a handful of boss fights, most every boss was pretty forgettable and not the coolest thing in the world. Don’t get me wrong, the boss fights that are good are REALLY good. But, the large majority of the bosses are pretty meh.
My last point is more just an observation than a total downside. The game is very derivative of other games in its genres. Primarily ARK and Pokemon. This is something that didn’t necessarily bother me, as I was excited for the mashup of these two concepts. However, I can see how it could be considered a bit lazy and “copied the smart kids homework”.
In conclusion, Palworld is a fantastic game that I sunk roughly 113 hours into, and enjoyed almost every moment of. There are a few things that could be better, so I would not call it perfect, but I would definitely call it a great game worth playing.
Last Pull Buff Gives Palworld 7/10
