Looks like a weird Pokémon knockoff game. I don’t get the hype.
Latest indie darling blow up videogame fad that you’ll hear less of in a month or so. I say that somewhat derisively but I think it’s pretty normal, Lethal Company was the last one and that was a neat little horror co-op game imo.
I think the reason word of mouth is spreading so much can be attributed to two things:
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It’s somewhat edgy, misanthropic and subversive take on Pokemon/Nintendo’s family friendly aesthetics. I can’t say much about this as I haven’t played the game myself to judge just exactly how much is being played straight and how much is satire (and I don’t plan to), but I’d guess people who grew up with Pokemon as a franchise have been looking for that edgy take and are reacting to that, and the resulting controversy is driving the engagement algorithms (I mean just look at hexbear lmao), and
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it’s fulfilling a niche that Nintendo hasn’t by being an online multiplayer Pokemon-esque game that’s not turn-based; just judging based on some of the clips I’ve seen but working together with your friends to catch a high level Pokemon-alike actually does look kinda fun. This one’s really on Game Freak for allowing Pokemon to go stale by playing it safe and not innovating the game design at all, so Palworld coming in to steal Nintendo’s lunch money here’s pretty deserved, I think. (Although yeah, I guess Ark did it first but the cartoony character designs are doing a lot of heavy lifting in making the on-screen action legible).
They played up the edgelord stuff in the advertising, the game itself really isn’t that edgy. If I hadn’t seen all the attempts at selling it via edge I would assume that all the edgy content in the game is just poor translations.
Nah the edgy content is there. The game tells you some of the monsters are weak and only good for food, and that there are “no labor laws for pals”. It’s just that it doesn’t go all the way and make these things horrifying like a lot of “commentary” games do, it’s just a pokemon/survival game with edgy subtext and guns.
It isn’t subtext though, it’s just text. Literally. The game says it’s all slavery and torture and stuff, but the pals seem happy enough to work on their own, and stop working when they feel like it. That’s what I mean when I say it feels almost like a bad translation. The story in the text and the story in the gameplay are completely unrelated. I think they just did it solely for the meme value.
make some kind of point how the hundreds of millions of people playing Pokemon apparently think cockfighting is okay because they played a video game about cartoon monsters fighting each other.
Goadstool, you’re the best, but nobody thinks this or is genuinely arguing it
I don’t think they’re trying to make a point about anything lol. They’re just making a game about being a Pokémon warlord because they think it’s epic
I wanted Pokemon with guns. What I got was yet another unfinished “survival” game with a legally distinct coat of paint.
The same way I felt about Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom… and I beat them both!
I was being glib though. I wasn’t interested in the guns so much as I was factory automation with not-Pokemon.
Honestly, it’s very early. It’s one of the most feature complete early access games I have played in a long time.
It has similar survival aspects compared to Ark, valheim, and Conan. Building is not punishing with reasonable material requirements. You assign pals to your base, and they perform actions based on their available skills (mining, logging, handiwork, planting, watering, etc) and their passive traits (randomly assigned modifiers). You can keep a party of 6 with you, including one that can be out walking along as a companion. Some can be mounted, some can be used for extra oomf in combat, some will guide you to resources.
There are dungeons around the map that have bosses and loot, as well as some more elusive pals.
It’s a bit like Satisfactory in that you setup resource nodes and your outpost will generate those and allow you create things from it. There are a lot of pals to find apparently, as I continue to find new ones while exploring. There are boss battles, sometimes you’ll find a camp of syndicate guys (poachers) and free their captive pal from a cage to obtain it.
Idk man, I’m having a blast playing it. It’s very forgiving for a survival game, and reasonably easy to manage your base. Resources are plentiful, gameplay loop is pretty solid, and exploration is fun.
Where it will go from here, considering this is the first public build of an early access title, idk. But it has a really good foundation.
It’s less edgy pokemon and more just open world pokemon. The vast majority of the edgy stuff are just things that appeared in the pokemon games but you weren’t allowed to do yourself.
