Pokémon has been in a rough patch recently. Not in terms of making money, they’re going to be selling Pokémon properties even in the nuclear wastelands. Rather, it’s the quality of the games that have fans concerned. The number of bugs, glitches, and technical problems lead to many seeing the series as the next Call Of Duty, with them constantly pushing out new games, spin-offs, and DLC to keep making them money. It has left fans wondering if there could ever be any more competitors to the brand. With Palworld entering Early Access, beginning results are showing that this game is all over the place, with many praising it as the thing Pokémon needed to get more focused on improving their products, and others feeling like this is even worse than the standard modern Pokémon offering. Personally, it feels like it’s stuck in the middle.
You are a castaway, awoken on a mysterious island. Here, you find yourself surrounded by mysterious creatures known as Pals. These animals are your ticket to surviving this world. You will have to forage, harvest, and craft tools to fight and capture them to help you in your home base. As you do this, you will be exploring the world and looking out for any enemies who will want to beat you, both animal and human. Rival factions and dangerous Pal bosses litter the world for you to maneuver around and deal with.
First off, the game is still in early access, so sound effects, graphics, and mechanics are subject to change. As of right now, however, aesthetically, it’s just a better-looking Pokémon: Legend Arceus, but barely. While the graphics do look decent and blend with the world and creatures you can catch, animation-wise it still definitely feels like there’s some cleaning up to do. Character models can just load in place in an obvious premade group formation and just stand around, doing nothing until you get up close to their faces, and sometimes even after walking through them. When you load into the game after saving, your character will be in the default outfit while T-posing for a good minute before loading everything back in.
Alongside models not properly behaving, the land itself cannot work just as well. Some places don’t even have enough walls to stop you from walking underneath the ground, graphics won’t properly load in right away, or they do, but there is no collision loaded in, so you just walk off into the water without knowing what happened. Now granted, this is what was experienced on the Xbox Series S, so other more powerful consoles may be able to have a better time with it. However, it’s still concerning and something that can’t just be easily overlooked.
What can’t be overlooked is the gameplay itself, with it being the make-or-break point for many people. As the game isn’t ashamed to show, it wears its Pokémon influence on its sleeves with a lot of different creatures, called pals, to catch. At the start, you can’t even use other pals until you get your first one. This will require you to attack them head-on yourself. But before you do that, you need to craft pal spheres first to catch them. It’s more like Pokémon: Legend Arceus than a mainline game, which I am now just realizing that the abbreviation of is PAL, as in the name of the beasts in the game, which just shows how much it loves the series.
There is one big new thing about the game that has yet to appear in the Pokémon series; that is the base building. Your home base will be where all your Pals live and work. You will be able to use the materials you collected around the world in your projects, creating homes, places for your pals to work at, or more advanced tools and crafting stations. This element adds a bit of creativity to the game that lets you see and work out how to properly lay out your growing base with your new pals.
Within the world, after clearing your checklist of chores to give you a rundown of what the world has and what you can do in it, the entire world is your playground. There is no clear end goal yet given the fact it’s in a beta build still, but there is still a lot to explore. From collecting all the different Pals to the small caves and towns you can explore, you’ll always be seeing something new. In the world, you can even come across merchants that sell you either materials or other Pal. There will also be enemy camps that want to kidnap and sell pals from the wild, so going after them could net you with new pals to use.
As you capture and beat more pals, open fast traveling points, and take down bosses, you’ll be unlocking more tools for you to craft and use. They can be more powerful spheres to capture the bigger and more powerful Pal, more tools to use around the base, and of course, the chance to use guns or even craft some for your pals. With the more powerful beasts in the world, you will be relying on them for some serious damage, so it’s recommended that you get them as soon as you can. The different types of weapons that are unique to each Pal make this element better and encourage experimentation, even letting you hold certain Pals to use like guns. This is one of the few ways this game can comfortably say it’s distinct from Pokémon.
Yeah, it’s no secret that Palworld has caught heavy online flack for being what many claim to be a rip-off of Pokémon. They often keep on pointing to a troubling amount of design ideas from Pokémon and how similar many pals look to their Pokémon counterparts. As an outsider, there is some clear influence; you’ll have to be blind as a bat while also being as dead as a plant to ignore what they took for their game. However, this isn’t the first game to try and get a ride off the formula of Pokémon. Digimon, Yokai Watch, Fossil Fighters, Cassette Beasts; they all have Pokémon baked into their DNA, and while it is true that this game is not so much wearing its love for the series on its sleeve but rather just made it into a shirt for its wedding proposal of wanting to marry the series, it’s barely distinct enough from what Pokémon’s lawyers are presumably seeing.
The more serious issue on the table appears to be whether or not AI is used in the game at all. Now this is a whole new battleground with landmines sprinkled around the place. There is no concrete proof of this game having AI of any kind, but that could change. As of right now, nothing is showing that AI is used, especially as a way to replace artists. With the rising problems of AI, it makes sense that this claim is making people jumpy. The best use for any AI is to use it as a tool to make the artists’ lives easier, and not to replace people. There’s no harm in playing this game if your main concern is if it has AI art or not. Not when there are a lot of other things to gripe about.
Again, this is all in early access and easily can be changed on a dime, but right at the time of this writing, alongside the game’s graphics being too ambitious from what I saw on my Xbox Series S, the main game definitely can get stale fast. This game is a big open world, but as of right now, with no clear goal like Pokémon’s “defeat all the gym leaders” deal, the real game cycle will be you inching forward more and more while collecting and getting more materials to build more weapons and increase your base, alongside capturing the occasional pal. It can quickly feel like you’re grinding toward a goal that is always out of reach. Of course, experiences will vary, and this cycle will tire some out faster than others. Minecraft has a similar structure, but the promise of beating the ender dragon, the easier crafting system, and not having to worry about being weighed down by carrying too many blocks means it feels like there’s more freedom there for you to explore and learn how to use the whole world to your advantage.
In the end, while it is decent, Palworld is still missing something that can make it feel whole. The graphics and sound effects are decent enough, and I’m sure they’ll improve alongside any technical issues as it moves out of early access. The real problem here isn’t it ripping off any game, but rather having its entire identity revolve around being Pokémon with guns and hoping that’s enough to keep players around. The base building feels more like a chore and something that other games pulled off leagues better, and can easily make anyone feel bored and tired with it bringing nothing unique to the table. Sure, it may look better than Pokémon at times, but when I keep asking myself “Why am I not just playing a Pokémon game instead”, then the results are clear.
It’s not quite a contender yet, and Pokémon still holds the crown, even though some competition could be healthy for it. It’s not completely bad and has room to grow on the ideas of pals and how to fight with them, but it still feels too empty. For only $30, it’s up to you to decide if Palworld is worth checking out. It’s not the worst Pokémon clone out there, but if nothing in this article has convinced you to try it out, then sticking to Pokémon on the Switch is the better choice.
