Pocket Pair’s Palworld released in early access on January 19th, 2024 and since then has exploded onto the gaming scene. Gaining infamy as the game known for being “Pokemon but with guns”, it amassed over 8 million copies sold in its first five days on Steam. This doesn’t included sales on consoles or the amount of players using Xbox’s Game Pass to play the game. Safe to say, Palworld has had major success, and it’s not even fully completed.
But what exactly is Palworld? Pocket Pair Inc. describes it as an action-adventure, survival, and monster-taming game set in an open world populated with animal-like creatures called “Pals”, which players can battle and capture to use for base building, traversal, and combat. Essentially, it’s like a lot of other survival games, except, they’ve thrown in elements from other popular games such as Pokemon, Ark: Survival Evolved, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This is partly why it has found itself enveloped in so much controversy.
Palworld is currently available for PC on Steam and Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S for $29.99 or through Xbox Game Pass.
Story – Told In Bits
There’s not much of story in Palworld if I’m going to be completely honest. There’s definitely bits of story and lore within the world that could become a grand overarching story. But as of now, it’s sticking to the usual survival game template where you’re dropped within the world with the bare minimum and you work your way up to bigger and better aspects of the game. As you come to from unconsciousness, you get bits of dialogue from NPCs saying it’s been a while since a new inhabitant has come to this land and that it can be a rough place for those who are unprepared.
After some progression, you start to encounter different types of human enemies. These include the Rayne Syndicate, Free Pal Alliance, Brothers of the Eternal Pyre, and Pal Genetic Research Units. The goal of these groups can only be surmised as they do not have dialogue. It would be safe to assume their goals revolve around the Pals in one form or another. Each group also has a corresponding tower in the world that hosts a boss. These serve as the general guideline to complete the game’s story. With Palworld being in early access, there is still a full possibility that they will add more depth and complexity to the story.
The world of Palworld is surprisingly robust
Gameplay – The Real Meat of the Game
Palworld clearly takes inspiration from many other games within its genres. But, that does not stop it from being an enjoyable game. Very similarly to ARK: Survival Evolved and other survival games, you are thrown into a huge world and left to your own devices to explore and build within it. You’ll also have a temperature gauge and nutrition bar you’ll need to manage. Palworld’s unique selling point is the Pokemon-esque way you go about catching monsters, “Pals” as they call them, using their skills to help you craft and traverse the world.
As you build your bases, a maximum of three throughout the world, you assign different Pals to various tasks depending on their abilities. For instance, Fire-type Pals have the Kindling skill which allows them to help you craft things such as ingots. Pals will also have a certain level of task type which determines their speed and capabilities. An example would be Tombat, who has mining level of two, can be very useful in the start of your journey. But, Digtoise, who has a mining level of three will be faster and can mine more materials than Tombat can. Several Pals can also be ridden to help you explore at greater speed, such as Direwolf or Vanwyrm.
Palworld uses a system similar to Pokemon for Pal storage
Crafting – A Steady and Satisfying Escalation
Crafting in Palworld works similarly to other survival games. You’ll begin with a few basic crafting recipes, and as you gain experience, you’ll be able to unlock more tiers of recipes which you can use technology points (aka experience points) to receive. You’ll be able to craft better versions of previous weapons and higher tier spheres to catch Pals, stations and schematics for building up your base, and unlock Pal abilities that require a saddle or other resource. The speed at which you unlock these tiers is slow at first, but as you get into the game loop, the easier it’ll be to expedite the process. You can also increase the rate at which experience is gained in the world settings if you’d like quicker progression. Beware, you cannot change these settings once a world is started.
screenshot of my base and Pals working on tasks
Combat – A Mix of Styles
In a survival game, combat is often very limited in the beginning, Palworld is no different. You’ll start out with the basic weapon blueprints such as axes and simple bows. Once you make some progress up the experience ladder, you’ll start to get into the juicier parts of combat, like handguns and rifles. Another aspect of combat will allow you to craft the ability for your Pals to wield firearms as well. You’d be forgiven for laughing at the prospect of a cutesy green squirrel-like animal named Lifmunk waving around a submachine gun and shooting at enemies.
As you go around the world, you’ll find circular icons of certain Pals. These are “Alpha” Pals and provide a boss-like battle within the open world. They will also be abnormally larger than other Pals of their species. Once you have defeated and/or caught an Alpha for the first time, you’ll receive an ancient technology point which you can use to unlock schematics in a separate ancient technology tier. These schematics include special weapons like the grappling hook or extra gameplay mechanics such as a feed bag which the Pals in your party will use to automatically feed themselves.
Me and my vanwyrm in combat against Beegardes
Audio and Graphics – Still Work To Be Done
Being a game in early access, I tend to go easy on the audio and visual aspects. However, there are clear issues that need to be addressed by Pocket Pair Inc. going forward. Most of these issues involve audio such as the player characters voice which sounds pretty rough. It might just be modern sensibilities but it almost sounds like they recorded the audio using an MP3. There’s also very little in-game music besides the music that triggers when in combat. It might be small but it would help to fill that silence when you’re not in combat.
As for the visual aspect, one of the main issues I have is the pop-in. Often, when I’m flying through the world, the textures will take a minute to catch up and that can ruin the immersion. Also, when assigning Pals to tasks within the base, the pals may clip in and out of the world, especially when you’ve built things close together. For the most part, the game has performed as well as you can expect for an early access title. Pocket Pair Inc. has also released a content road map that, while not super specific on the timeline, does seem like they are going to be giving Palworld priority in the future.
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- You can ride many Pals including Direhowl as seen here
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- My character petting a Pal named Dinossom
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- Your base functions as storage for your Pals and a fast travel point
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- An example of textures failing to load resulting in pop-in
