Palworld Review | Xbox Series X

Creating a monster-catching game is no easy feat. You need to ensure that your game stands out against the giant colossus that is Nintendo's Pokémon. For years, many games have tried and failed to knock the biggest media franchise off of its pedestal. However, Palworld seems to have been doing just that by selling well over 1 million copies and having a Steam player count that could rival PUBG, but is this survival Monster-catching game really all that it's cracked up to be?

 

To cut a long story short, no, it absolutely isn't, and in all honesty, the strange grip this obvious cash grab has on players should be documented and studied because it concerns how a game so unoriginal and disjointed has garnered so many players. Palworld is less an original title and more a mishmash Chimera of three popular games that are trying their hardest to be interesting and failing on almost every front. Still, this very much makes sense when you consider its developer's previous works and a few very obvious design choices that make it clear that Palworld is just meant to get your money and nothing else.

Despite the controversy surrounding Palworld, the game was played and reviewed with an open and unbiased opinion, but further research was put into the writing of this review. Probably one of the biggest concerns with the game is its developers, Pocket Pair. Pocket Pair has been around for quite some time; it is a game development company based in Higashigotanda, Shinagawa, Japan, and was formed back in 2015. The studio has an impressive four titles under their belt: Overdungeon, a deck-building tower defense roguelike; Craftopia, an open-world survival crafting game; AI: Art Imposter, a game in which a group of AI artists need to figure out who the imposter artist is and of course, Palworld.

If you look at Pocket Pairs portfolio, you will notice that their games are incredibly derivative of more popular games. Now, this isn't a bad thing; indie developers borrow aesthetics and mechanics from many of their favorite games, but this doesn't seem to be the case. Most developers at least try to make their games stand out against their muses. This is mainly so you don't get accused of copying and also because - why would you directly copy something you enjoy? Shouldn't you expand upon it and make it uniquely you? Unfortunately, Pocket Pair doesn't do this; their games are usually just a mix of whatever is popular at the time mashed together and typically incredibly bare bones, as can be seen with Overdungeon and Craftopia, two games which many players complained haven't been worked on and whose core systems are underdeveloped. The same can be said about Palworld.

 

Palworld is essentially what would happen if you forced Fortnite, Pokémon, and Valheim to breed at gunpoint, and whatever slid out was what we got. Nothing in Palworld is cohesive, from the mechanics to the pals to even the visuals; this game just feels like it's having a massive identity crisis. Okay, but what about the story? Surely, there must be a story. I mean, monster-catching is a subgenre of RPGs, and those need a story, right? Well, Palworld has absolutely no story. You wake up on a beach with an ancient tablet in your hand, and that's it. The game gives you no direction whatsoever. Maybe it's trying to do the Valheim and Minecraft thing where you need to learn at your own pace and discover new mechanics as you explore the world, but nope, it does have a tutorial; it just doesn't tell you about anything important, such as crafting.

Crafting plays a huge part in Palworld; you will need to craft bedding, weapons, clothing, and equipment for Pals and Pal Spheres. Pal Spheres are essentially like Pokeballs; they allow you to catch Pals and are one of the very first things the game tells you to make. Unfortunately, the game doesn't tell you where to get the vital material of Paldium fragments. Now, you would think 'Oh, maybe it's something Pals drop, right?' Nope, it's actually a mineral you need to mine, so why would the game not tell you to make a pickaxe first? This becomes incredibly frustrating as the game will introduce more and more mechanics as it goes on. One of these mechanics is the base building mechanic.

Once you have caught your first Pal and have gathered enough materials, the game will tell you to craft a Pal Box, which you need to learn via the Technology menu. However, there is a notable issue, and it's that there are technically two technology menus; the one menu is where you learn new blueprints and unlock more things to make, and the other is simply a glossary that tells you what all the tech does. Can you guess which one the game tells you to look at first? Again, it's a small gripe but one that should have easily been resolved with a better tutorial. Anyway, once you have crafted a Pal Box, you need to find a place to put it down; where you put it down will determine where your "base" will be. This is nice as it really cements what region is yours, but the reason for establishing an area as your base turns dark rather quickly.

 

Once you have a base setup, you need to deploy a Pal; this Pal will act as your worker and gather materials, craft stuff, and build structures. However, calling it a worker wouldn't be right as the Pal isn't getting paid and is instead technically being exploited, so your 'Pal slave'? Through the Pal Box, you will also be able to upgrade your base. This gives you bonuses and allows you to have more Pal slaves do things for you. Now, there are two major issues with this, both theoretically and mechanically. In terms of themes, Pals are called, well, pals, as in they are friends! Why are they being put to work? Who puts their friends in a factory? In terms of mechanics, the game establishes itself as a survival game; it has all of the mechanics and shows them off, so why, right at the beginning, do players have the ability to make a factory with workers to exploit? It just doesn't make sense, but then again, nothing in Palworld makes sense.

The game is incredibly confusing; one minute, you're in rags and using clubs, and the next, you have a factory of workers! But this isn't the only example. As mentioned before, the Pals themselves are cute and are clearly meant to be friends, but talking to NPCs reveals that they are, in fact, man-eating monsters that have killed people by the hundreds, and yet, as one person, I can hunt, kill, catch and exploit them for personal gain? To continue this, there are human settlements dotted across the map, a settlement with armed guards, and a marketplace selling Pals! What? Are we sure the Pals are the dangerous ones? There are also ruins found throughout the environment, so clearly, humans existed here once upon a time, so why do the people who live on the island treat it as if this is uncharted territory? It just doesn't make sense. It comes across as a cheap excuse to make players not feel bad for hunting adorable creatures who obviously were meant to be plushies.

Okay, so the survival elements don't last that long, and you exploit Pals? So, what is the point of the game? The answer is simple, my friend - if you felt bad about the colonization in Minecraft, then boy, oh boy, you are going to hate Palworld. The game is essentially about you, a colonist, arriving on an island, and you must enslave and exploit the inhabitants on this island for your own profit. This is not just looking at it through subtext; this is literally what happens from the beginning of the game! You hunt and capture more unique and powerful Pals to exploit their uniqueness to give you a power advantage against other wild Pals and other players. Essentially, the game boils down to two power-hungry tyrants fighting over resources and populations to exploit. This game is neither a fun monster-catching game nor a fun survival game. It is a game about colonization, and it makes you feel gross for playing it.

 

So, the story makes no sense, and the gameplay makes you feel like an anime Christopher Columbus; what about the visuals? These are probably the most inconsistent things about the game. The world you play in is rendered in a realistic style utilizing what Unreal Engine does best, photorealism, but then the world is inhabited by stylized cutesie monsters and anime characters. The two styles don't mix well at all and make the game look like somebody added an anime mod to an Unreal Engine game. It just looks messy. A prime example of this is with the character creator, which has facial presets that range from 'animesque' to kinda anime to grizzled stylized character from an action game; it just doesn't work.

However, there is some consistency with the Pals. All of the Pals are well-designed, and all look like they are from the same universe, but it's hard to appreciate the designs when it is so glaringly clear that most of their designs are ripped straight from other games. The most notable of these "inspirations" is, of course, Pokémon. Many of the Pals are simply two or three Pokémon smashed together, and it's not subtle at all. Any Pokémon fan will easily be able to recognize what parts are from what Pokémon, but it doesn't stop there. Other "inspirations" include Yokai Watch, Studio Ghibli, Dragon Quest Monsters, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and even Harvest Moon of all places. These designs read more as copies than inspirations because of just how closely they resemble their source material; it is incredibly uncanny and comes across as crash-grabby and lazy. Heck, one Pal is just straight up from AI: Art Imposter.

The game has a decent soundtrack, which I'm pretty sure was inspired by Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which Palworld has also taken inspiration from. The music is soft and soothing while adding mystery to the setting, but it just isn't enough to make the game enjoyable. On second thought, the soundtrack sounds incredibly similar to that of the studio's other game, Craftopia, so not even that can be seen as original. Then I suppose the sound effects are decent, but even that has some audio mixing issues in places.

 

Overall, Palworld is an enigma. The game is full of glaring inconsistencies that are hard to ignore; nothing in the game feels cohesive; it just feels tacked on to each other. If the game is meant to compete with Pokémon, then it has a chance with some of the Pals designs, but it has nothing that makes Pokémon and monster-catching games so special. Your Pals aren't friends; they aren't there to help you grow and become stronger. They are there to be used and exploited, and that's not what makes the monster-catching genre special. 

Palworld feels like it was made as a parody or a way for people who hate Pokémon to live out their sick fantasies. I know gaming is about achieving a power fantasy, but this feels wrong; it feels vindictive. If you dislike Pokémon, don't play Palworld; it's not worth it, and there are so many other better games you can play, like the latest entry to Dragon Quest Monsters, which just recently released on Switch, and it would be a far better investment than this. Palworld is a crash-grab, and that's all it is and ever will be, and I'm disappointed at how popular it has become.

Daman Shelley (@UndeadandTired)
Editor, NoobFeed