Today I finished PalWorld. I've completed the Paldeck, all bosses, all syndicate towers, have all saddles and tech items, weapons, 3 bases etc.

TLDR: The game is ARK with Pokemon, if you like survival exploration games and Pokemon you'll love this one, and despite the obvious ethical issues people bring up with the possible (but as of this review unconfirmed) use of AI and the fact that it seems to add to genre of game "slop" that we've been accustomed to lately of just mashing tons of systems together from various other games and calling it a new thing. But I really like this one, I spent nearly 100 hours in it and I don't really even know why, but I would recommend.

The obvious rip is Pokemon but below the surface is the entire ui, skill, and unlock system from ARK, an opening and map that consistently will give you dejavu if you've played elden ring, or other ui and audio elements ripped from various other titles, I only notice because I play to many games.

As for gameplay it is essentially just ARK: Survival Evolved but with Pals instead of dinos, I already stated these comparisons above. A lot of the latter ~50 hours is grind, consisting of farming ore, sulfer, and coal, as well crafting items/ammo/Ingots as well as breeding for better pals (which is one of the reasons a lot of my last 20 hours was afk waiting for eggs), Beating all bosses and towers can be achieved much faster than I chose to. I was playing solo, I needed max level pals and at least 1-2k bullets to do the later syndicate towers, so it took me much longer, even a duo could complete the game in probably half the time. I could have gotten 10 of every single pal to "fill out" the paldeck, but after achieving about 50-70% naturally I really didn't feel like it (I caught at least one of everything though, just not the 10 goal for extra xp). Speaking of the syndicate towers they do offer a genuine challenge whether you are solo or in numbers (scaling) and I found I did need several tries for the final 2 towers solo, mainly because I ran out of time, unable to do enough damage in the 10 minutes allotted, but eventually, after farming for better moves and pals overall, I got through them, which was satisfying. Overall this is a grind game that is improved with friends, but I loved it solo.

Performance wise I was surprised by how well it performed even when I turned up the scaling and server options to allow more pals in my base (big plus to the devs for including all of these world settings on launch, it made playing solo much more enticing, and I HIGHLY recommend changing almost all of the scaling settings if you intend to play solo like me. I got ~100-130 fps on a mix of high/ultra at 1440p around the world (RTX 3070 & AMD 5800x3D) and around 60-80 at max capacity with all large pals in my base.

Overall what you have is essentially a game the world has been waiting for for years, a Pokemon survival game with guns, what more could you want? The game just launched in early access, and while I'm not really the type to return to games, I look forward to whats to come for this one. 8/10

Today I finished PalWorld. I've completed the Paldeck, all bosses, all syndicate towers, have all saddles and tech items, weapons, 3 bases etc. TLDR: The game is ARK with Pokemon, if you like survival exploration games and Pokemon you'll love this one, and despite the obvious ethical issues people bring up with the possible (but as of this review unconfirmed) use of AI and the fact that it seems to add to genre of game "slop" that we've been accustomed to lately of just mashing tons of systems together from various other games and calling it a new thing. But I really like this one, I spent nearly 100 hours in it and I don't really even know why, but I would recommend. The obvious rip is Pokemon but below the surface is the entire ui, skill, and unlock system from ARK, an opening and map that consistently will give you dejavu if you've played elden ring, or other ui and audio elements ripped from various other titles, I only notice because I play to many games. As for gameplay it is essentially just ARK: Survival Evolved but with Pals instead of dinos, I already stated these comparisons above. A lot of the latter ~50 hours is grind, consisting of farming ore, sulfer, and coal, as well crafting items/ammo/Ingots as well as breeding for better pals (which is one of the reasons a lot of my last 20 hours was afk waiting for eggs), Beating all bosses and towers can be achieved much faster than I chose to. I was playing solo, I needed max level pals and at least 1-2k bullets to do the later syndicate towers, so it took me much longer, even a duo could complete the game in probably half the time. I could have gotten 10 of every single pal to "fill out" the paldeck, but after achieving about 50-70% naturally I really didn't feel like it (I caught at least one of everything though, just not the 10 goal for extra xp). Speaking of the syndicate towers they do offer a genuine challenge whether you are solo or in numbers (scaling) and I found I did need several tries for the final 2 towers solo, mainly because I ran out of time, unable to do enough damage in the 10 minutes allotted, but eventually, after farming for better moves and pals overall, I got through them, which was satisfying. Overall this is a grind game that is improved with friends, but I loved it solo. Performance wise I was surprised by how well it performed even when I turned up the scaling and server options to allow more pals in my base (big plus to the devs for including all of these world settings on launch, it made playing solo much more enticing, and I HIGHLY recommend changing almost all of the scaling settings if you intend to play solo like me. I got ~100-130 fps on a mix of high/ultra at 1440p around the world (RTX 3070 & AMD 5800x3D) and around 60-80 at max capacity with all large pals in my base. Overall what you have is essentially a game the world has been waiting for for years, a Pokemon survival game with guns, what more could you want? The game just launched in early access, and while I'm not really the type to return to games, I look forward to whats to come for this one. 8/10