Recent reviews by Chiquita Dave

At the time of my review, I have played on a singleplayer and a multiplayer save, and have reached level 30 (out of what appears to be 50) on both saves.
Multiplayer seems to have some performance issues. I, being the host of the multiplayer save, experience crashes once every 1-3 hours. I had originally thought it was happening only when the game was trying to auto-save during a big event (like a raid or a boss battle), but that doesn't seem to be the case, since I've also experienced crashes while just walking around my base. I have not encountered any crashes in singleplayer, however the game does take several minutes to freeze and go framey when first loaded. Being early-access, the game does warn you that this could happen.
As far as actual game play goes, I'm enjoying it more than I expected I would. At first glance, it looks like a Pokemon copy, but it actually works much differently than Pokemon. While there are some similarities, like having a party of Pals, capturing them in Pal Spheres, and even just the appearance of the Pals in general, the mechanics work much differently. Rather than catching wild Pals by battling with the Pals in your party, all battles are fought by the player (with the optional choice of allowing a Pal to fight with you, though the Pal will choose its own moves and you don't command it). Pals can learn new attacks similar to Pokemon, but again, you don't tell your Pals which moves to use unless you are riding it, holding it, or otherwise interacting with it in the moment of battle. I personally like the way battles work in this game. It's what I thought Pokemon battles would be before I ever played.
Leveling up can be done in many different ways, but the most effective way (as far as I've figured out on my own) is by catching Pals, especially repeats of Pals you've caught before. The game encourages you to catch 10 of each Pal, and you can later "condense" the duplicate Pals into a more powerful singleton. Condensing can make mounts slightly faster, which is also nice.
Each time you level, you're given points to unlock new recipes, as well as points to level your stats. Unless you specifically put your points into leveling your damage stat, I don't think that you become (much, if at all) stronger just by gaining levels alone. This makes it so that a level 30 player, with a low damage stat, could be horribly ill-prepared for a battle against a level 30 Pal. The compensation for this is in the unlockable weapon recipes, which do typically get stronger and deal more damage. I've found that when fighting bosses, specifically, even if my level is matched to the boss, I typically need my entire party of Pals in order to even make a dent in their health. I recommend "over leveling" before fighting any bosses, or even just wild Pals, for that matter, especially because putting all your stat points into damage each time isn't necessarily feasible.
At base, you're able to choose some Pals, each with different skills, to complete tasks for you such as mining, cutting trees, crafting, or gardening. With the use of the right combination of Pals, your base can be almost fully automated. There is an unlockable recipe for an item that allows you to control what tasks your Pals do. This item, however, can only adjust the speed at which the Pals work, and the skills that you want to allow them to perform. For example, if a Pal has both the Mining and Watering skills, you can choose for them to perform both, or just one. This is nice sometimes, but unfortunately isn't perfect. At your base, you can have a mining site for gathering stone, and one for gathering ore. Both of these items require Pals with the Mining skill. The control item does not allow you to assign Pals to specific sites. I believe that if you pick up a Pal at your base and throw it at the site that you want it to work in, it will do so, but of course this requires you to be present at your base. The Pals will also quickly tire or become hungry, and may not return to that specific site when they've finished resting or eating. Adding the ability to assign specific Pals to specific sites would be nice, but we'll see what comes when the game is ready for full release.
I really enjoy the ability to use flying Pals as gliders, large Pals as mounts, and some small Pals as weapons. I think this is a unique and fun feature to the game. I enjoy the battle mechanic, as well as the large focus that the game puts on crafting and survival. The map is very large and feels endless at times, which encourages exploration (though it also makes it very easy to wander into an area you're severely under-leveled for). I like that the map is large enough to have diverse biomes that require different types of clothing to comfortably traverse. I like the way bases and Pal skills work, but I do wish that you could make your base's area larger with upgrades, and as mentioned, I wish Pals could be assigned to specific job sites rather than just a general skill.
It is worth mentioning, since it matters to some, that the female versions of the armor and clothing are very revealing and tend to aim more for "sexy" than for "realistic". I noticed in my multiplayer save, playing as a female character with someone playing as a male character, that my character's metal armor was extremely skimpy (crop top, bare middle, bare thighs, booty shorts) compared to the male player's (full coverage). We both thought it was pretty funny, with the comment "This is one of THOSE games, huh?" being made at some point. If realism or immersion is important to you, this may be an issue. Admittedly, while it's kind of funny, it does de-immerse you when you have to stop and laugh at the design choices in the game. In a perfect world, having both a sexy and non-sexy choice for the armor and clothes, for whatever player gender, would be awesome. That way, everyone can be happy. But being realistic, I know this isn't likely to happen. If you play as a character with a female build, expect the sexy versions.
Overall, I very much enjoy the game and I think that it's quite fun. If you're into crafting and survival games, this will be a big hit. If you're looking for a Pokemon clone, look elsewhere. It's surprisingly different in terms of mechanics and actual game play. There are just some minor quality-of-life upgrades that I'd like to see in the future, but I'm happy with my purchase and would not necessarily be disappointed if the game were to stay exactly the same as it is now. I think it's definitely worth the price. I'm honestly surprised it doesn't cost more.

Overall: 7/10
There may be some very minor spoilers in my review.

I got this game after a friend talked about how much they loved it. As a fan of Stardew Valley, I'm enjoying it well enough! It's sometimes hard to feel fully invested, though, and there are some aspects of the game that seem unfinished. It feels, sometimes, like this game was put out before it was 100% ready. For example, there are (crafting?) tables and telescopes placed all over the valley, but you can't interact with them. I don't really know what they're for. Additionally, unless I just haven't figured it out yet, it doesn't seem that there's a way to split stacks of items in your chest or inventory. This makes it a little frustrating when you only need a few of an item, but end up taking a couple hundred instead.

Aside from that, there are supposed to be 45 dream stones, according to the achievements, but it seems that to me (and the Paleo Pines community, too) that there are only 23 that are currently reachable. Maybe there are more that no one has discovered yet, but it does seem a little strange that half of the dreamstones are more or less un-findable. With over 35 available types of dinosaurs- all with a wide variety of color variants, and each one requiring its own dreamstone- only having access to less than half of these stones forces you to be picky about which dinosaurs you actually tame. Perhaps this is intentional, perhaps not. Just an observation.

Aside from this, though, the color design in this game is beautiful. All of the areas are fun to look at, even if they're areas with limited color palettes. The artists did a fantastic job making everything bright, beautiful, and fun to look at. Additionally, the dinosaurs are very cute and the wide variety of colors makes "window shopping" for dinosaurs exciting, and adds an element of suspense when you're waiting for a rare variant to finally spawn. It's also fun that they've added some pride flag inspired color variants to some of the dinosaurs.

Having the dinosaurs act as farming tools is a unique and creative way to separate this game from other farming sims, and it's a cute way to tie the farming aspect into the game a little more. I have found it to be a little difficult to remember that this is supposed to be a farming game, however. It's easy to get wrapped up in the excitement of discovering and taming new dinosaur friends without realizing they're supposed to help make your farm more efficient. This isn't necessarily a downside, but adding more to the farming could help bring this further into the "farming sim" category. To me, it feels more like an exploration game, at heart. This is exaggerated somewhat by the fact that crop seeds are very expensive, and it can be a little difficult to get enough money for everything that you need in order to progress. I usually find that by the time I've finished buying the materials I need for taming dinosaurs, building pens, or completing quests, I'm all out of money to buy seeds.

There are times that I feel like I'm on the edge of boredom- only JUST captivated enough to want to keep playing, but feeling that I'm starting to lose interest. This tends to be the case with a lot of farming sims, in my experience, but adding new areas and more dinosaurs- as well as more easily discoverable dreamstones- could help remedy this.

There are many points where you're forced to dismount your steed in order to write notes in your journal or collect items from the ground. This halts the flow of the game-play somewhat, and can be very tedious when there are many items that need to be noted or collected. Adding the ability to collect or take notes from the back of your dinosaur would help this a lot.

Overall, while it's easy to get tied up in the minor complaints, this is a fun game with a cute, unique, and creative concept. Due to the dreamstone, telescope, and minor game-play issues, this does feel like a semi-unfinished game, but I'm hopeful that the devs will continue working to implement more over time. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys exploration or farming sims, but if you're still on the fence about purchasing it, it couldn't hurt to wait a few months and see if any expansions come along. Might make it more worth your while.