Palworld! Where Ark meets pokemon.

*watches lamball calmly walk through the campfire*

We're just going to ignore that.

So, despite the media: this is actually an open world, survival, crafting game. Much in the vein of ark, realistically. Yup, there is a massive monster catching mechanic similar to pokemon (but like pokemon go, where you can actually miss the ******* throw.), which is completely tied to the automation in the game. The upshot to that is: you immediately get into basic automation, and the programming for it is actually pretty good. Pals with appropriate skills and abilities will find stuff in and around you base to do. Whether that's working on stuff in the workbenches, mining local resource nodes, farming, or helping you put in more infrastructure.

The survival mechanics are fairly basic. You cook some food, it'll rot eventually, and you eat it when hungry. Carry too much stuff and you can't sprint. Don't forget to fix your tools and weapons: either repair kits (when in the field.) or at the repair bench (when at home.). Pop out a torch (or a fire pal.) when you're cold, make some better clothes. You gain levels, you get technology points and attribute points. You learn more schemata and make yourself stronger in various aspects (like carry weight, stamina, health and such.), it's all fairly standard and seems to be well implemented.

In fact, there is nothing powerfully outstanding about any individual aspect or mechanic of the game. Survival crafting? Open world? Monster catching? Yeah, all of it has been done before. I haven't played enough to say one way or another if it's done better than other games.

But all of it flowing into the one pot, with the "high technology bordering on fantasy" pokemon aspect, with real time, absolutely frenetic combat? Oh yeah, I am absolutely enjoying it so far, even if the opening few hours is very laid back: chopping trees, weaving cloth, cooking eggs and harvesting berries.

Plus the ridiculous overly cartoony art style for the pals, when everything else is functionally very realistic is just fun. The first thing you do is beat down a cartoon lamb and enslave it. The corpses have rag doll physics, so they just... roll ludicrously. They move when you walk through them, flop down slopes. It's hard to treat it like a serious endeavor, like you're grinding to get to the guns! when you have pink cat bashing its head into a boulder then helping you hammer together a work station.

I am liking this so far. I really am.

Managed to automate pal food production by getting a pengullet, and a... moss... something. One of them seeds the berry plantation, the other one waters it. I've got a cat that drops literally everything to harvest it. I got a foxsparx that helps cook on the campfire and wanders around the base automatically lighting the torches I create (nice touch, actually.). My stupid lamb won't stop shedding, and the stupid chicken won't stop laying eggs... despite being male.

I watched four different pals literally run through the campfire (which I was forced to move.) because the sun had set and it was suddenly bed time. They then laid down and went to sleep... WHILE BURNING! Then went out... so, you know... no harm, no foul?

I then got my ass kicked by an alpaca wearing pink thigh high boots. I just don't want to walk anymore, it's too slow.

Would recommend, 8/10 so far. That number might change once I can test whether the rumour about humans being capturable in the pal spheres are true.

Edit: a giant glowing chicken pounded me into the ground like a tent stake. 9/10

I forgot about this. I was hoping this would be good, because Nintendo needs some competition again, even if it's very loose competition in this case. Everything I've seen so far looks fun.

Well.. if what I heard is true.. the company that made Palworld actually owns NONE of their designs, as they where made with AI.

I gave a giant green chipmunk a mach 9, and used a self immolating fox as a flame thrower.

I don't care who owns the rights, cause I am having fun.

Played it for between 4 and 5 hours with some friends last night. Getting the itch to fire up a single player instance right now, actually. Quite fun. It's literally 'lets take Ark, Pokemon and Breath of the Wild and throw them into a blender' but it works, somehow.

As far as the AI thing goes. While they may have used AI, the game was announced with a trailer back in 2021. Before the current crop of 'good' AI tools were available, so I kinda doubt those claims.

It sounds like a rumor a salty Game Freak employee started.

And here's the CEO talking about AI usage in creation with hopes to turn the studio in that direction.



said CEO is also a massive crypto/NFT shill.


So yeah. **** this game.

Ubisofts CEO told us that we should get used to not actually owning the things we pay for. Epic deliberately turned fortnite into a "mommy's credit card" slush fund. EA has literally been been rebranding and selling (at massive ******* profit.) the exact same soccer game for a DECADE. The gaming industry as a whole has turned loot boxes into LITERAL gambling.

If you're going to be outraged by this guys choices, wait till you see the entire rest of the gaming industry. Turns out, it's a ******* cesspool.

So? I can hate everything at the same time. I don't have to make exceptions for whoever's deciding to be the least evil this week.

That's kind of my point: if you're going to hate on one person in the industry for things the ENTIRE INDUSTRY is doing, then you have to hate all of it.

And since I'm not about to stop playing games, what with modern human civilization being in the "bread and circuses" phase of collapse, you either need to learn to like stuff made by scum, or least not ruin everyone elses fun.

Alright; you can ABSOLUTELY capture humans, it's just hard as hell. The down side is: the humans are completely worthless for automation. They have the "handy" trait, so they can help with stuff in manufacturing (which means an army of them would be useful in the much later production line stuff.) but otherwise nothing else. I'm kinda tempted to shlep my captured syndicate thug and see if he levels a bit and gets better. Maybe try to feed him some skill fruit and see what happens.

Also: small pal traps do work on humans, as two snare traps and a small bear trap (I was just as shocked they would put this in.) took care of 3/4's of a syndicate base raid. Watching those clowns dangle upside down was hilarious... treating them like pinatas was even better. So buy them traps and set them up! Good fun to be had there.

I'm starting to sound like a psycho, good thing this is just a game.

ONE MORE THING!

If you can find a pal called "vixy", and have them operate at the ranch in your base: they'll skip the middle man and just spawn pal spheres and arrows for you. Small amounts, to be true, but great for early game supplies in general. Hell, I'm level... 14? and the cross bow uses regular old arrows. So, free ammo, yeah boy!

LASTLY!

I just opened up the ability to build another base. I'm going to find a nice place, shlep some supplies up, and set up another palbox. You can fast travel from them, and fast travel to them, so you can just back and forth while moving stuff around. Going to see what the limitations are on that mechanic, and make a better base while doing it.

This game already looked decently far along when it was announced. You might hate the CEO's embrace of generative AI, but the timeline just does not work for it to have had much of a role in this game.

I couldn't care less, personally. Whether the design work was done by humans or an AI that was remarkably ahead of the curve, the point of this game is that it's a blatant Pokemon ripoff... that derails into hilarious insanity. I thought the first trailer was a joke, but it's a real game. This is art.

Alrighty, pal world got a little bit darker here:

1.) humans can be made to eat the skill fruit. I haven't seen him use the skill yet. That's a me issue though, once I fed him, I went about moving base. So... no real combat.
2.) humans can be sold at the pal trader... and for fairly comparative prices to similarly levelled pals. Ultimately not worth it for the difficulty in catching them.

Also, I figured out how to go about changing the names of captured pals. It's literally right there on the status screen for each pal. An edit command right next to the default name. So of course I changed my syndicate thugs name to "Batty McThug", and then set him out to fight giant birds and moss covered mammoths. Dudes got a ******* baseball bat, I don't know how he's expect to fight something that can THROW TORNADOES, but I make him do it. That's what you get for trying to kill me.

UPDATE: I was exploring the island I moved onto, and wound up finding the black market pal trader. So I sold off Batty McThug. Dude not only wasn't using his new skill, he wasn't even fighting when I was being attacked. So off his worthless ass goes into the void.

Lol. I need to play some more. Was going to last night but the guys I was playing with weren't online and it was super cold, so I ended up just going to be.

Okay, so turns out the LEVEL of the skill the pal uses (like transportation, mining, farming and such.) determines how well they do it, and in some instances what they can actually do. Rock mines require level 1 mining, ore requires level 2. Don't know how far this mechanic goes yet, but I am going to be re-examining my pals at the base to see if I can more optimize my production. I picked my location cause an ore node routinely spawns in between the pal barn and the storage depot.

There are drop versions of schematics which allow you to make improved items. I found a blue crossbow schema while running a dungeon, turns out the learned schema you pay for are all the basic "common" version. I nearly double the damage my cross bow does. Kinda want a epic baseball bat now.

Finally: collect those copper keys! They are rare, but RED CHESTS are locked, got good stuff in 'em too.

I am just having so much fun with this. I'm genuinely looking forward to playing again.

Edit: Oh yeah! On the far right side of the tech tree, the purple column. There's stuff in there that needs "ancient technology points" to purchase. Not a lot of stuff in that column, but good shit man. Good shit. The feed bag lets you open an automatic food slot, so you don't go hungry till you actually run out of food, and it'll feed your pals as well. There's the incubator, the pal compressor, hell! I just bought a grappling gun! It replaces one of the tools slots, so think about your load out, but still fun and useful when exploring.

I finally got a gun! It's a musket, but thanks to the syndicate goons, I've got plenty of ammo for it. And it hits like a TRUCK! 1.2K if I land the critical hit, between 8 and 9 hundred on a body shot.

It does nothing for my weapon load out because I still need to carry around my crossbow in case I want to try to actually CATCH the low levels... dang it.

This got posted in a Discord server I'm in.

“You cannot, in any way, accidentally get the same proportions on multiple models from another game without ripping the models. Or at the very least, tracing them meticulously first,” one senior character artist told VGC anonymously, adding: “I would stand in court to testify as an expert on this.”

They explained: “To give you an idea of how impossible this is, sometimes we have to copy one mesh to another when we make sequels to games, for example, redrawing an NPC from one game to another, and even when we rework those old models, they only SOMETIMES match this closely due to rigging changes that might need to happen.

“There have been times when dozens of artists are given the same concept art to create a 3D model, for example, during art tests for jobs. I’ve seen 30 artists try to make the same horse using the exact schematics.

“None were as close to each other as these Palworld models are to the Pokémon models. None. The silhouettes and proportions here are near-perfect matches.”

Click to expand...

Can't say I feel like supporting a company that blatantly steals. Nintendo is not without its problems, but still.

If you want to keep playing, that's fine. I'd rather be informed and make my own choice whether to play it or not.

The game has been in development since '21. Nintendo has had plenty of time to issue legal action, and they haven't.

But actual evidence hasn't been available till now... and because it wasn't for sale till now, that also complicates matters.