Games being inspired by books, movies, or other games we already know is nothing new. Sometimes it’s well done, and sometimes it looks like a bad copy or even blatant plagiarism. It’s usually most interesting when you take inspiration from other things and give them a new and original touch. Palworld is certainly similar to a lot of things we’ve seen before, and there’s no denying that most of its ingredients aren’t exactly unique and you can easily name their inspirations on the fly. It doesn’t matter though, Palworld is a strange mix and doesn’t ruin the gaming experience, even if some things feel and look a little too similar to the titles that influenced it. Because here too there is a portion of something unique, even if it may initially be difficult to find it in this rather strange fusion.
Because Palworld offers us a lot and not everything is as easy as it seems at first, but you will learn everything quickly thanks to a series of fluid tutorials that show what you should do first. After you’ve laid a solid foundation, set up the first things in your camp and caught your first creatures, here called Pals, a few things will become clear to you: It’s very entertaining, but also quite monotonous and time-consuming. You have to be patient, think of your own little adventures and, above all, embrace this type of experience in order to be able to devote more time to it. Because time is something that Palworld demands of you in most aspects, and the more you dedicate yourself to it, the more fun you will have and the more effective you will ultimately be at everything the game has to offer.
There is no s tory here. You just wake up and it’s time to start collecting, building and capturing. Luckily, you quickly realize that most things are a lot of fun, and even though they take time and are sometimes awkward and inconvenient, just standing on a hill and looking out at the wide world is enough to whet your appetite for adventure wake up. Palworld is as much about collecting items as it is about building things, which feels a bit like a cheeky Pokemon recreation as you have to capture creatures with a Pal Orb. Then your captured little companions can be used in battle, but above all to complete the tasks of your camp, where you will spend a large part of your time. It’s a lot of fun to watch the little creatures water the fields, collect resources or come to your aid when you need to build something.
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There are over a hundred different buddies in the world to catch, and their different characteristics also allow them to bring different things to your ever-growing base. Because after you’ve built a small shed, set up a bed and slowly started leveling up (which is mainly achieved by capturing buddies), you only have to take a look at the menus to see that there’s a lot to build and building is doing. It always feels like there is something to do, even if the game itself is quite narrow in scope. The mix of collecting, building and conquering is successful, as you can take your time with each new game session for what you feel like doing.
Almost everything you do, building, collecting and capturing, earns you and the little creatures experience points that you can use to become stronger. Essentially, it’s a classic build where higher levels give you the ability to build new things, catch stronger creatures, and become more efficient at everything. You end up in a loop of collecting and building, but at the same time the tasks become more fun and faster as time goes on. If you want, you can also grab a few of your friends and head out to explore the world, and although it seems pretty empty, every element here still adds variety. Above all, it’s fun to constantly feel like there are new things to unlock and discover with every level you win. However, I hope that over time the world will be filled with more interactions and things to explore.
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What I really appreciate is that the resources are plentiful. It’s easy to collect hundreds of them, and as you level up your camp you’ll also have the opportunity to build more. So if you find a good location with good proximity to resources, you can build a new base there. However, it is not possible to move what you have built because you have to destroy it (you get all the resources back) and build it in a new location, which is very strange. Therefore, a tip is to try to find good locations to build your base from the start.
The look in general is also a bit inconsistent, there are a lot of nice views and the Unreal Engine raises everything to a technically decent level. But it often feels pretty empty and the frame rate sometimes struggles to keep up. I also noticed a lot of graphical issues, particularly with the resolution of the textures, which varies and sometimes becomes very pixelated on certain surfaces. Also, the interface with all the text is very overwhelming when you are in your camp as all the text constantly appears and covers the screen.
It’s a shame that some areas are quite rudimentary, because despite being an early access project, I have experienced frustrations, particularly in the behavior of your friends, which disrupts the gaming experience. They have the ability to get stuck or “glitch” in various places around your base, and since your friends need to be provided with food and rest, there will be some annoying moments when a creature is starving just because got stuck somewhere. We hope it gets a lot of polish before the full version is released. Crafting certain items also requires a certain type of buddy, and sometimes they can disappear and do other things without completing their task. It’s an annoying distraction to have to go into a menu, change it, and then go back again.
Likewise, the sound section could be improved as the game is incredibly dark. Since you spend a lot of time setting up your camp or exploring the wide world, the sound needs a lot more atmosphere.
Near the area where I built my first base are huge creatures that surpass me in strength in many ways. Knowing that it will be time to catch them or go hunting for new types of creatures is one of the strongest aspects of Palworld. The joy of discovery and curiosity simply found the right setting. There are many places where you can fast travel. So when you unlock them you can easily get to a specific area and also to your base. Even though the world is big and the journeys can be long, getting around is easy. Even if the world seems quite bleak, there is still a lot to discover that will captivate you, you just have to be prepared for the fact that this is not a game where you are accompanied by any story, but above all about it The hunt for new friends is the focus here.
If you want to have a clearer objective, there are large towers that contain a boss, a kind of equivalent to the gyms in Pokémon, and it is important to be well prepared as these battles are timed and so are you and your skills require helpers. You are strong enough. Since there’s nothing to tell, it’s a little sad that this is really the only important objective, but each play session is really what you make of it. Building was the most fun for me, and as more friends get together and complete tasks, the process becomes smoother. They can even go so far as to implement a rather cruel regime and make the poor creatures work themselves to death.
The premise of this game has often been to be “Pokémon with weapons,” and like everything else, as you level up you unlock the ability to craft firearms for some of the individual friends. However, these weapons are only unlocked as you progress through the game, and the progression as you constantly unlock new items makes each new gaming session even more entertaining as you have new things to do and watch the cute little creatures get to grips with theirs Weapons walking around. It’s devilishly fun.
It’s not just weapons that can end up in the clutches of creatures, as some species can also use them as mounts to fly or cross the water. This makes the world even more fun to explore and more efficient to explore. And like anything else, it takes time to get to the level where you can create all of this, but all the effort you put in is truly worth it when you’re rewarded.
The multiplayer capability is welcome and will be developed over time, allowing you to have multiple players per world. As it stands now, four players can adventure and build together, and in the cases where I played around with a few friends, it worked well, aside from a few crashes and the inability to connect to a friend’s world to produce. Help from your friends in defeating a specific boss or building a larger project is welcome, but the most fun is just hanging out and chatting while building. Time flies when you play Palword without really knowing what you’ve accomplished.
This early access version is promising, but not only is it a showcase for something that will undoubtedly be updated and expanded, but I also think the entertainment that’s out there right now is really great. Several times I’ve started without a clear goal and then spent hours collecting materials, building, and then hunting in the big world. It’s just as easy to feel the urge to rebuild camp as it is to spend hours looking for new companions. Just like a game like Minecraft, where your imagination is the only limit, Palworld also requires you to have fun crafting and tackling things that might seem a bit tedious at first, but will reward you well. If you have this attitude, you will enjoy many incredible hours and undoubtedly many more as it expands and improves.