Pokemon with guns, kawaii V Rising, anime Valheim, the main surprise of January – all of that and more can be used to describe Palworld. Created by the small and little-known up till now studio Pocketpair, the game swiftly became the main hit of January, with the peak online of 2 million concurrent players and more than 8 million sales in the week after its Early Access release.
Palworld even became more popular than Minecraft on Xbox Game Pass! So, what’s the reason for such explosive popularity? Palworld caters to fans of several genres and approaches at once, from survivalists to crafters to Pokemon lovers.
The game starts like most representatives of the survival genre out there. After a brief character creation, your protagonist wakes up on the coast of an unknown world, surrounded by the local creatures: Pals. Just like in other games, you have to manually obtain resources to create a base and craft on. Starting with ordinary wood and stone, moving to rare metals, ancient devices and other incredible resources.
fter the creation of a workbench, players get the opportunity to craft: simple spears, pickaxes, bows with arrows to (much later) machine guns and other high-tech gear. The workbench also makes it possible to create Pal-spheres, the local analogue of Pokeballs, which work on the same principle: you have to lower a Pal to critical health (to increase the chance of success), throw a sphere at it and, after the bar is filled, the creature is yours.
But it’s worth considering that not all Pals you meet will voluntarily allow themselves to be caught, some slip right between your fingers even with a 90% chance of success. Then you can keep the captured Pal to help you explore the world or send it to the base where it will carry out assigned tasks or do something helpful within the scope of its abilities.
Every Pal has its own element, character traits and skills that come in handy when working in the player’s base or assisting in combat. It’s worth considering what elemental powers are possessed by your Pal, especially when you are planning to tackle a boss. During battles, any active Pal you have will automatically attack other wild Pals that decide to duke it out with you. If you don’t want your Pal to attack or want it to attack your current target only, you can issue a command by using the radial menu (Key 4 on PC) and selecting the appropriate option.
Pals have up to three active skills available during combat. You can find skill fruits that can teach your companions new skills and, unlike Pokemon, you do not have to erase a current skill to learn a new one. Teach your Pal enough tricks, and you can simply swap them around depending on what kind of battle awaits you ahead.
Every Pal has one partner skill and up to four passive skills. Partner skills are often combat-oriented, such as Tanzy’s Jolly Rifle skill, which causes Tanzy to attack enemies with an assault rifle. Other partner skills allow you to ride your Pal or receive a buff while the creature is by your or your friend’s side in the party. Choose your team wisely, and all its members will be useful even out of combat.
Passive abilities work similarly to partner skills, but the Pal has a randomly generated set of passives. These skills can have a positive and/or negative effect on your Pal, and each passive skill can have one of three levels that increase or decrease its effect.
For example, Lamball is completely useless for mining ore or chopping trees, but will happily help you create things on a workbench or carry resources to the nearest crate. Its combat skill – when summoned, gives the player a fluffy shield that lowers the amount of damage taken. Also, while at the base, from time to time it will leave behind wool, which is necessary when crafting certain items.
Likewise, Pals can have negative and positive character traits that are randomly generated upon the capture. Which, in turn, forces you to catch as many Pals of the same type as possible in order to get “the one” with the ideal parameters. From time to time you can run into rare Pals out in the world, they differ from ordinary ones in their size and in the fact that they do not have negative character traits. In addition to their size, the search process for such Pals is further simplified by the sound they make. If, while exploring the world, you heard a loud, continuous ringing nearby, chances are it’s a rare Pal.
Most Pals live in biomes corresponding to their natural element. For example, ice Pengullet can be encountered mostly near the coast or in snowy expanses, while grassy Lifmunk should be looked for in the forest. Each Pal has combat abilities corresponding to its elemental type. You will get a chance to feel them on your own hide as you attempt to catch the creature.
In addition to their innate skills, Pals can be fed a variety of fruits that will unlock additional skills indicated in the description. The acquired skills can be viewed and changed in the Pal Card, which is also where you can change your companion’s name.
Also, when leveling up, players will unlock various equipment for their companions: from weapons (including firearms and various crazy options like rockets shooting pengullets) to saddles that will help you ride Pals that offer such an option.
Every captured Pal will gladly aid the owner in their work at the base. At first, the creation of items by the player takes a certain time, but with the help of your furry assistants, the player will be able to focus on other things. Standing by the workbench with a pressed button is no longer a requirement, just assign the appropriate Pal helper, and it will do everything on its own.
However, you can’t just leave Pals to work and forget about it. Every single one requires care and attention. All Pals want to eat, sleep and relax. To provide everything necessary at the base, you will have to install special buildings that are unlocked as you level up. There are a lot of available buildings, and you can spend many hours on construction of your base and organization of its work.
This is probably one of my favorite parts of the game: watching everything you’ve been busy on for so long start working like clockwork. And just spending time being surrounded by your furry Pals is incredibly fun. The only drawback (which I hope will be fixed in the future) is that Pals very often get stuck in the environment and in each other, which is why you have to go looking for them and manually correct the situation.
In addition to building your base and capturing new Pals, Palworld is also an open-world adventure game. The world is divided into different biomes and regions, and in general is similar to what you could have seen in any most open-world games. Yet, at the same time, the exploration is pretty addictive with a large number of activities to tackle. Here and there you will come across different Pals that you’d want to catch, there will also be poacher camps with cages filled by imprisoned Pals – just kill all the enemies (which is quite simple to do since the AI score is approaching negative values), open the cages and the captured creatures are yours.
You might also run into wandering merchants and ordinary travelers, chests with loot, dungeons with rare powerful Pals and even Boss-Pals that will give you quite the problem at first. They might even visit your base to destroy everything there. Poachers are not above ignoring you, either, especially if your base is filled with rare creatures. Traversing the world is made easier thanks to numerous fast travel points and mechanics that allow players to climb rocks, glide and move while mounted on a Pal.
Dungeons and boss fights require you to be prepared in order to complete them. In addition to simply raising your level, you need to work on your equipment and pick up correct Pals (preferably so that their element would counter your opponent’s). Bosses have a large supply of health and you will only have a limited time to kill them, so you will have to fight together with your Pals in order to score a quick win. While the Pals are busy with their skills, players can focus on their weapons. For example, for Zoe & Grizzbolt (the both that will conclude your tutorial), my Pal was tanking and soaking up the damage while I kept shooting the boss and lowering the HP.
From a visual standpoint, Palworld is not incredibly impressive, although the game tries to create an open world similar to that of The Legend of Zelda or Genshin Impact. However, it looks empty, and the design seems like the developers pulled a bit of everything from a variety of titles. I can’t say that it is a huge negative, but the developers should really work more on the in-game world, bring it to a more cohesive uniform style, start filling it up and create various events.
Just exploring the world is an enjoyable activity, you can climb steep mountains, soar on a parachute, warm yourself by a fire, make your way through a dungeon or clear out smugglers’ outposts. The locations are filled with various resources: chests, eggs for incubators, and there’s always something to do, especially finding special hidden figurines that will enhance your summoning power.
The battles are also not too varied in tactics. You have an acrobatic somersault, a shield and HP, and the battle itself amounts to clicking on the enemy. It doesn’t really matter who’s in front of you, an ordinary Pal or a Boss, the difference is only in how fat the HP bar is and what techniques are used by the enemy.
However, the variety of Pals is quite pleasing, and so is their beauty. I had a lot of fun fighting against some of these creatures just for the sake of checking out their animations.
Now let’s talk about building your Outposts.
Oddly enough, at first glance it might seem like a mediocre activity, but once you actually start building… the game shows itself from an extremely pleasant and unexpected side. The developers managed to incorporate Pals into the world extremely well, and that includes your base. First, you build yourself a house of wood and stone, set up the workbench and then… you add your Pals and start taking care of them. They need everything from a crib and some food to a heated swimming pool so that they can rest up.
Pals greatly facilitate all the work, and the higher the level of your base, the more Pals will be able to live on it and help you out in turn. You need to smelt the ore: place a Pal with fire ability nearby, and it will maintain the fire in the furnace. You need to grow berries, add a Pal with water skill that will keep it watered, and all you have to do is harvest a finished crop in a few minutes. Got yourself some generators, there are Pals that will provide you with electricity, others will mine or chop wood, someone else will help out with crafting, and everything else. Watching Pals work is very entertaining and interesting, and one of the huge positive points of the game.
At first Palworld didn’t impress me, and I felt it was a typical “Early Access survival with some interesting mechanics” but during my time in the game I was surprised at how comfortable and convenient the developers managed to make some familiar things. The same processes that seemed annoying or boring in Valheim or Rust can be pushed onto Pals. Basic mechanics such as hunger and item durability have been simplified so as not to force you back to the base just as you got somewhere interesting. It’s simply fun and relaxing, silly Pals, colorful bright world, and you tear yourself away from the PC without noticing that you’ve just spent 5 hours in-game. And it’s even more fun if you are playing with friends.
At the moment, the game has certain drawbacks and issues, both in terms of its technical state and overall gameplay loop, but they are quite insignificant to the overall impression from the project. I highly recommend you give Palworld a chance, you simply cannot find a better Pokemon-esque game right now. Additionally, it is quite cheap and also available on Xbox Game Pass. I sincerely hope that the developers continue working on and investing into Palworld, further developing the game and adding to it, and not simply letting it fade into oblivion after the wave of hype passes.
