*TL;DR:* As someone who had no prior experiences with Pokemon, I liked Palworld because it turned out to be a fun and solid experience (for me) and its devs are pretty goated and down-to-earth. And thank you for a level-headed discussion on the matter. Good video. I'm someone who, for all my time spent in gaming these past 29 years of my life, was never into Pokemon, ever. Couldn't get myself into it. Tried a couple times, it just fell to the wayside. So when Palworld was revealed two years ago, my best reaction to it was "Oh cool that they're doing this" and moved on with my day and would be forgotten until it got released to Early Access and was blowing up. Picked it up along with Lethal Company because I was bored and wanted to try out new things. So yea, I'm not a Pokemon guy and by proxy shouldn't have been a Palworld guy either. Yet here I am today, a big advocate for Pokemon Gun. How'd it end up this way? It certainly wasn't because I wanted to stick it to big Nintendo or some other stupid reason, that's for sure. I'm a fan because I see great potential here, greater than any other game I've seen in the past years. The ideas they have, cobbled together as they are, somehow still work together to create a simple enjoyable game loop even though it should've been impossible. The simplicity of it isn't overwhelming at all and is a small part of why I like it. And because it's such a solid foundation for an early access game, they could simply build it up from there and even try out newer and crazier ideas, which I feel won't be restricted by things like what would fly in today's gaming landscape since the very premise of the game never gives a damn in the first place. There's so much to look forward to, it's crazy. Another thing that sold me was the devs' attitude towards Palworld's sudden boost in popularity and even its so-called "decline". They never capitalized on it, nor did they try desperate attempts to keep everyone playing. Time and time again their statements prove that they aren't pressured by numbers on the graph, and at one point even encouraged players to go explore and try out other indie games while they cook up new stuff for the future. That's honestly an attitude and mindset that I can get behind with. They are very transparent with the community and, while sometimes there are disagreements, still value peoples' opinions and listens to feedback constantly. They know how to respect the player's time. Palworld is an anomaly in gaming, and it never should've gotten successful as it did. It is Early Access Survival Crafting which is already an over-saturated market at this point, clearly riding on its edgy marketing and Pokemon's success, is EXTREMELY derivative as some people had said, and was already Pocketpair's last-ditch effort in making a game (Seriously, they would've already gone under had this game been a flop). Yet it still stands strong today because it ended up being simple and fun, and is being handled by people who cares not for getting big numbers, but for actually creating a game which in turn created a community that would still happily play for years to come. There's more exciting things to come from it and I can't wait to see what's in store in the future, even more so now that they've formed a joint venture with Sony Music Entertainment to expand the (Pal)world beyond just the game. There are many reasons to like it just as there are as many reasons to dislike it. I for one am just satisfied that this was a level-headed take and, despite not liking it, still tried to understand why other people do. We need more discussions like this. ✌ Some extra blurbs meant for Internet Couch: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- - While *OW THE EDGE* is a big driving force behind its marketing, the reason you don't see it much in actual gameplay is because you are never forced to do any of it. In fact, playing like a monster benefits you LESS in the long run. It's like they're telling you "Hey, you can totally do this and that.... ?" You can choose to play as a power-hungry dictator and work your Pals to the ground, or play it as benevolent as you possibly can (still you can never be a true saint in this game) It's why for me it's rather telling of a person's character when their argument for PALWORLD BAD is the excessive animal cruelty, or they only see Pals as tools and workers. - 6:49 - These are just meant to tell you what your Base Pals are doing and act accordingly. Sometimes it's just Fluff - you see "Hard Working! It seems they're a good worker" if the Pal in question has a "Artisan" Passive Skill or "They're slacking on the job" when they have a "Slacker" Passive Skill. Little details like that can sometimes go a long way. And while you can do it if you wish, no, you are not expected to Kill your Pals when you see these. You're meant to fix what's causing these behaviors so they can go back to working efficiently. - I've always wondered why is it that people are so turned off by seeing mechanics from other games in Palworld. Is it an "Uncanny Valley" type of reaction? Was it a reaction that was magnified by the whole "They copied Pokemon" thing? Was it because there's too much of it? I personally never had such a visceral reaction to it - in fact, as stated above, I find it impressive that they managed to tie it all together when it shouldn't have worked conceptually. Is it really just me? - Gunplay is pretty aight. On PC it's very responsive and flexible and it never felt like you're fighting against yourself. I don't have any strong opinions on Melee as I've only ever stayed on Melee in the early game when that's all you have. Once you get ranged (which is fairly quickly) you forget about melee combat. Still, I hope they expand on that in the future. - When did you drop the game? As of the latest Summer Update there have been a sizable content drop and some much-requested QOL stuff being introduced to the game. Palworld is still far from refined, but what we have currently is still pretty solid!
I've leveled to max in Palworld 3 times now with ~150 hours played. Off the jump I went to max 50 in the default normal settings, then 50 on default hard, and with the recent update I started fresh again and hit the new cap of 55 hard again. I've caught every pal, ran every dungeon, bested every boss. I'm not a pokemon fan, haven't played one of those since Yellow. You're right that the game doesn't have much to it -- nonexistent story and fairly barebones on mechanics. That being said, I'd still argue that it's in the top 1% of games that release early access - the fact they didn't just take the paycheck and abandon development when it hit big is reason enough for me to keep up with updates and continue to give it a chance. It's still v0.3.3, so there is a lot of time for them to shore up the game and have a decent v1.0 in a few years.
Honestly Palworld is the single most derivative game I've ever played. Pokemon is the obvious one -- I just called half the pals by their obvious 'mon they ripped off because it was easier for me to remember. But the entire world itself is like Elden Ring stole Breath of the Wild's art style and wore it, the typeface and musical stings are Breath of the Wild and Ark: Survival Evolved, the progression is Ark: Survival Evolved, the build system is Ark: Survival Evolved. Conan Exiles did clearing camps to rescue thralls (Palword's syndicate camps to rescue pals) with the Isle of Siptah 3 years ago. You're suspicious of the cute dinosaur thing (Goodra) but when you've played through everything this game is 'inspired by' it's a sort of suspicion of where anything you don't immediately recognize comes from even beyond just the Pokemon. Basically all I can give them is the gathering of resources that, while not original, is so endemic to the genre that it's difficult to call it stolen at all, and it's as basic and bare bones as it gets. I got farther than you did in less time, but I wouldn't say I really had more fun. When you get to the non-Pokemon guns, they're too expensive to use so it's not really much a leg up until, I suspect, a bit later in the game when the resources to craft bullets are flowing more freely. It was fun with a friend, but as Nick Frost says, that's the fun *we* made, not the fun the game made. We enjoyed Enshrouded a lot more.
I figured I'd throw some engagement in here. Heres my two cents: I absolutely agree that this game and its popularity are a reaction to how the Pokemon Company, Creatures Inc., Game Freak, and Nintendo are collectively running things. That said, I find many of your complaints either lacking merit or context. First off, as others have said, 10 hours in an open-world survival game is inadequate. I doubt even Skyrim feels super great the first 10 hours, and this game is meant to scale much more slowly. Secondly, and I think this is my draw, is that there's something for everyone. It has Souls-like, Monster Taming, Survival, RPG, and Base Building game elements, and these make for a compelling gameplay loop. "Have you gotten tired of grinding dungeons? Try breeding, Lifmunk Effigy hunting, Oil Rig assault, Pal rescue, Building Desgin...!" You get the idea. Regarding the strategy side, you can directly control some Pals, when you ride them. That said, I'd argue that being unable to control their every move is the point. You're the sixth member of your team. It's meant to evoke training a real animal, in a way. In the thick of combat, you wouldn't want to rely on shouting commands. You need to adapt your personal combat style and your pals' movesets to work together, if you want to min/max. I get that catching humans and such feels like edgey nonsense, but the ideas explored in Palworld are natural progressions of what might happen in a more realistic Pokemon setting. We get snippets in Pokémon Red (1996), where things like genetically engineering pokemon as weapons and using them for war is mentioned in passing. This is just showing more of those ideas. Also, a lot of your questions regarding the setting, characters, and motivations ARE answered in-game. There's a LOT of lore, its just hidden in those journal entries you can pick up and the Paldeck, rather than spoonfed to the player. The real value of the game for me is choice. The CEO of PocketPair said it best: he wasn't overly concerned with making the most creative or message-laden game. He just wanted to make one that was fun. And honestly, even with the lack of polish it has in its early access, it was fun enough for me to sink 500+ hours in so far. Its right up there with No Man's Sky, Subnautica, and Skyrim as one of my most-played games of all time.
You absolutely can judge a game in 10 hours. If you can't, it is a badly designed game. To use Skyrim, in the first 4 hours you fight a Dragon and get your first shout if you are following the story. You get basic information about the game as well. It is ton of information. You get the basic gameplay loop. You can absolutely tell if you are going to enjoy Skyrim before you hit 10 hours. So, if you tell someone that "The game gets good 10, 20, 100, whatever hours in" ... I have to justify putting that much time into a game over other games I could be playing. I have beaten 2 towers in Palworld and caught most of the launch pals before I stopped playing because it became a grind that is just boring. I have about ~95 hours in the game. And I feel exactly as this video described.
@@darththeo People having issues with the grind usually don't understand that the game expect you to understand how bases work. Pals are supposed to take care of the grind for you from the very beginning of the game and progressively become more and more autonomous with the levels gained. In fact what makes the game great is the options and ways it gives you to optimize your pals, your bases and the grind. The devs are also listening to feedback and for instance, made is so you can still move while over encumbered along with many more quality of life changes with the numerous updates the game received since
@@neitsuke I disagree because the reason the grind was so unbearable was because it became more autonomous. It means my character came gave orders to do things and then either went and farmed outside of base, help in base, or stood around and waited. None of those are fun for me. I don't like farming materials or pals as it gets boring after a while. I don't like standing there watching a bar fill up. The autonomous nature made the grind worse for me not better, because at that point I don't even feel like I am playing a game at all, just digital chores at best. And the reward for doing said chores was ... stronger Pals to repeat doing chores. So, where you see "choices" I don't. I see a linear path to better and better performance that will always have the same end results with surface level differences. And I am not saying you have to dislike the game or agree with me. I get what you see, I am just pointing out that what you feel lessens the grind removes any sense of accomplishment in the game for me and makes the grind stand out more and makes it feel worse to me.
@@darththeo Truth is I can't think of many games that do not have any sort of grind in them beside action/adventures games like traditional Zelda games. Even great games like Elden Ring expects you to grind in a way or another. Same with another great game being Guild Wars 2. What I'm getting is these sorts of games aren't what you're looking for which is fine. Open world games will always bring the curse of grinding as a mean for progression
I mostly agree, though I think the Palworld core gameplay loop is genuinely fun despite all the lack of polish. There is a paradox here that despite blatantly copying ideas from left and right, the dev team somehow managed to accidentally create something genuinely new. You nailed it towards the end, it's not that Palworld is particuliarly good at what it does, but that it's the only game currently doing it. I wouldn't however put the sole responsibility of the missed opportunities on Game Freak, there are plenty of companies which had the resources to do this. It's an industry-wide issue that large companies tends to not experiment novel gameplay mechanics, which leads to vacuums like this. I wouldn't be surprised if we started seeing emerge one or more major monster-taming survivals within a few years now that it has been shown the genre has wide appeal.
It's basically Genshin Impact and Breath of the Wild, they took an idea that was already popular and added stuff that appeal more to specific groups. It only copied Gamefreak in the way that some of these designs are clearly Pokemon inspired but Gamefreak never would've made this game so nothing is really lost or stolen. The only dubious part is the marketing. I don't know who started the "Pokemon with guns" thing but they definitely leaned into it and it would've just been a quirk B-tier indie game that came and went with moderate success. The Pokemon debate wouldn't even exist if other studios were better at making their own monster collection games, Pokemon just killed it in the initial years but the opportunity around other studio building their own branding was always there.
Hell yeah we're eating tonight! Glad you're getting kinda consistent with the vids. Hope your next stuff is about things you actually do enjoy! Also 12:40 is a brilliant update idea. Give the workers too many guns and see what happens.
I think your spot on with your analysis. 90's kids grew up with an amazing franchise that has been diluted down to a money printing machine for Nintendo. Personally I stopped paying attention to Pokémon after Ruby and Sapphire as I didn't want to keep buying their new handheld to play the new games. Palworld isn't offering anything novel, there are a whole slew of games out there that do the same things, but baking in the "old pokemon" feel to an open world PC game allowed for a repressed player base to finally play the game on something more powerful than a cell phone. Nintendo's business model is "sell the system with the game" so I doubt they ever pursue a PC release, however, like you said, whoever does pick up the idea is going to make a killing off of a bunch of repressed pokemon fans that just want to scratch the itch they haven't quite been able to scratch in the last 20ish years.
Neat! I’m fascinated by Palworlds success mostly cause I don’t think I want “adult Pokémon” the same way other people do, I’ll see ads for a fake Pokémon game and it’s usually “in this game you actually murder the Pokémon, that’s cool!!!” and that to me isn’t what’s missing with current Pokémon lol. I thought it was interesting how you concluded that most people liked just farting around with their friends in a world, I think that’s why things like Fall Guys or Among Us were able to take off the way they did. Great video!
Palworld is fun until you hit the grind wall, where you need to focus on breeding/improving your pals in order to progress in challenges. That's the biggest issue I have with Palworld, is that it makes grinding for the best pals feel mandatory to progress in the game. And grinding is just boring. There are good things in the game, but overall it feels poor even for early access releases. The fact is the novelty wears off quickly, and there is no point in some item tears afterwhile, like I got a Legendary lower level armor built ... the base armor at the next tier of armors was better when I played, so there is no reason to grind out legendary schematics of anything but the end game weapons and armors, you aren't rewarded for the material and effort in producing the lower level ones. It isn't bad, but it is definitely not something that is going to have staying power in the game world.
combat feels better on hard. watching all this gameplay is mind blowing to me the entire 200 hrs i have, and not 1 time has anyone survived 3+ hits in a row from anything unless its 20 levels under any of us. huge difference.. i mean 1 shot for shield 1 shot for hp. never seen it any different
Oh boy...............i will so trash him so bad as almost 1000 hour player. You can get a gun on lvl 1 pretty much, if you just run araund map and collect chest and swim a bit. (you buy from vendor at vulcano) Each pal has cooldown on specific skills, you can adjust those (or find skill trees) and get the attacks you want out of them. Taking good ideas and implenting them in your game is a good game design (when they work). As for morality, the game design is that players on online servers police it. You can get a lot of roleplaying out of it. I know a guy who realy doesnt want players to have lovelander in base and ask you to sell them to you, then he takes out a knife and butchers them. And important -- you can set your world settings if you hate farming and you make your own experience. Only issue is have with game is sound problems causing lag sometimes or some bad bugs with constant battle music. And instances need some serios re-work to generate fully when you load in and not piece by piece.
I remember watching you play this and feeling almost disappointed there wasn't anything to really comment on asides from its cheap aesthetics. I suppose that's usually the case for games that try and market themselves as edgy and wild and audacious like this one did.
I would've of agreed with this take but lots of successfull game stole lots of mechanics from other games. Fromsoft created the soulslike tag which other games like Lords of the fallen,Niho, and Lies of P ect. Plus not alot of people like Pokémons turn base game play witch is why being able to catch them by beating or weakening first yourself is fun. As for putting the pals to work, they have different task they can do and they come in different sizes, if you put a big pal in a small space yes it will bug and get stuck, which is why you manage and fix the placement of work. Plus alot of the issue have been fixed since the beginning of the games release, dont forget this game is in early access. Which is funny because it has more to offer than pokemon has done is the last recent years 😂.
i do need to say, most of the stuff you said that isnt present in game literally is. you just need to actually read the lore in game. plus 10 hours is absolutely nothing in RPGs. this game is supposed to be a slow start. if they made it easy to get everything there would be 0 reason to actually play the game, you got effigys, your paldeck, your player stats, building, and so much more to look forward to doing, 10 hours is just disrespectful lol, plus the game is literally in active development, its early access right now and things are still changing.
Palworld isn't an RPG, it is a survival crafting game. Also, a good RPG, or game in general, can absolutely be judged in 10 hours. It is a sign of bad game design if it can't be. If a game can't establish its basic gameplay loop in 10 hours, it is a bad game. Games shouldn't be good after 10, 20, 100 whatever hours. They need to be good from the start. Seriously, saying "10 hours is "disrespectful" is bad take. If you don't like the game 10 hours in, you aren't likely going to like the game 100 hours in or further.
@@darththeo in palworld you establish a gameplay loop instantly once you start playing. I was talking about him saying there isn’t much to do. You can’t say there isn’t much to do in the game if you only put 10 hours in. And no it’s not a bad take. It’s the more popular one because most of the internet things the same way.
3:18 10hrs is nothing for a RPG game. You should not play this game if u have limited time, you shouldn't play any game of this nature with limited time. Take single player WOW it takes 490-5548hrs to beat it. Average length to beat elden ring is 59hrs. This game is commonly compared to ARK, ark is 77hrs for the main story, Completionist is 699hrs. If you could get level 25 in 10hrs palworld would lowkey suck, RPG games are known to take a long time to complete it would be completely out of the genre for a RPG game to be that short
That's what I was thinking, being that low of a level he wouldn't even go against some of the more challenging bosses. I also noticed that he never mentioned that its an unfinished game that's still in highly active development. He did make some valid comments about the environment and world tho.
See I get where you're coming from, but games like Elden Ring and WoW don't take more than 10 hours to get started. You don't need to sink over 10 hours to get a sword in Elden Ring, or 10 hours in WoW to get your main attack. Assuming you dig the game, I am genuinely curious: did you enjoy having to wait that long for guns? Did it add to your experience in a meaningful way?
@@internetcouch Personally for me, yes. You unlock a basic bow pretty quickly (30 minutes in) and can pretty much immediately catch pals. Then you get to a point where the basic tools and pal sphere is in-efficient and same with food so you eventually use your newly caught pals to build a basic base, which then allows you to start automating. Then you start getting ways to order your pals, make new tools like gliding, or even saddles to make the pals themselves do more. All this slowly makes it easier to explore as you gain better and better pals. You do get pals as well that have gun related abilities like lifmunk . Then you get to the point you can breed or grow eggs. These are just examples I can think of on the top of my head. It doesn't take 10 hours to "Get started". If the game immediately gave you guns and that was that, this game would have failed ultimately and been a meme game. The fact it bothered to have actual progression and do more than just be a pokemon + guns game is the reason why it has succeeded. You can feel the progression, and thats what makes it fun and meaningful. There is a natural progression that is built into the game. Your constantly getting new tools and constantly getting new pals with new kinds of abilities. At the end of the day, palworld is a survival/automation/monster collection game, and at least for the first two genres, this has always been about slow progression and creating your own adventure. The game has some lore sure, but at the end of the day, its not trying to have this grand story or be a breath taking adventure, its just trying to be a fun survival game that blends in monster collection. There is technically some end goals that can be achieved, but its ultimately up to the player if those goals are worth achieving, or if they want to make their own goal. The game is fun because of the freedom it offers. Its okay if thats not your jam when it comes to games, but saying it takes time for the fun to start I think is disingenuous. It sounds like you wanted a shooter game with pokemon, not a survival game with pokemon. Maybe we will have a shooter+pokemon game, but palworld isn't pretending to be that, nor trying to be. The whole gun thing is just a small piece of the entire puzzle.
@@internetcouch Yeah feels more well earned, if everyone in the server ran around with guns it would completely change the feel of the game. Not to mention I got guns day 1 when first getting the game, took me like 8-12hrs. Took other players 20+hrs or so. It would be boring for people who are experienced with RPG games if it was too easy
@@internetcouch You can get guns pretty quickly if you want them, the level requirement is to learn how to make it yourself. You can find them in chests, buy them, or loot them from various human enemies over time there.
I think you're really missing the point of a game like palworld. It also feels like you haven't played since they've done some of the larger updates. Realistically just another contrarian troll who can't let people enjoy something fun without putting your shitty two cents in.
