Palworld recently released on January 19 by Japanese developer Pocketpair to massive commercial success, with many people likening it to Pokemon as a monster-catcher of cute creatures in spherical objects. However, that is where I believe the similarities end between Pokemon and Palworld. Although I had known of Palworld since its initial reveal in June of 2021, my expectations of the game were still related to a Pokemon-style game that would include mostly elements that I had seen before. Boy was I wrong! Palworld offers so much more than I expected.
Story
As Palworld is very recently released and is still in early access, there isn’t much of a story yet. From what I can gather, there is something off about the area you explore in Palworld, and there are also evil organizations roaming the land, such as the Syndicate and the Free Pal Alliance. At the time of writing this review, most story details that I have been able to gather have come from a series of journals left by someone that have been scattered around the islands that you can collect. Overall though, there doesn’t seem to be much story in this build of the game, at least none that is very upfront about revealing itself to the player.
Gameplay
The name of the game in Palworld is exploration. You start on the first island in the archipelago that is the world of Palworld and will progress to different areas as you level up and capture better Pals. Along with capturing better Pals, you will also be collecting resources for building structures such as your base (the first structure the game instructs you to build). The game has a built-in tutorial that is very good at guiding the player though the beginning stages of the game.
Speaking more to the exploration, it is very similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in many aspects. First, you have a stamina meter when running, climbing, swimming, etc. Along with that, you also have to worry about hunger and temperature. Hunger will slowly drain passively no matter what you are doing, and the consequences of letting it get low will get worse over time, eventually draining your health at zero hunger. Temperature will also drain your health if you are not wearing suitable clothing or standing next to a heat source in the case of the cold. Luckily, your stamina can be increased with the stat point you get each time you level up, and, as mentioned above, the temperature can be taken care of by wearing clothing best suited for the environment you are in.
Catching Pals is an interesting endeavor. It is similar to Pokemon in that it takes three “wiggles” in order to catch a Pal (sometimes less, I’ll get to that), but the way it calculates the probability of actually catching a Pal is different. In Palworld, the catch rate of a Pal is shown when you take out a ball and hover your cursor over the Pal. The catch rate can be increased by damaging the Pal, and it will reflect that in the UI. Once the Pal is in the ball, the game will first decide if you make it past the first RNG gate, being whatever your starting odds were. Then, once you succeed in passing the first gate, the chance will increase, making the second gate easier to pass. Finally, the third gate usually is just a guaranteed catch, being somewhere in the 90% range if not going all the way up to 100%. Funnily enough, I have had times where I pass the first gate at 3% and fail the second gate at 33%, but that’s just my luck.
Your base will be your main hub for progression in Palworld besides your character, as it will be the place where you will have your Pals work and eventually be able to have them harvest resources for you with structures like a stone pit. The progression of your base revolves around you leveling it up by building specific structures or doing other tasks that it requires, which will earn you rewards such as increasing the maximum number of Pals you can have working at your base.
Speaking of progression, Palworld’s other progression systems are… decent. This is with regard to your character and the Pals you can catch. First, I believe the character progression system, such as leveling up, is well made, although it is very dependent on catching new Pals and Pals you already caught. You will end up getting a lot XP from that method. For the progression of Pals you can catch, I believe early game, when you are exploring the first area, it is fine, as most of the Pals you will find will be very low level, which is good when you are beginning the game.
However, you can very quickly find out that you can get much later game Pals by sneaking into Syndicate (one of the human antagonist groups of the game) or Free Pal Alliance (another human antagonist group) camps and unlocking whatever Pal is locked up. Although the game does lock the higher level Pal to whatever level the player is at the time, the Pals moves and base stats will naturally be better and higher than many of the Pals you may be encountering naturally at the time. That being said, the game definitely does not want you to be in those areas, as you will be punished by higher-level enemies if you aren’t careful, which I do appreciate as a mechanic.
However, that has been my biggest gripe with the gameplay so far, but the monster-catching Breath of the Wild-style exploration more than makes up for it.
Technical
Palworld is a very beautiful game made in Unreal Engine 5, which is not surprising. In a single-player world, I can easily get a stable 120+ fps at a 2K resolution (I have an Nvidia 3070 graphics card). This really accents the gameplay well. While you are exploring, you can stop and admire the scenery, whether that be a glistening river or a vibrant grassy plain. As something that is very important in an open world survival game, Palworld definitely nails the scenery and graphics.
Unfortunately, the performance is hindered a bit when playing in multiplayer. Specifically, when playing on a dedicated Palworld server that one of my friends created (the type that could support up to 32 players), me and my friends experienced some pretty bad rubber banding. However, it was still very much playable and would rarely get bad enough that the game would be impossible to play.
Besides the multiplayer hiccups here and there, the game itself is already extremely polished for an early access game. I couldn’t find any standout bugs or glitches, and it really seems like a lot of care was put into this build of the game.
Summary
Palworld, even in its early access state, has far exceeded the expectations I had set for the game. The exploration can feel challenging but fair, and the rewarding feeling you get from leveling up your base or catching a Pal with an extremely low catch rate is amazing. Even with the fairly easy late-game Pal grabbing existing and multiplayer experience not being perfect, I can confidently say that Palworld is definitely shaping up to be something special. The beautiful graphics, along with the satisfying gameplay, make for a very fun experience indeed.
Palworld is now available on Steam in Early Access and Xbox Series X|S on Xbox Game Preview and Game Pass.
The Review
Great
