izigame.me

When I saw a buyable DLC with an event, and a few days ago an official statement on Instagram about their financial problems, stating a "Paleo Pines 2"(loud sigh), telling people to go buy their merchandise and plushies.... Yeah, I knew this was gonna happen.
I never wrote a review so this won't be perfect, but let's go.
After following it's development for some time I knew this will be something for me to just relax and have fun. I got this game last year and was not wrong, it was a blast... Until. But first here are my pros:
1 - Great style design, the dinosaurs are so cute and yet remain pretty scientifically accurate, which is very important to me. Their sounds, animations, really bring lots of character into them and I grew a great bond with my Baryonyxes.
2 - Soundtrack is amazing, I love the OST on rainy days. It does sometimes gets repetitive, that's the only thing that could be changed.
3 - Exploring is very nice, I personally like getting lost in the forest, makes me feel like I'm wandering around with my dino rather than constantly looking at coordinates on the map.
4 - Gameplay, foraging, farming, taming dinos is fun, I like that dinos have their own abilities for each thing, but it's very clunky, so see you soon in cons.
Cons:
1 - Gameplay, foraging, farming, taming dinos. All of these things could've been done 100 times better. Targeting in this game is terrible, whenever I wanted to make a field with my Styraco, I'd need to turn 180 degrees and try again because game would not focus where I wanted it to focus. To forage anything you need to get off your dinosaur, making it tedious rather than fun, a dinosaur with new "Forager" ability would fix this. Focusing dino to tame is as well at times just not working, the flute just doesn't catch the animal.
2 - NPCs are so bland it's unbelievable, all of them are nice to you, give you things to begin your gameplay, you don't feel any connection to them, you don't make FRIENDS with them. Furthermore, they're so annoying with the long tiring conversations, at some point I just skipped thru everything because the game just didn't keep me engaged (eg. shorter talking, more animations, scene views changing etc). Not even to mention that some NPC are just gone from the plaza for DAYS leaving you with an unfinished quest.
3 - The story. My main issue here is that I felt no connection or importance of the story whatsoever. The game throws Lucky at us, says "this is your favourite and most loved dino" and we don't even get to choose her name, colour, or even species. We're on a quest to find Parasaurolophuses because they're so important to us and Lucky, but I stopped caring about it... Almost immediately. I believe they made it like that just to pour their player's money into making plushies and merch rather than develop the actual game.
4 - Before I forget, the cooking pot. To cook anything you have to get out into the wilderness and cook there, instead of being able to BUY a cooking pot for your ranch. There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to buy a pot.
5 - Inventory is way too small. Imagine running out all the way to another region, you gather things along the way, filling up your slots, and you run into 5 other things you need. So what, you gotta go back to your ranch, put everything away, and then run for the things again. Solution? A single storage chest in every region so we don't have to run around like headless chickens because we got no space or forgot a single carrot.
6 - Game about collecting dinos... Has a limit to collecting dinos. I love Baryonyxes, and I want every single one of them, but I can't because theres not enough space, not enough dream stones,
7 - Spawn rate of dino colors is terrible, I'd get a rusty/shamrock Bary like 20 times, but never a different skin, the same goes to other dinos. Solution? Breeding system.
8 - The biggest one... Lack. Of. Multiplayer. The way I would have 300 hours of gameplay with my partner if this game had multiplayer, imagine all the couples buying this game to play it together? The devs or publisher just shut it down to cut on budget and time, just like they did with many things such as polishing the game, making free updates (we got ONE new dino in 1 year span, I am dying lol), not adding more useful abilities to dinos, developing more in depth NPC relationships (where is my romance option?), not adding MORE NPCs, making the tutorial and unlocking small dino helpers/ariacotta canyon (I still don't know how to unlock these two and I'm 50hrs into the game lol),
9 - Paywall event in a DLC with little to no content, and in today's times, a paywalled DLC with new gameplay is just a slap in the face to the community, especially when we got NO free updates the whole year. Just a single crocodile.
10 - Some animations. Why isn't there a mount/dismount animation? Or why is my runner dinosaur sprinting in a 300% sped up animation rather than just running like a normal animal would? There could be much more animations during cutscenes, but there's not, welp.
11 - If "Paleo Pines 2" is happening the Dev's attention will shift to that game, leaving Paleo Pines dead for good. No more free updates, no more ANY updates, just slightly 1 year after release, that is WAY too soon. The developers should be focused on base product, on fixing it, polishing, adding new content that players paid for, to further extend it with new attractive features like multiplayer, so that new people will be interested in it. They should not run to a new game and ask for more money, not only is it greedy and disrespectful to their community, but also because this exact same situation will repeat. Game development is not easy, and people working in that genre should know very well how to use their resources, if they won't, they'll end up making posts on reddit, instagram, steam and everywhere asking for "financial support". The merch and plushies made tons of money, over thousands being sold, an800% and 500% of them being funded, each plush costing 30$. They have no idea how to leverage their resources.
I'd like to reccomend you their post here on Steam "Paleo Pines Needs Your Help", there's lots of comments making good points on why making a new game is wrong and that they should focus on THIS game.
I would love to support this game, but there is no guarantee that If I support it all these issues won't repeat, and right now it seems like there's a big chance for repeatance. Both the developers and publishers of Paleo Pines chose the wrong steps, instead of focusing on their game.
Shame we won't get new updates from marketable plushies.