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I'll be honest, I decided to play this game purely for the memes. As a fan of Pokemon, when I caught wind of this new monster catching game where you can hand a "Pal" a sub-machine gun, I knew I had to check it out.
I've only owned Palworld for three days I've already almost played 10 hours which is a lot for me since I barely use my laptop for gaming. This game is still in early access but there's still a lot the game has to offer which is a given when it comes to these types of survival games.
Palworld is a survival game similar to Ark: Survival Evolved, an open world game like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and a monster-catching game taking fairly heavy inspiration from Pokemon. You wake up on a desolate island and you gather materials to survive. The hook this time around is that you can do it with your Pals, this games collectible monsters. Its this mechanic that gets fleshed out throughout the game loop that really attaches me to it.
Survival base builder games aren't my favorite types of games, my closest experiences to compare to it would be something as basic as Minecraft and Terraria. The gameplay loop of gathering and building grows stale quick for me. This game streamlines the experience with how Pals you capture do those tedious tasks for you. Instead of me planting seeds, then watering, then harvesting, I can just have an elite group of Pals farm for me.
This game has numerous environments to experience: the usual old green forests, snowy mountain peaks, abandoned ruins, and much more. This all sounds fairly boring, but it's what's in the world that really makes it feel worth exploring. Climbing up mountain peaks often reward you with some eggs that can net you some rare late game Pals. In ruins, you can find resources to improve your Pal catching. Not to mention new Pals to find in each biome.
Then obviously, there is the monster catching aspect. This game reminds me of Pokemon Legends: Arceus when it comes to this. In Arceus, you can either capture Mons in the field phase or in the traditional battle phase. In Palworld, it doesn't have turn-based gameplay but it feels like the field gameplay has been more throughly explored compared to Pokemon Legends: Arceus. If you want to get a Pal you could just throw a sphere at them, or you can square up and beat'em to a pulp weakening them for capture. This brutality provides the game with an immersion unlike the entire Pokemon series.
To round out this review, I implore you to give this game an honest try. Certainly the game has questionably unique designs, but looking past that grey area, this game shows a lot of promise. The way that Pocketpair implemented the Pals into almost every aspect of the game: from traversal, to battles, and even resource gathering, I can't help but be charmed by a few of Pals. My three favorite Pals are Daedream, Chillet, and Celaray. I give Palworld a solid 8 out of 10. They made a better open world Pokemon game than Pokemon. (I still do like Pokemon more though)