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0 Palworld an amazing mix of Pokémon, ARK, Minecraft and Rust. Developed and published by PocketPair and is available on the Xbox consoles and Steam. Palworld has been met with a huge welcome from the community so far with over 5 Million New players in the first 3 days after launch!
Palworld is a great game but with most new games there are always the bugs and server issues on online multiplayer. Not to mention the controversies regarding some of the art of the game some people speculating that it is partially from Pokémon. However, I have not seen any facts regarding this issue besides people speculating.
Palworld AKA Pokémon with guns
I was very excited to jump into this game as a lot of the new players were as well. please leave a comment below what part of the game were you most excited for to try. For me it was the open world element of the game and the vast new vistas that you can explore.
Gameplay
The game can be played alone in a single player mode or with friends via online co-op. It is an open world survival type game with a lot of possibilities to grow and expand.
Regarding the story of the game. The game begins with a short cut scene with stranded on a beach holding a tablet with says ” The towers are the key…..” and ” The tree holds the truth” Which instantly gave me an ARK vibe. As you explore you will see weird towers in the distance which can be challenged. As for the tree…. Well you’ll have to play the game and find out yourself!
The game has a very nice adventure/explorer feel to it and is very easy to learn. There are still quite a few bugs. I think my biggest issue for far has been some parts of the building mechanic of the game. Where sometime it will let you place a foundation for example in a place but then when you try it in a different place with the exact same or similar parameters it doesn’t allow it. For example I tried to place a foundation piece on a cliff and since it was half in to the cliff side it allowed me to place it there. But when I tried to do the same again it told me that the foundation is not touching the ground and that it can not be placed there. Since recently some other bugs I have come across have been things like this.
The issues with Palworld at the moment
- frame rate drops at game start or when going back to a base.
- Your pals getting stuck in water, on top of rocks or trees.
- Pals not doing the assigned work given to them and instead walking off on their own and doing something completely different.
- When you fast travel into your base all pals are condensed to one spot or just not spawn in forcing you to open the machine they are in and un-spawn and re-spawn them.
- some attack of enemies being stopped by rocks, tree or other things around, while other attacks just faze right through them.
Is Palworld worth it?
At the moment, the game is fun to play and explore. There seems to be a lot of potential to it and I can see it as something I will be playing a lot of as long as they keep working on fixing the bugs mentioned above. So all in all for me Palworld is a fun experience as long as you don’t find your self glitching through the world.
Graphics & Audio
I am currently playing the game full screen on 1920 by 1080 with an RGX 1050 and the game still runs amazingly well with great graphics.
With this format it is very nice to play and very easy to as well with close to no framerate drops over time. There can be a few graphics glitches here and there for example if you try to catch a Pal (the general term for the creatures in this world) near a roof of a cave. Sometimes they can glitch into or even through the ceiling. But I have only ever experienced glitched and issues like this while playing on multiplayer and never on single player mode.
The textures on the game are very good and crisp. However when rendering in things from a long distance there can be some issues with the AI of enemies or creatures at times.
The game has great music and sound design with a very nice and venturesome theme/intro music. Even better are the effects down to the flapping of wings in the wind and the sound of a torch burning. But also here can be sometimes some issues. I have not experienced this yet in single player. But when I was playing online with friends I have had times when the boss music would get stuck and keep playing despite me having beat the boss 5 minutes prior, or after I landed with my flying mount the sound of it’s wings flapping continued on for the rest of my time playing and I had to restart the game in order to get rid of it.
Longevity
Currently there is no PVP mode on the game, but even despite that since I bought the game about 3 days ago I have spent over 27 hours playing it on Steam. The most recent news I have seen is that they are working on bug fixes and implementing a PVP mode in the future.
Final Thoughts on Palworld
In summary, I would say it’s definitely not a game for everyone. Yes, it is a lot of fun and even more fun when you can play with friends. But it does include a lot of grinding (doing things over and over again to get resources/materials) to progress. Of course, you can also just use your Pals who you have captured to do all the work for you and make your life easier, but with some of the minor bugs, it can be a handful to try to get things done with 10 to 12 creatures of varying sizes running around you trying to do 7 different tasks at once.
The game in general gave some very pleasant nostalgic vibes and a feeling of adventure. To be able to explore a whole new world and to bath in all of its glories. With quite a few times running for your life with 4 giant monsters chasing you and mad men shooting you with guns.
So far every day when I get home from work I jump on to play a few more hours and I can not get enough of it. Always discovering new creatures, mechanics and fun things to do.
As a new writer for Thumb Culture and someone who has grown up on open-world adventure games, I can’t help but love this game. So for me, I would give this game a Silver award. I want to give it a platinum, but since there are still so many bugs in the multiplayer until those are ironed out I do not feel comfortable giving it a platinum. I would say if you want a perfect or at least better and more optimized game, wait a little longer until most bugs are fixed and buy the game then and stay up to date with this preview as I will be updating it and writing more about it the more it changes and evolves.
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