Palworld Review | The Open-World Pokémon Survival Game Nintendo Never Made
A 100-hour deep dive into Palworld's 1.0 release, its addictive pal-labor loop, its rough edges, and the ongoing lawsuit hanging over Pocketpair.
REVIEWS
Spencer K
7/24/20265 min read
On January 19, 2024, the gaming world was blessed with an early access edition of Palworld. Then almost 30 months later, our excitement was reignited with the official 1.0 release. While hundreds of thousands of players are flocking back to the game in excitement, it's not all sunshine and rainbows for Palworld's developer, Pocketpair.
My Credentials
Before I dive into that, I have to disclaim my progress, as I always do in my game reviews. (I hate reviewers who barely beat the tutorial before posting.) I, along with multiple friends, am one of those players flocking back to the game in excitement. We each have our own solo worlds, plus a shared server. Since we all have full-time jobs, finding time to play together is a challenge, so our server runs with lightly boosted rates. That aside, I've sunk over 100 hours into Palworld, accumulated across both early access and now the 1.0 release. As of writing this, I have 20 of 75 achievements, for 1,100 of 2,820 gamerscore. I originally started playing this game through Xbox Game Pass but fell in love with it and bought it outright digitally.
Lemme tell ya, it's so freaking addicting.
With all of that out of the way, let's get into what makes this game such a success: Pokémon-inspired open-world survival, with guns. Well, there are plenty of other reasons, but let's call it how it is and admit this is the biggest draw. Millions of gamers have wanted an open-world Pokémon survival game for well over a decade, but Nintendo hasn't even considered it, so Pocketpair filled the void. There's plenty of conversation and drama surrounding just how similar Palworld is to Pokémon, and we'll get into that. But nonetheless, Pocketpair filled the void with an open-world survival game inspired by Pokémon, and in my opinion, did so better than Nintendo ever could have.
The main reason I believe that is because Palworld has guns, grenades, and other various weapons. Nintendo would never allow that in a Pokémon game; they barely allow weapons in their other beloved franchises. Genuinely, think about how many Nintendo games feature realistic-looking weapons. Even games like Metroid keep their weapons cartoonish by comparison. We would never get a pal resembling an existing Pokémon armed with an AK-47 if Nintendo had developed this game instead. I also don't think there would be player-vs-pal or player-vs-human combat at all; if Nintendo made an open-world survival game, I imagine it would be pal-vs-pal only, just like their mainline Pokémon games. You would never be allowed to capture a human in a Pokéball and force them to mine for you. Those reasons alone are enough for me to be grateful Pocketpair jumped first.
Really, any company that released a Pokémon-inspired open-world survival game before Nintendo was bound to draw a lot of attention from players initially. But the real challenge is releasing a game good enough to build on and grow its player base over several years. In my opinion, Pocketpair did just that. For a developer considered indie or AA (depending on who you ask), they released a massive game with a huge open world, a vast array of pals, weapons, tools, materials, and building options, all while keeping the game fun and addicting. Even in the early access days, I believe there was enough content to rival AAA open-world survival releases.
There's really so much to talk about when it comes to base building, exploration, and combat too. It's hard to put into words just how well done this game is, in my opinion.
The most tedious part of any open-world survival game is grinding for hours, or even days, to get enough material to upgrade your base and equipment. But with the power of unpaid pal labor, you can progress quite quickly. It's kind of a messed-up concept, but it's too addicting to look away from.
My favorite part of the 1.0 update is the new requirement for the pal capture bonus. Prior to 1.0, players were required to capture 12 of the same type of pal to receive bonus experience, which was extremely grindy and time-consuming, especially considering there were 215 pals before the update and almost 300 after. The new requirement is just five per pal, which is far more reasonable.
The Legal Mumbo Jumbo
As I mentioned earlier, not everything about Palworld is perfect. Pocketpair still faces a lawsuit from Nintendo, and the player base won't have peace of mind until that's settled. There have been multiple game mechanic changes since release to help combat the stolen-patent claims made by Nintendo, along with recent updates to the designs of several pals that were extremely similar to Pokémon. While these changes are a good show of faith, another complaint I've had is just how similar some pals were to Pokémon to begin with. That obviously fuels Nintendo's claims in the original lawsuit and, in my opinion, shows a certain laziness on Pocketpair's part. There's been a lot of conversation about whether pals were stolen or simply inspired by Pokémon, and truthfully, I couldn't tell you. When you see some of these Pokémon side by side with certain pals in Palworld, it's really hard to defend Pocketpair. While it's a bad look, I'm willing to let it slide, since they've since updated the designs and are filling a highly demanded genre that Nintendo has blatantly ignored.
Palworld runs fairly well on console but still has plenty of glitches that can make harder difficulties and settings frustrating. That's to be expected given the huge scale of the game and the size of its indie/AA developer. One feature they added is an unstuck option, which you can use if your character gets stuck under the map, as mine did on several occasions. Unfortunately, there's no fix yet for when a wild pal you're fighting glitches under the map and becomes unobtainable. I'm something of a bad-luck charm with glitches, so of course I've experienced that too.
I don't think I'd be alone in saying that more missions and side missions would be a net positive. There are already some missions and side missions, but they're not especially extensive or interesting. I don't want to call that an outright negative, since the primary focus of the game is pal capturing and base building. Maybe there's room to add activities or missions tied to specific pals, something that would encourage players to diversify their default party instead of leveling up the same few favorites. I'm guilty of that myself. I primarily use the same three pals when adventuring. That's more of a personal recommendation than a critique.
Most of my other gripes with the game can be addressed in the world settings menu, such as the experience rate. Levels 0 to 30 felt a little too easy to climb through, while levels 50 to 80 were just annoying, in my opinion. Overall, the late-game grind becomes extremely time-consuming if you stick with default settings and modifiers. Fortunately, Palworld offers a ton of custom settings covering the majority of its features, so it can fit just about anyone's preference.
A Must-Play If You Enjoy Survival Games
If you love open-world survival games and haven't given Palworld a chance yet, I think you're missing out. Pocketpair delivered a quality game in a genre we never thought we'd see in our lifetime, thanks to Nintendo's stubbornness. Most of the game's issues can be addressed through custom world settings, and I think there's still plenty of room for it to grow and expand. Even though several pals seem like blatant Pokémon lookalikes, they're still cute and helpful enough to keep me hooked. Now that the 1.0 release is here with new content, Palworld is in a better spot than ever, whether you're a new player or coming back for more.
