I don’t have a direct link to this Palworld Steam review but placed the text of it it at the end of this post and was wonderin what you think about it (under a spoiler tag to condense it):Day 19
This is a day, I have waited three years for. Palworld has finally released, and now that it's in early access, I'm happy to say it delivered. It is good, like, stupidly good. In just 24 hours it not only sold over 2 million copies...
...but it has also become the top 10 most played game on Steam of all time, beating the records of GTA5, Monster Hunter World, Destiny 2, Call of Duty Warzone, and Apex Legends. That is not an easy bar to cross.
And best of all, it's causing the Pokemon fanatics to cope, seethe, and mald hard.
Before I get to the game highlight, some context is in order:
In 2019 was the "hype season" of Pokemon Sword and Shield, the first major mainline Pokemon games on a home console, and not just any home console, the smash hit Nintendo Switch. There was a lot of hype for this as this was our big dream, the first Pokemon mainline RPG on a home console.
And then E3 happened
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And then Gamefreak announced going forward, the future Pokemon games would no longer have every Pokemon ever in them, a thing that used to be the series' stable since generation 3 on the Game Boy Advance. The discourse this caused, was enormous. It was the most toxic time to be a Nintendo fan ever. What made it worse was any legitimate criticism was getting buried by Pokemon fanboys, and a lot of them would take it a step further and draw targeted harassment on any critics...including me
And for what? A bastardized franchise that has become a joke by modern standards that has LESS content than the games that released on the Game Boys and DS, but for $20 more
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And despite the game being an objective dumpster fire...it still sold 26 million copies. Those same fanboys then used the sales numbers as even more ammo to silence criticism. Sword and Shield's release essentially sealed the franchise's fate as a sales juggernaut that will never improve because it will still sell boatloads no matter how bad it is, as evident from how Scarlet and Violet runs like complete ass.
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But then something happened in 2021. A small indie team in Japan called PocketPair announced a new game called Palworld. From the trailer, it was Pokemon, but with guns? AND SLAVE LABOR?! WHAT IS THIS?! Pokemon fanatics were raging, seeing the mere idea of this game with Pokemon lookalikes and violence, absolutely absurd! That trailer gave many hope of an alternative to Pokemon at last. Many games have tried to be that "Pokemon killer" like TemTem or Cassette Beasts, and they all failed one way or another, so there wasn't a lot of hope for Palworld
But then...every now and again, a miracle happens. Palworld launched in early access on Steam and Xbox Series X/S through the Xbox Game Preview program and Xbox Game Pass. And what was originally thought to be a shameless Pokemon clones but with guns and edgy humor, turned out to be actually really good.
So to see the shoe on the other foot and those same Pokemon fanatics who harassed me four years ago now malding over Palworld's overnight success, it's honestly just desserts.
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Now, what makes Palworld so great that it's breaking records? Well I'll tell you
Palworld
Save 10% on Palworld on Steam
Fight, farm, build and work alongside mysterious creatures called "Pals" in this completely new multiplayer, open world survival and crafting game!store.steampowered.com
To describe Palworld briefly, it's an amalgamation of Pokemon Legends Arceus and Ark Survival Evolved. You are dropped in the mysterious Palworld with nothing, told only to find and go to the towers. From here, you must now explore, capture, hunt, and build. First you get some wood and stone to make some basic tools to be able to cut some trees and mine some stone to get some Palium, a mysterious resource used to create Pal Spheres. These are how you capture Pals. Just like in Pokemon you gotta weaken the Pal to make it easier to catch, but of course you don't start with any Pals unlike in Pokemon. So how are you supposed to weaken a Pal?
Oh that's easy. Just beat the crap out of it
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Once it's weak enough throw a Pal Sphere. Just be careful not to beat it so hard that you kill the Pal. But if you do accidently kill a Pal, don't sweat it, there's plenty more. That dead Pal becomes food for yourself and other Pals
So aside from having a party of Pals for fighting, Pals are primarily used for camp labor. And this is where Palworld really shines. Not from the fact you have guns and can kill and do other inhumane acts that will probably get me tried in the Hague, but the Pals themselves. A big problem of survival crafting games has always been the tedium of them. You have to go chop down trees to get more wood, mine more, maintain a farm, maintain your bases, and of course craft all your gear constantly. In Palworld, that tedium is gone as the Pals can do all the boring work for you, leaving you to focus more on the fun side of survival crafting games: exploring and committing war crimes! Remember: War crimes rhyme with fun times
Here's an example from my first two hours of playtime. I was crafting a dozen Pal Spheres to go out hunting forslaves, I mean employees 😉 and crafting a Pal Sphere takes 15 seconds each. As I was crafting though, one of my Pals ran over to my crafting table and helped me craft these, greatly cutting back on the crafting time. The dozen Pal Spheres were finished in less than 30 seconds as a result. After I finished that, the two Pals I had so far began going to nearby rocks and destroying them to harvest stone and Palium, and then carried said resources to some chests I made and automatically put them in and organized them
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The labor in a survival crafting game is greatly reduced, and seeing all your Pals doing all the heavy lifting in an organized matter is a level of euphoria that only the strongest, most refined crack cocaine can emulate. Sound familiar? Because that's the same kind of automation satisfation and addiction that got Factorio it's overwhelming success and infamy.
And of course you gotta take care of your Pals, having food management for them and making sure they get rest so they don't work themselves to death...or not. I mean if you want a sweatshop of Pals that work themselves to death, you can. PocketPair just made a big open world filled with human factions, Pals, and various weapons and just lets you do whatever you want with it, no matter how horrible and inhumane that may be
You can capture humans too...
Even in it's early access state, the game is absolutely loaded and worth a buy right now. I'm also pleased to say it works perfectly through GPTK as Andrew Tsai tested so Mac users rejoice! You too can become a Palworld war criminal!
I look forward to whatever future updates come of Palworld
Post in thread 'What Game You Play'n?'
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/what-game-you-playn.1693452/post-32893635
