Palworld is an upcoming action survival title for Xbox and Steam. The best way to describe this game is a mixture of Ark: Survival Evolved and Pokemon, and while this may seem like an unholy matrimony of games…it combines perfectly.
Gotta Capture Them All
Palworld, despite drawing a large amount of inspiration from some of the best games on the market, stays unique. When you start the game it’s all manual labor. Find the resources, take the time to craft it. This all starts to change once you catch your first pal. Pals come in many different shapes and sizes, from the simple Lambal you can use as a shield, to the Frostallion which lets you fly upon its back and deal frost damage.
The palspheres you use to catch these wondrous creatures come in different tiers which make it easier to catch these creatures. However, pals will resist your attempts to subdue them and you need to weaken them in order to more easily catch them. Luckily, there are many different tools to capture them…from a baseball bat to a musket, these tools let you weaken a pal enough for them to submit and be caught. Worse case scenario: you can always use your fists.
Pals come with different perks which affect what they’ll be best for. From reducing sanity drain levels to increasing attack – it’s important to get pals that will help with whatever activity to which you’re assigning them. Thankfully, later on you can breed pals in order to get even better pals and specialize for specific perks and stats.
The Industrial Revolution and Its Consequences
Once you have your base built you can assign pals to it. The number depends on the level of your base; when pals are at your base they will perform different tasks based on their attributes. Water types will water crops and run the crusher, and pals with hands will craft and construct any building you’ve put the schematics for down. Overall, this game encourages the player to automate everything. However, in order to even get enough pals at the base you need to complete the base missions. Base missions mostly involve leveling your character in order to be able to craft different base enhancements.
You need to put your base in good locations, otherwise you’ll be making a journey every time you need materials. At least for first base. By the time you can build a second base however, you’ll have access to the farms, where up to three pals can automatically farm the materials and even put them in containers for you. Then, the most important thing becomes space. If you want to be able to make a proper factory you’ll need a lot of space, so big flat areas become the go to. There’s an issue with this as well, however. Your base is vulnerable.
At random times man eating pals or syndicate members will come attack your base. While your pals can fight back, it’s still dangerous as they could be downed. This would make it so that your production grinds to a halt. Without pals you can’t have your precious resources, so make sure to build defenses around your bases so that the nasties can’t beat your pals.
The player needs to make sure to feed your pals and provide them with entertainment and beds. Otherwise your pals will start to go insane and not be the good little workers they normally are. The lower the sanity the less cooperative they are.
They Only Get One Blast Off
The player needs to be careful as they explore for the dastardly Syndicate. The Syndicate forcefully captures pals and attacks anyone who gets close to them with their superior fire power. If you manage to take down the nearby Syndicate, enemies the captured pal is so thankful they willingly come with you. The player needs to be careful to not throw a pal sphere at a Syndicate member, because you can “accidentally” catch them (and that would be slavery).
The player can breed pals in order to get new and unique pals, like Frotallion Noct. The Noct version of this pal changes its bonus to dark damage rather than frost.
Aside from the regular survival game base progression there are other objectives. Scattered around the map are towers at which boss fights await the player. These fights are difficult, but are a great source of experience for the player. Aside from these towers there are raid bosses around the map that are also extremely difficult, but give you very powerful pals.
Beware the Lag
While this game is very good (especially since it’s in early access) it’s got some stuff to fix. The game significantly lags in multiplayer, though this might have been patched out since the publication of this review. The game also has quite the power spike. And since you need to level up to get new crafting recipes you’ll have to farm wild pals fairly often. This can be mitigated if you edit the exp acquisition rate in the advanced settings, but if you play with default settings it’s going to take a long time to get max level.
Equipment has limited durability and you need resources to repair them. However, if you’re using the best equipment available to you you’ll need to go and farm for more materials just to repair your equipment. Ranged weapons also have this issue, but it’s a little better since you can create an absolutely absurd amount of ammunition all at once. This causes a different issue of preventing you from creating items at the workbench. It’s especially bad when you’re early on and your friend makes hundreds of arrows locking you out of your one crafting bench (OWEN).
Palworld is a really good game…ike absurdly good for being early access. As long as they keep up the good work this game actually has a fighting chance for GOTY awards for its full release. In its current state, though, I’d give it a very solid Pal that totally isn’t Latios.
