Anime Palworld - basically pro slavery Pokemon game - now available on Early Access

[Talby]

It's pretty much one of those open world survivalcraft multiplayer games like Conan Exiles, but with the monster collecting aspect added. You can use your Notemons to build stuff or gather resources, or bring them along as a combat buddy. Some of them also have special powers e.g. a horsemon can be a mount, a glidermon can be used as a glider etc. There's higher level ones like dragons that can be flying mounts. It seems better for a singleplayer/small coop experience compared to most games of its type just because your Notemons can act as a stand in for other players, or else you'd be doing all the work yourself manually.

 

[Yosharian]

This honestly looks pretty neat but also a bit janky and not visually consistent. I guess it's still in EA? It's kinda cheap though so I might check it out.

 

[Yosharian]

What do you DO in this game ? Is there a main quest / side quest or is it just fuck around with pokemon ?

It's Factorio with slavery I think?

 

[Yosharian]

Despite this being a Eurogamer video it's actually a pretty good summary of what it's like to play the game currently I think

 

[Yosharian]

The slavery:

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

You niggers know you can just buy real animals, right?

They can even be crazy colors to satisfy your inner child.

This chicken is lavender.

These rabbits are bluish black.

This goat is Halloween themed.

This cat has a Hitler mustache.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Censored unfortunately.

How did this faggot become popular? He looks like a homeless child groomer. Every time I see him I'm waiting for the non stop videos of 14 year olds saying he asked them for nudes.

What do you DO in this game ? Is there a main quest / side quest or is it just fuck around with pokemon ?

It's a survival game with quests and pokemon collecting. Once you're set up you can adventure mostly freely but it leans heavy into survival mechanics early on.

 

[Artyoan]

Made it one of my rare impulse buys. I'm impressed so far, just a couple hours in. The base building is significantly weaker than Conan Exiles or Valheim as to how customizable you can make your house (so far). But it makes up for that by having the Pals automate your base. You chop wood with an axe, get stone with a pickaxe, as you would expect. Then not long later you look for Pals that can do it for you through infinite 'nodes' that you build in your base. Some will chop wood, mine stone, water or plant a berry farm, get wool from a ranch. Then others will haul the proceeds to boxes. They do all of this by themselves with some choosing to slack off. You need to feed them but with the farm they feed themselves mostly.

Edit: Any crafting you do will not require items to be in your inventory, just in a box in your base, so not having to care where the Pals stuff the materials is good.

Different Pals can only do specific tasks so you're looking out for Pals that can not only help in the base but might also have good combat capabilities. It has a night/day system and some Pals only show up at night. Seems decently random as to what I'm finding even in the same areas. Lots of little treasures to find with some green items that apparently help in the catching process of Pals.

It is bizarre but for less than $30 I've been pleased. Any more than that and I wouldn't have given it a try.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Since it's early in the thread I'll add that it's from the Craftopia devs

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1307550/Craftopia/

How did this faggot become popular? He looks like a homeless child groomer.

Standard millionaire attire.

 

[Nirvash]

"Pokemon but open world survival" done right can be GTA/WOW tier as the biggest mainstream mmo.

Can they manage it?

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

Buy current year product, wait for next current product.

 

[Forest Dweller]

It's pretty much one of those open world survivalcraft multiplayer games like Conan Exiles, but with the monster collecting aspect added. You can use your Notemons to build stuff or gather resources, or bring them along as a combat buddy. Some of them also have special powers e.g. a horsemon can be a mount, a glidermon can be used as a glider etc. There's higher level ones like dragons that can be flying mounts. It seems better for a singleplayer/small coop experience compared to most games of its type just because your Notemons can act as a stand in for other players, or else you'd be doing all the work yourself manually.

Made it one of my rare impulse buys. I'm impressed so far, just a couple hours in. The base building is significantly weaker than Conan Exiles or Valheim as to how customizable you can make your house (so far). But it makes up for that by having the Pals automate your base. You chop wood with an axe, get stone with a pickaxe, as you would expect. Then not long later you look for Pals that can do it for you through infinite 'nodes' that you build in your base. Some will chop wood, mine stone, water or plant a berry farm, get wool from a ranch. Then others will haul the proceeds to boxes. They do all of this by themselves with some choosing to slack off. You need to feed them but with the farm they feed themselves mostly.

Edit: Any crafting you do will not require items to be in your inventory, just in a box in your base, so not having to care where the Pals stuff the materials is good.

This sounds like it's actually addressing my main criticism of the survival/crafting genre: that those games force you to do repetitive tasks over and over.

 

[Forest Dweller]

 

[Tyranicon]

If that's the route they're taking, I wish it was dark and edgy instead of this cheerful pokemon aesthetic.

But.... money. So I get it.

 

[9ted6]

So it's Pokemon but glitchy, edgy and with guns? Looks like streamer bait to me.

Also looking at the creature designs I'm gonna be surprised if Nintendo doesn't try to sue.

 

[Gerrard]

Honey wake up new streamer bait game just dropped.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

This page has a lot of tweets with the ripoffs

https://www.ign.com/articles/pokmon-fans-are-coming-for-palworld-with-a-vengeance



Don't think Nintendo can do anything, nobody would think this is an actual Pokemon game and the ripoffs aren't identical enough.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

Nitendo sued then already few years ago because of the similarity.

 

[Yosharian]

This page has a lot of tweets with the ripoffs

https://www.ign.com/articles/pokmon-fans-are-coming-for-palworld-with-a-vengeance



Don't think Nintendo can do anything, nobody would think this is an actual Pokemon game and the ripoffs aren't identical enough.

Oh no!

Anyway...

 

[Caim]

This page has a lot of tweets with the ripoffs

https://www.ign.com/articles/pokmon-fans-are-coming-for-palworld-with-a-vengeance



Don't think Nintendo can do anything, nobody would think this is an actual Pokemon game and the ripoffs aren't identical enough.

The modern Pokemon games look less like actual Pokemon games than this does. The most recent ones are somewhat open world but they're trash compared to what I've seen in Palworld.

Sure, there's no way Nintendo will allow even a quarter of the shit you can do in Palworld, but if they did something similar and made a new Mystery Dungeon game or something similar based on the premise they're looking at some major money.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

They'll probably make something like this eventually, Arceus and Violet/Scarlet sold very well. Just exchange the realistic guns for some other type of gear, tone down the survival stuff, and instead of "sweatshop lol" just have the pokemon help with construction as they already do.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Sure, there's no way Nintendo will allow even a quarter of the shit you can do in Palworld, but if they did something similar and made a new Mystery Dungeon game or something similar based on the premise they're looking at some major money.

Palworld is what Pokemon Arceus should have been. It's a wet dream for pokefags who wanted an open world game where you actually battle and USE your monsters. Having a glider mon or a ridable mon make your stuff actually matter. They serve a purpose. While Nintendo as such stupid cunts they won't let you use your own mons and have to shoe horn in ugly as fuck ride mons. I'll admit I'm a fanboy of Palworld at this point but it's because it actually moves the monster collecting genre forward. Real time combat, exploration, mons helping you and having a purpose beyond HP bar draining. Actual fucking depth to the world where what you do matters because your mons are a part of your movement and combat skills.

I genuinely hope Palworld inspires a revolution in not only Pokemon style games but all the monster catching games. Imagine Palworld but Digimon. Trying to figure out how the fuck you deal with Skullgreymon dropping a literal nuke on you. Commandramons going full spec ops on your base while you're out exploring. Palworld is jank as fuck but it's jank that makes an impact. I would compare it to PT in terms of it's "genre revolution". It won't do shit to change the big games (like Pokemon or Resident evil for the horror reference) but it can make AA games and indies have an entire new space to explore and a proven market now it sold 1 mil copies in 24 hours. It's a jank game with a lot of issues, but every genre needs a starting point and "Pokemon survival sim" has huge genre potential IF people think there's a market for it.

 

[Caim]

Sure, there's no way Nintendo will allow even a quarter of the shit you can do in Palworld, but if they did something similar and made a new Mystery Dungeon game or something similar based on the premise they're looking at some major money.

Palworld is what Pokemon Arceus should have been. It's a wet dream for pokefags who wanted an open world game where you actually battle and USE your monsters. Having a glider mon or a ridable mon make your stuff actually matter. They serve a purpose. While Nintendo as such stupid cunts they won't let you use your own mons and have to shoe horn in ugly as fuck ride mons. I'll admit I'm a fanboy of Palworld at this point but it's because it actually moves the monster collecting genre forward. Real time combat, exploration, mons helping you and having a purpose beyond HP bar draining. Actual fucking depth to the world where what you do matters because your mons are a part of your movement and combat skills.

I genuinely hope Palworld inspires a revolution in not only Pokemon style games but all the monster catching games. Imagine Palworld but Digimon. Trying to figure out how the fuck you deal with Skullgreymon dropping a literal nuke on you. Commandramons going full spec ops on your base while you're out exploring. Palworld is jank as fuck but it's jank that makes an impact. I would compare it to PT in terms of it's "genre revolution". It won't do shit to change the big games (like Pokemon or Resident evil for the horror reference) but it can make AA games and indies have an entire new space to explore and a proven market now it sold 1 mil copies in 24 hours. It's a jank game with a lot of issues, but every genre needs a starting point and "Pokemon survival sim" has huge genre potential IF people think there's a market for it.

Maybe something closer to Monster Rancher? There's a much bigger emphasis on raising the monsters there, and you can expand on the ranching thing, then go out and adventure.

Digimon might work, but that series has mostly been about the bond between one person and one Digimon (unless the later series mixed things up), so that might require some tooling. Or if you want to go heavy on the RPG elements over the monster breeding, a fully 3D Geneforge.

 

[Machocruz]

It's third most viewed category on Twitch currently. Streamer bait indeed.

I have not one second of experience with Pokemon, so I wouldn't know the appeal, but I thought I saw some action-adventure stuff in PW, which I'm always interested in. Probably should just emulate BotW though.

 

[Artyoan]

The 'edgy' aspect seems vastly overplayed based on what little I've seen people say of it versus what I'm experiencing in-game. I would have zero issues with an 8 year old playing this after my first few hours. There is nothing mean-spirited I've seen so far. I can now make a butcher knife to cull some of what I catch but I'm not seeing much reason to do that yet. Most of the 'edge' just comes from people making slavery memes and other social BS, not from any aura the game is exuding.

I wouldn't say I'm a fanboy, and I've never played Pokemon or any game like it, but for $30 it's quite entertaining. I did enjoy some survival crafting games so I gave it a try. I've been out at night not only finding different Pals but going out at night is how you see glowing treasure and items in the vast distance, so that is how you find some of the good stuff anyway. Which is neat. I've yet to die but I've come close a handful of times.

It is absolutely early access though. The actual building aspect is not good and a pain to use as things don't snap all that well and lots of angular pieces are missing. When you take damage there is no visual feedback, you just lose the health. Your pals will sometimes be exceedingly lazy in both combat and at work. I think, probably due to a priority system, some Pals will just not do a task that is open to do in favor of a task that is less important to the player. I've got pals that could be making a medicine but instead they just haul things or do whatever else, because they are capable of doing those as well. So ideally I look for more Pals that are specified and good at just the one task I want done. Already finding some of that.

I've got complaints but there is a solid base here and I have no idea why people have an aneurysm when an unknown game vaults to unexpected heights. It has a low price and has some decent ideas. Valheim was the same, I bought it early access, and enjoyed it immensely despite it not being finished. This feels the same so far.