played it occasionally
it's pretty good

So it's a couple of days after release. Sale numbers have just hit 4 million. I've played nearly 30 hours since its release, which is a heavy burn, even for me. I've been enjoying it. Everybody's talking about it. My friends are playing it.

In spite of this, I genuinely don't recommend it. It's nothing to do with the various complaints about the developer having dealt with AI or having abandoned previous titles. It's also not about the derivative nature of the game's aesthetic - it knows what it is, and I see no reason to harshly judge a game for hitting its intended target. It's also not because of the natural early access jank - I have a reasonable amount of confidence that the AI and geometry bugs will be ironed out, and that certain somewhat temperamental systems like base building will get a solid overhaul.

If you're the kind of person who'd be really into this game, you've probably already bought it. This review is one part warning for the latecomers, one part critical analysis, and one part prediction of the future. Also, for the duration of this review, I will be referring to the creatures as Pokemon, because I have little to no tolerance for pretense.

I believe Palworld will be a flash in the pan. A blinding flash, to be sure. It's sold 4 million copies so far, and I won't be surprised if it hits 5. I genuinely believe it'll start a mass rush of open world monster taming games in the industry in the same way Minecraft put destructible terrain on the menu and Stardew Valley seemed to get everybody into farming. But I don't think it'll have any real staying power in and of itself.

Palworld is, fundamentally, an open world survival crafting game similar to Ark or Rust. You're in a world, you punch some trees to get wood for a workbench, you build a little outpost and start picking away at a tech tree. It's also got a bit of that Breath of the Wild style climbing and gliding going on. The main gimmick is that there are Pokemon. And, honestly, that much is a really fun and cool. There's a very definitive moment just after you first craft a bow where you first nail a Pokemon to the floor before belting it in the face with a Pokeball. That, right there, is the immediately satisfying interaction that you never knew you wanted. It's quick, it's snappy, it feels good. That's basically the "hook" - Pokemon dropped into a wilderness survival game, and it plays out exactly as you'd expect.

In game, your Pokemon serve three main purposes. The first is what you'd expect from a game like this - they're combat pets. They operate fairly autonomously with little room for direct control. They're more akin to an MMO pet than an actual Pokemon. The second is as a sort of crafting automation tool - You have various crafting stations, and you can release Pokemon into your base to have them craft items or harvest resources and whatnot. They require some minor babysitting, but they generally just do work where available. Their third and final purpose is as mobility tools - ground mounts, flying mounts, aquatic mounts, and also an automatic glider replacement.

The problem with these kinds of games, and Palworld in particular, is the inevitable loss of momentum. There's a moment at which the game stops surprising you, and Palworld hits that point remarkably quickly. The Pokemon themselves perfectly capture the essence of the real thing, which is to say they haven't been interesting since I was a teenager. The world itself does not feel especially alive. An idle glance over the tech tree just after the early game will eliminate most of your curiosity. The combat is remarkably shallow. Guns are cool, but shooting Bootleg Xerneas in the face while dodge-rolling fireballs is only so compelling after the first couple of instances. The level grind will also start getting pretty tedious past a certain point. If you're playing with friends, these issues won't be felt quite as harshly, but I'm afraid Pocket Pair don't get to take credit for my friend's insightful philosophical musings regarding the nature of goats.

I don't think it'll be long before other people start noticing these issues, and I don't think these are problems that will be fixed in any meaningful way. When it comes to early access, there are two kinds of issues that can be resolved: Lack of content, and lack of stability. But the fundamental underlying structure being poor? That's not something you can really fix after sales begin.

I don't regret buying the game, I don't regret playing it, and I'll probably get a bit more fun out of it yet. I'll probably even pick it back up again later after some updates hit. But if it's a couple of months after release, things have gotten quiet, and you're reading this because the initial hype wave didn't ensnare you and you're wondering if it's worth the purchase? Honestly, you could probably give it a pass and not miss out on anything remarkable.

I look forward to seeing if time will make a fool out of me.