Game: Palworld Developer: Pocketpair Genre: Role-Playing Game Releases: 2026 (Windows) Stalk’s Rating: 8/10 “Pokemon” is a household name these days, with a long series of games and so much merchandise that any number that come up in sales figures can only be described as “breathtaking”. Now, as is so often the case with successful franchises, you have a number of copycats trying to get a piece of the pie; and the pie of collecting and battling with little critters seems especially tasty, which is why there are tons of “Pokemon” clones on the market. However, just like with “Doom” clones back in the day, it took a while for anything to seriously threaten the market share by being better. Remember “Temtem”, the pretender to the “Pokemon” throne? Pretty much dead and gone; and for good reason because that game mostly sucked, if we are entirely honest. But like I said, while it might take a while for something to come around that not only apes the original but improves on it, eventually there is something that can catch up; and in terms of “Pokemon” and the monster collection superiority, there is “Palworld” to challenge the established order. With currently over 200 hours of playtime, I feel like I have a solid grasp of what “Palworld” can deliver, even without constantly bringing up “Pokemon” for comparison. Now, there will be some Nintendo-related banter, but for my opinion on a cool take of open-world monster catching, feel free to continue with the paragraphs below. Some comparison between “Palworld” and “Pokemon” border on the ridiculous; but there are designs which certainly have a “copied homework” feel to them. “Palworld’s” early builds certainly took “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” to heart, since it does not feel wrong to state that the game borrows heavily from the original. Earlier games from developer Pocketpair include “Overdungeon”, which borrows gameplay elements from “Slay the Spire” and “Clash Royale”, while “Craftopia” takes inspiration from “Minecraft” and “ARK: Survival Evolved”. So, the developer certainly has a history of looking at what works and taking their own spin at it. In terms of “Palworld”, the main idea of having a world populated with so-called “pals”, which can be battled and caught using spheres and then summoned to your side to fight for you is definitely screaming “Pokemon”, with the biggest difference being the introduction of melee weapons and firearms which resulted in people on the internet giving the game the moniker “Pokemon with guns”. There were other “Pokemon” clones before “Palworld”, and while Nintendo is certainly non-compromising with their IPs not all of those games got a legal response. Well, surprisingly enough “Palworld” did evoke such a reaction. Whether “Palworld” did hit the window of opportunity given by the middling releases of “Pokemon Scarlet and Violet”, Nintendo dreading the concept of a “Pokemon”-like being available on Sony consoles, or the company actually being threatened by “another company “Pocketpair” using their intellectual property with some success, the hammer went down and Nintendo activated their legal team to halt the upstart. Apparently, some of the game mechanics that were used in “Pokemon: Arceus” were strikingly similar to what “Palworld” offered, and Nintendo has patents on these game mechanics which was the very bullet they loaded their gun with. The settlement was for much less money than you would think would matter to Nintendo, with speculation being that they tried to force some sort of end result in which “Palworld” was stopped from being developed or sold, or at the very least getting them to pay royalties for using those game mechanics. History shows that Nintendo failed to achieve anything noteworthy with this lawsuit, with Pocketpair simply changing the game mechanics in question (for example, pals cannot be used for gliding anymore, while the “summoning” animation just makes the pal appear rather than having the player character fling the sphere forward to release it); but what this definitely did is giving “Palworld” tons of additional exposure and publicity. And all that might have backfired more than Nintendo first anticipated. A new character, an unknown world. But not every game that lands a spot in the news is bound to succeed; or is even worth playing, to be entirely honest. So, to slowly get away from constantly bringing up Nintendo and “Pokemon”, what exactly does “Palworld” bring to the table that is new and fresh? Well, instead of being a ten-year old that is finally ready to begin their journey with their own critter as their companion, you are some nobody waking up in nothing but in a loincloth on some strange island. “Palworld” is first and foremost an open-world game, so nothing really forces you to do anything in particular. Sure, you are better off activating fast-travel points, you should probably catch a pal or two, and there are tutorial quests in the upper right corner of the screen teaching you the ropes, but the ultimate goal to strive for is for you to find. Unsurprisingly, the pals that give the game its name can be found everywhere and come in all sorts of varieties. Pals behave like animals would in their territories, with some pals being indifferent to you while others will flee or even attack you. They come with elements like water or fire, and will normally roam in regions that suit them, with Ice-type pals being found in the snowy mountain area, while Fire-types might spawn near an active volcano. The first thing that probably needs to be said about “Palworld” is that it is a bit more mature in theme. When “Pokemon Sword and Shield” introduced the ability to make curry for you and your critters, people understandably asked where the meat would come from if all the Pokemon were friends and not fodder. Well, in “Palworld” you do not need to ask such questions, because pals very much die when they are killed; at least in most circumstances. Sure, to keep your teammates from permanently dying they just go on a knockdown timer, and in order to keep players from going on a genocide against the pal population they also drop important organs and meat when caught, but death is very much present and not sugar-coated. A wild pal that goes to zero health is very much dead, helped by the fact that you probably used a machine gun or a grenade launcher to cause it into such a state. And there is a butcher table available for the very purpose of making the most out of pals that you don’t really need anymore; with a pixelated slaughter animation to shield you from the gruesome business of dissecting a Lamball. Early adventures with my trusty fluffball Celeste. This is, however, just a small change from the established creature collecting formula of this type of game. The thing that really serves “Palworld” well is the massive open world that invites exploration; and it constantly rewards you for expanding your horizons. Not only do you meet new pals, but you also come across helpful items, with some of the better spheres just lying around in the later areas and therefore giving you ways to catch things without even the need of starting your factory again. You can find chests and salvage piles, which on top of giving some good loot also increase your experience, while finding fast travel points and new sections of the map will also result in higher level gain and more technology points, the latter being needed to unlock blueprints on your skill tree. The start of the game is really cool and reminds me of that time when I first played “Minecraft”, starting with nothing and having to familiarize myself with the controls while avoiding the many dangers lurking everywhere. True, in “Palworld” you will not be no-scoped by a skeleton sitting under a tree, but you still need to understand certain pal behaviors and outside factors like temperatures to survive. The first thing to do normally is build some sort of a base, as having a foothold in this alien world has many advantages. You can place pals in your base to help building, crafting, and basically doing whatever else there is to do in order to progress in the game. At the start, you will have a workbench and just hammer some equipment out of wood and stone, but things get more complicated quickly; and pals are often the solution for your problems. At some point, your base will have to advance to machine usage to function, which need electricity; but that is something that an Electric-type pal can provide. Fridges allow you to store food for longer since they keep it from spoiling, but only if there is an Ice-type pal giving it the necessary temperature control. And there are many more tasks for pals to do in your base, like transporting things, watering plants, harvesting crops, mixing medicine, helping with anything that needs to be crafted, to even physical labor like woodcutting and mining. This is where “Palworld” is pretty unique, since you not only give your caught critters a purpose aside from battling, but they can actually turn out to be more proficient in base work than some of the crazy legendaries that “Palworld” has to offer. My Chillet being utterly bored doing a rather chilly job. Setting up a base also gives you a convenient fast travel point where you can simply offload all the stuff you find while exploring, which is what I did for most of my time in the game. There is interesting stuff to see around every corner, whether it is a new pal, some merchant, an alpha pal boss fight, or some stronghold of an enemy faction. Everything feeds into the gameplay loop of gaining levels to unlock more tech to give you the tools to explore new areas to repeat the cycle. And your pals are with you for the entire journey, since they can do more than just battle. Each pal has their own unique ability, which further diversifies what teams to use. Pals can be used as mounts, for example, with the type of pal determining whether it travels over land, is capable of swimming, or takes to the air; and also how fast and how long it is able to do so. My Chillet “Shui” is only really able to transverse over flat ground since it is unable to fly and has a terrible jump that will hardly get you past a few rocks; but it also comes with an incredibly swim speed for some reason, which allows it to torpedo through the water at break-neck speed. Due to how the areas evolve in the game you will eventually be forced to take something with flying abilities, which is a shame since those pals therefore severely outclass a great number of options; but in fairness there are also various other different abilities to work with that might give some pal your haven’t looked at before a valuable niche. “Palworld” is definitely at its best when you get to explore in my opinion, which brings a set of issues with it. At some point, interest will wane due to the fact that you have explored most of the map, even though this will take a good amount of hours. Now, there are still other options given to the player, like filling the Palpedia with every entry, upgrading your gear, or improving your base; all of which have flaws in my humble opinion. Catching all the pals does not seem particularly interesting to me, especially since your catching power comes down to various factors and requires lots of resources and grinding if you do not want to see that Jetdragon in front of you simply auto-blocking your spheres with a meager 9% catch chance. Upgrading gear means more grinding for less rewards since the materials themselves are not too hard to get but you eventually need to have special workbenches used by pals with at least a certain level of proficiency while going through various steps to even make the necessary parts to build all that; which gave me “Valheim” vibes that I did not necessary appreciate. And base building is, at least in my opinion, fraught with difficulties: You have no landscaping tools, which means that your base cannot align to the ground, will constantly clip through something, resources will spawn in the most unfortunate areas, all while there are tons of building options (like palisades) that really do not help all that much to be honest. The Steam store page of “Palworld” has a screenshot of some Lamballs sitting at stationary machine guns, but the reality of it is that you simply fast travel to your base and defend it yourself when a raid comes by which makes such measures completely unnecessary. Funnily enough, if I had to name one component of “Palworld” that I honestly did not enjoy it would probably be battles; and I mean battles against pretty much anything. In the best case scenario, I am exploring the world, I have a “Ring of Mercy” equipped so that whatever I attack is always left with one HP, and then they get one of my many spheres thrown into their face for yet another entry in the Palpedia and some experience gain for my character. As soon as I have to fight anything that the game sets up as a boss battle, you can be sure that shit hits the fan in one of many ways. The gym battles of “Palworld” are fought in towers that are found all across the map, each with one pal tamer and their companion. The best thing that can happen is that you are over-geared, in which case things are done relatively quickly and you can return to more fun activities. But it is perfectly possible that there is a long health bar with 350,000 HP and a timer at the top of the screen, with you dealing nowhere near the damage you are supposed to do. This is where other games would allow you to adjust by using some strategy, poisoning the enemy and stalling, or using type advantages to gain a massive edge. “Palworld” features those elements, but does not make them impactful enough to actually matter. The best thing you can do is just stack damage with damage improving accessories on your character, and fire with wild abandon. And there are layers to the battle problem. Since the game works in a 3D space, aiming is certainly a thing; and definitely an element that causes problems on a regular basis. Sure, “pal fires attack forward” is an easy enough concept to work with, but some of the later options like “Geyser Rush” are an RNG catastrophe that might look impressive but have a good chance of not hitting things at all due to how the projectiles spawn. And then there are battles like that against the level 70 Panthalus which are honestly where fun goes to die. Sitting on my maxed-out Eidrolon and therefore in a prime position to dodge its bullshit, I have to slowly widdle down the health bar of that ginormous blob and eventually run out of ammunition for my tactical grenade launcher because of my hubris of expecting five-hundred shots to be enough to fell Moby Dick’s cousin. And do not get me started on the summoned raid bosses like against the Bellanoir Libero fight which I have featured in an image further up in the article. There was no strategy or planning involved in fighting that thing, we just build a base, placed everything that was semi-capable of fighting in it, summoned our own pals and then got to work by shooting that thing. As soon as it used its big laser attack, our frame rates died just as much as the pals we placed for combat support, and I can honestly tell you that randomly firing at pictures in a power point presentation is not really my cup of tea. However, despite all my criticism towards certain game elements, I still very much enjoyed playing “Palworld”. It is a breath of fresh air for the genre and shows that creature collectors have a lot of room to grow still. And if I am entirely honest, I do not even care whether it is “Palworld”, “Pokemon”, or something else entirely benefitting from those recent developments, I just like the idea of having a survival-esque game in which I can also use monsters as companions that also feature a multiplayer mode to share the experience with friends. That is probably the final thing to say about “Palworld”: Pocketpair definitely had the right idea of allowing multiple players to exist in the same world and I can only wonder why the “Pokemon” franchise never bothered to make something similar. However, I would love to see more interaction between players being encouraged since the current state of “Palworld” (which was also true for the entire early access phase) really only features guilds and therefore allows you to share living space and resources with one another, without ever really tapping into the potential of having more than one person available. “Palworld” is a nice game if you the idea of open-world “Pokemon”, and is in my opinion worth playing regardless of some aspects needing more polish.