When it comes to talking up my favorite games, I try as often as possible to not demean another adjacent title as a way to drive home that argument because it’s the most menial of punch-downs possible. Even if I may feel that way in some cases. Just because World of Warcraft has never really been my jam doesn’t mean that shitting on it makes Final Fantasy XIV look better. Even so, it’s hard not to do that when it comes to Palworld versus Pokemon because, for all intents and purposes that matter, Nintendo looks to have wholly lost its legal fight against Pocketpair. But that’s not what I aim to do with this post. Instead, I want to try to argue what Pokemon and the folks leading its development should learn from this defeat. Even as that defeat makes me smile. Read more: The Palworld Lesson To be clear, this isn’t really about what Nintendo did wrong in its trademark fight in Japan against Pocketpair. I’m hardly intelligent enough to react to that effectively. What I instead hope to point out is how a Pokemon game can really learn how to absolutely blow apart Palworld. And that’s through giving the developers time. I’m not going to suggest that Palworld is a flawless game — no game is, let alone this one. But even so, the devs for it were given lots of time, grace, and space to make sure that the gameplay beats and overall look and feel stuck the landing. That effort absolutely shows in all of the unique animations, or the distinct looks of the titular Pals, or the fun beats of its blend of open world creature capturing and survivalbox base management. There is a very clear vision. By comparison, at least from my second-hand experience, the Pokemon games haven’t really felt that interesting to me. It’s always been safe and routine and same-y. It’s just another JRPG shell of itself. And that’s not necessarily an awful thing, but the time in-between each of the mainline games has always felt far too narrow, or at least tight enough that the devs are not being able to try something truly new. Now I should point out that regurgitated JRPG titles are not inherently a bad thing. Hell, I’m an old Final Fantasy series diehard and a lot of those titles didn’t have a lot of variance gameplay-wise. But then I also think back to Square’s games that were spaced out from those like Chrono Trigger or Secret of Mana — titles that really did try wholly new things — and stuck the landing super hard. To that point, even if Nintendo didn’t try something new, I still would argue that granting the devs more time to refine the same old gameplay would still yield dividends. The games would look cleaner. The creatures would carry more life. The animations would be crisper. The battle system would feel more drum-tight and finessed. The new monsters would really shine beyond just being new. And it’s not as if the Pokemon games aren’t capable of doing unique things. The existence of Pokken Tournament, Pokemon Snap, and hell even Pokemon A-Z to a degree illustrate as much. I’ll point out that the games that aren’t part of the primary series have always been my favorites, but that’s because they try so many new and wild swings with the universe. Pokemon is a money-making monster that is peerless, but it also has gotten far too comfortable and safe for its own good, a perfect illustration of the worries of homogenization and fueling franchise IPs instead of trying new things that’s weaving through the games industry. Pocketpair has not only shown that trying new stuff works, but granting the people creating the game time and space to make that happen will result in an excellent, fully realized, and fantastic game. If you build it, the money will come. I promise. If nothing else is gleaned from this whole legal scuffle, I truly hope that this lesson sticks. Let Game Freak have the time it needs to hit new quality strides, try new things, or just polish the stuff that’s known to work to an absolute mirror finish. Who knows? Maybe if you do that, Pokemon fans will have a reason to talk smack about Palworld.