Palworld

Palworld is the craze of today. Everyone is talking about this new addictive game and what I heard about it made me rather perplex. Some people claim it is a Pokemon game mixed with Breath of the Wild while others say it is a mix of Minecraft and Fortnite with Pokemon. Since the only game I played out of these is Breath of the Wild I could only wonder what the game was about and wanted to know for myself. If I were to compare it to something I'd say it is Ark: Survival Evolved with Pokemon.

The game starts with you waking up seeing several lovely creatures. They can be small and resemble a cat or huge and resemble a dinosaur. You will soon find out, after talking to another human, that you are on Palpagos Islands where Pals, the lovely creatures, live. The game tutorial will then lead you through different aspects of the game. You will learn that your character needs to eat or it will die, you will learn that you can capture these Pals and you will also be tasked with building a base. Gathering materials and crafting items is big part of the game and this can be automated by using the Pals to do the work while keeping their sanity.

Gameplay
One of the main aspects of the game is catching Pals. There are 111 different kinds of them and some of them have more variants than 1 making the total number even higher thus. Catching Pals is done by damaging the Pal, making it easier to catch, and then throwing a Sphere at it. The catch rate can be made higher by using a better Sphere, collecting Effigies or incapacitating the Pal in certain way (poison, knock them out, freeze them). Depending on the catch rate the Pal either escapes or gets caught. Caught Pal either shows in your party if there is a vacant slot or your Palbox accessible from your Base. Catching a Pal gives the player experience points. For the first 10 caught Pals of one kind, the player gets a bonus experience points that are not related to the player's level. After that the experience points are fairly low and depend on both the Pal's and player's level.

If one wants to collect all the Pals in the game, they need to explore the vast islands of Palpagos. There are different biomes - lush forests, snowy mountains, desolate desert - in which different kinds of Pals live. Desert is the home of electric Pals, snowy mountains are home to Ice Pals and fiery Volcano is where Fire Pals thrive. Apart from Pals, a player can find entrances to Dungeons that are suitable for different kind of levels. For example in the beginner areas they are for players of level 13, in the most dangerous areas, level 45 is recommended. In dungeons one can find Pals not living anywhere else and a boss Pal which is an Alpha version of Pal that we can find in the wild. Alpha versions are bigger and stronger versions of the Pals. After clearing a dungeon there is a period during which one cannot enter, but then it is available once again for clearing. Dungeons are good for grinding XP as the enemies will respawn after leaving each room - walking in circles thus gives endless Pals to kill or catch. They also contain treasure chests with fairly rare loot.

Pal drops and treasure chest contents are often materials or schematics that can be used for crafting. In order for one to craft, they need to setup a base and build different kind of machines. With each player level, you can unlock and build different kind of structures that allow you to craft items, produce materials or build a lovely home. At the beginning you will just need to get some wood and stones and special Paldium stone to build your first structure. There's plenty of stones and wood around to be collected but very soon you will need way bigger amounts than those you can collect and you will either have to do some logging and mining yourself or put your Pals to work to automate it. Each Pal is capable of different kind of work. There are Pals good for logging or mining. Then there are those that can cool, water or heat. Others can craft or they can even produce materials themselves - mostly food but it can also be wool, cloth or even gold coins! The more you level up the more advanced technology will be available to you. That includes Spheres for catching Pals - the higher the level of a Pal the better Sphere is needed to catch it. Crafting those requires more refined materials that themselves have to be crafted from even more rare materials. This way a need for more bases arises and those may have a sole purpose - mining. Apart from Spheres one will also need better weapons to deal more damage and armor to stay alive when fighting.

Combat is one of the main aspects of the game as well but is fairly limited. It is a real time 3d action combat that involves both melee and ranged weapons. You can attack and you can dodge and that is pretty much it. There is a roll move that can be used to dodge attacks but that drains a lot of stamina so I mostly just ran or walked away. One Pal, from your party of max 5 Pals, can also join the fight. You can throw a Sphere to the place where you want the Pal to spawn at will by pressing E (and recall it back at any time). Some Pals can be used as a mount. When mounted the player can use three of their abilities at will (they have a cooldown). Certain weapons and Pal abilities can take advantage of Pal's weak points and can deal more damage when a weak point is hit. Pals learn abilities when they level up. They level up when you do any activity, but gain most experience when Pal is being captured or killed. Abilities can also be learned by using an ability fruit that can be found somewhere on Palpagos Island. Apart from learning new abilities Pal's stats - Health, Attack, Defense, Work speed - can be augmented. For that player needs to collect lots of Pal souls. The player's abilities can be augmented by stat points gained (except defense) at each level up or with equipment (armor provides additional defense points). The range of weapons is not that big and some are different in fire power, what makes a weapon better is the time it takes to reload. I spent most of the time running around with a Crossbow as crafting any handgun or shotgun was not worth the damage output and resources. Letting Pal fight for you is often better as they can deal more damage and only resource they spent is food. Since you will mostly fight other Pals you can also pick a Pal of an element being more hurtful to that specific Pal. Fire Pals will make it hard for Grass Pals and Electric Pals won't be happy when they will get hit by Rock Pals. Pals can also be commanded even though the commands are very limited - they can be commanded to not attack, focus on a single enemy or attack aggressively. The last option doesn't make them attack nonhostile pals as one would suspect.

Verdict:
Palworld is a mixture of survival crafting game and monster catching. The game offers a big open world, over 100 different creatures and 50 level technology tree. This alone makes it worth tens of hours of gameplay.