Of course not, because they didn't do anything wrong. Just a bunch of pissed off pokemon fanboys pissed that Palworld was way better at the pokemon concept than Pokemon itself was.
I'm glad there are so many Pokemon, and that Pokemon were not unique enough for the most part to be trademarked, but if you think they didn't lift very heavily from a single source you're fooling yourself and making flippant accusations of your straw-manned opposition.
Also I'm questioning if it was actually "way better" or just edgier for the memes that games would latch onto and vehemently defend. It seems to have been very successful in the latter even if it wasn't their intent.
They iterated on a stale formula in a way that those customers had wanted. Palworld is also far more competently designed than you'd expect from its premise, but that premise is the kind of satire that only people familiar with Pokemon would write in the first place.
I mean...it is, literally, factually better than pokemon is at its own formula. Not really a disrespectful take, and far from a strawman. And you're kidding yourself if you think being inspired by something is the same thing as theft. Fun fact: pokemon lifted off of dragon quest. The fact that it is so successful is literally because it does pokemon better, but sure, "flippant accusations" lol. Congrats, you are the exact type of fanboy I'm talking about
At its own formula? I thought Palworld had a whole like crafting and base building/management side. That's not really what I wanted out of a pokemon type game, and so I didn't get Palworld. I can understand it being a better game for somebody who likes that, but I don't know if that qualifies as Pokemon's formula.
The catching of pals, the way you do it, mounting your pals, fighting in real time instead of turn based, the boss battles, the exploration are what people are specifically saying it does better than pokemon, and I 100% agree with that take.
I love the Pokémon franchise, even grew up with it. And Palworld was just a way better experience than let’s say Scarlet and Violet.
Yes, it was made for PC, which is way more powerful than the switch, yet it ran perfectly fine with ~50 fps on high on my 10 year old PC, while the switch struggles to keep 30.
Granted, a lot of the monsters look like amalgamates of 2-3 Pokémon - but they looked good, like Katress, that fire-gyrados, even that Dragonite-Goodra-Altaria mix looks good IMO.
The world was generic, but unique enough to be explored - and it is too big for the amount of Pals that existed.
I had fun with Pokémon as well, but I only got to play the DLC after I finished Palworld. I did not catch the legendary turtle as of writing this comment because the game is just… boringly slow.
Except Palworld isn't what you described. It's "build a base and capture mons and people to out to work at your base so you can climb the tech tree and build guns to fight the boss mons".