It's alright. Little bit of an identity crisis... But as a pokémon clone, it's pretty good. I picked it up today and I can already tell you I have put more hours into it than I put into Scarlet and Sun combined.
Of what i've seen I can't say anyone should be calling it a pokemon clone. It doesn't even have an ounce of turn based combat. The monster collection is as close as it gets.
It seems closer to Minecraft/Ark/Terraria than to Pokemon.
Initially I was into it, but then at about level 20 I realized it wasn't going anywhere. After a few levels, it's literally the same thing over and over again, but you upgrade the equipment. Nothing really makes a huge difference after you get them farming basic materials.
There's NO plot after you complete the tutorial. What it says about taking down the bad guys in the description? It's all in your head. You kill plenty of them. You make zero difference to the world that lasts more than a hour.
The only thing Pokemon-esque about it is the monster designs and that you catch them in spherical objects.
Everything else about it lends itself more to the survival crafting genre.
Gameplay I think is quite enjoyable from the bit I've played. It feels a lot more sandboxy than Pokemon would have ever allowed in their games because they care a lot about story narratives that everyone now finds super boring.
Inspired with some feature similar to the original works != plagiarism. I swear a shit tons of people just don't understand what's the nature of plagiarism is at all before sprouting nonsense like this.
And no, that grin on a cat face isn't original to Pokemon, Cat Bus from My Neighbour Totoro has it.
Also we're past 1000 pokemon now and a huge number of them are based on actual animals, mythical creatures, pop culture references etc. There are going to be similarities and it's completely unavoidable. You would drive yourself insane trying.
Am a pokemon fans, and palworld seems mostly based on established pokemon roster, i can understand calling it uninspiring design but to go as far as call it plagiarism is quite funny.
Also, this article is basically spreading slanderous misinformation. Its entirely speculation and conjecture, and until proven otherwise people need to remember that its "innocent before proven guilty."
I am getting really tired of these "guilty because we decided already" witch-hunts going on these days.
Who cares? It's not like any of us are losing money on it. And Nintendo/game freak aren't exactly known for their incredible iterative game designs. People have been bitching about Pokémon becoming a cashgrab since like...heartgold, hahah.
I wish Nintendo would go out on a limb like their era with Blue rescue team. I miss the deeper storylines and more personal atmosphere.
Watching the trailer gave me the impression as well. Of course Pokemon are based on real life animals, but they also a lot of unique designs. No way they made pals by accident that look like Hatterene and Garchomp but different colors.
What I don't get is why this article is so shit. Can't be that hard to let someone who played the latest Pokemon games install Palworld and make some comparisons themsevels instead of just sharing some Twitter posts. OK, actually in get it. That's how modern videogame journalism works.
The game takes mechanics and inspiration from tons of games. Fortnite, Pokémon, Breath of the Wild, farming and crafting sims… that’s kind of the appeal honestly.
Okay, but no one has said / verified that anything in this game is AI generated. The only thing we know is one of their previous games used generative AI as a core mechanic.