Palworld Early Access Review | MMORPG.com

System · January 31

Palworld Early Access Review | MMORPG.com

Josh has spent the last ten days fully immersed in Palworld. What's our verdict on the early access, possibly legally ambiguous creature collecting game? Check out our Early Access Review.

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Scot · January 31

Well it's not my cup of tea but it would be good to hear from players enjoying the game, we need more playing enthusiasm posts.

I do still have concerns about scoring an early access, how can a game that has "rampant glitches" get an 8.0? I feel that scoring at this stage may give games too much leeway with the assumption they will sort out issues down the line before release. But, in the round this is what has to happen, they are selling games as early access, way before they are officially launched.

sabrefoxx · January 31

The game is a 7 at best, and that's only because the presentation is done well and how fully developed some of the features are. I too found that building inside is rather difficult for a variety of reasons. That's why I placed all my equipment outside. So far nothing has broken or been destroyed because if it had I would be flaming this game.

Pathing is terrible, building a base is difficult when some pieces won't snap together, there are a few bugs (though I'm sure they'll work it out), currently no end game content (so when you reach max level you just have to "FIND" things to do besides leveling, no pvp so every goal must be PVE focused (refer to previous point), and is it just me or is the difficulty in catching Pok...Pals, kinda bad and uneven around level 20-30?

I tried to catch a level 30 pokemon with a hyper ball and it only had a 10-20% chance of success when I had been upgrading my player status to level 6 I think. IMO it could use some rebalancing.

The game IS fun, and cool, laid back, casual, and something you could introduce young family members to if they want a feeling of Poke....Pals but right now the game is only playable if you do single player. There's no point to multiplayer since you have to compete over land with other players. It might make sense if you have a group of friends of 4+ but under 4 then you may as well play co-op.

ZenJelly · January 31

Good to see this site continues to get it wrong. This game is not an 8 and this is why this site is typically the last place I go for any information or articles.

cheyane · January 31

I made the mistake of getting greedy. I wanted a pal to mine ore at level 18. I saw a YouTube video best mining pals you can get at 20 by breeding. Wrecked the game because then I started looking at what others you can breed.

I had by obtaining eggs in the wild whale like Dumad that can mine but it multi-tasks watering crops and ignores the mine even when I focus them on it. Enter breeding farm and my Digitoise. Luckily I stopped myself.

You can explore and play slowly and obtain the pals and enjoy the game but......

Elidien_ga · January 31

From the review:

The worst part of Palworld can be a deal-breaker for some. Pals are an integral part of success in the game. Keeping them happy and productive will lead to quite a few boons. Unfortunately, Pals are dumb as hell. Pal pathing leaves a ton to be desired, and it's not uncommon to end up With Pals that are just stuck. Sometimes, Pals stop what they are doing and stand there until they are so starved and stressed that their lack of sanity causes them to develop ailments like depression or ulcers.

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I saw this in a video review and thats why I have yet to play in depth. If the core feature is this broken, it worries me about the other aspects of the game.

Warhawke_80 · January 31

My wife is enjoying it...not my cup of tea though...I have learned that Hard Core Pokémon fans are the Trainspotters of the gaming world though... with all the death threats creepy behavior and the like...

It's just a game lighten up....

cheyane · January 31

Just move them in and out of the paldeck if they get stuck, keep an eye on the notifications and return frequently . This happens when the terrain isn't flat or you build stuff blocking them. Needs fixing in patches.

The area is small and you have many pals moving about eating, relaxing, sleeping and just strolling about resting. They do love their strolls. Then you have the trees , the nodes and plants and the uneven ground. It's no wonder they get stuck. I just make it a point to come back after a hunt when I see a fast travel point and check them . Takes a few minutes to look after them. It's buggy but completely manageable.

Plus the size of the pals matter and how frequently your pals clear the ore nodes. My ram like pal always gets stuck on a node until the Digitoise breaks it, then he rushes off to eat having starved while stuck. The deer one that has only logging loves to go everywhere there are trees and often gets stuck by a bush. I removed the logging node you make because he was getting fractures and sprains a lot. Free range logging prevents hurt to the poor thing.

It helps for the first base for you to look about until you find a place that is flat and away from water..... yeah they drown in the water if you do not get to them in time. They can also get stuck inside hills for some reason or another so avoid having the perimeter with a slope inside. Of course my first base is so uneven and has 2 slopes inside the perimeter but I am vigilant master.

It also helps for you to put good food like the jam buns so that they do not move frequently to eat. Keep their sanity up so that they do not go walking off upset about the working conditions.

I think the hand drawn world is lovely and the creatures looks quite nice. I love collecting them.

dirtyside · January 31

i found it easy to build a castle(4 tier lvl) bottom is honeycombed , stairs from the pal box to the third floor no problem , also using lower lvl pal's with their skills to do what they need , using your bases as intend , teleporting around and placing your pal box's by resource nodes (example ore) , it's basically common sense survival type game , no real thinking involved , when you find those elite or whatever their called Pal's those are the ones you combined with the common ones , and you go around farming the bosses to lvl ......... i mean other stuff also but ....... it's a good game to sink time into

Agentxk · January 31

Normally, I'd actually have leaned more into a 7-7.5. However, keeping in mind Palworld is early access and even the worst bugs are essentially just inconveniences, the actual entertainment and joy from playing pulled that extra point.

It's not impossible to reset a stuck Pal. It's just I want to explore, not babysit. Once we hit a full release, I'd be much harsher. In fact, there seems to be a stealth fix from the last patch and I was able to place in-ground stairs to let Pals into one of my bases.

Talin · January 31

This review matched my own experiences about 8 hours in (although I am > level 30 as 8 changed the server XI rate to see more of what unlocks over time).

The vision and ideas of the game is quite good to me. You can look at pals as either sentient tools by which you use them for system automation, or as members of the settlement you create that all contribute to help support the community. I personally use the second lens, but agree that the way jobs are assigned and managed, and the consistency 8n which they are executed, is not well implemented. I hope they add a more enterprise way to see/manage your pals by base, show what they are doing and will do next, and have the ability to change in a single UI.

Leaving the AI to decide what to work on isn’t great and doesn’t scale at all. Just because I start crafting something new means I want a Pal to drop what they were working on, but sometimes I do.

The Pal open world gameplay is pretty great to me, between fighting and capturing. Sure the camera can use work, and there isn’t a lot of weight to the attacks and hits, but it is fun and finally fighting alongside a Pal (vs just sending a Pokémon to fight for you) just feels right. Mounting, riding, and flying are also well done and fit in the world. Imagine my surprise that I could actually attack and shoot arrows from Pal-back... and it works exceptionally well.

Is this an 8,7,etc... I don’t know and I don’t think that’s the right question. It is an early access title and that comes with an expectation it is a WIP. What it is though is a fun game in its current state and has the potential to become even better. Is it polished? Not really. Is the UI great? Nope. It is fun, 8 certainly think so and consider the Mooney well spent even in current state. I’ve played far worse and incomplete early access games (admittedly this probably just means expectations continue to fall over time).

Scot · February 1

Agentxk said:

Normally, I'd actually have leaned more into a 7-7.5. However, keeping in mind Palworld is early access and even the worst bugs are essentially just inconveniences, the actual entertainment and joy from playing pulled that extra point.

It's not impossible to reset a stuck Pal. It's just I want to explore, not babysit. Once we hit a full release, I'd be much harsher. In fact, there seems to be a stealth fix from the last patch and I was able to place in-ground stairs to let Pals into one of my bases.

Welcome to the forums!

Thanks for posting, not all the article writers do that!

samooryesord · February 1

People seem to forget this is a game still in early access. This is not the finished product. Complaining about bugs and glitches and poor ai pathing or lack of polished features is really showing everyone what a clown you are. Most, if not all, of these issues will be fixed in future patches. The first few weeks are usually rough and you should expect to run into all these issues in an early access release.

SophusVir33 · February 2

The real issue is multiplayer is full of hackers. They can insta wipe your base and even delete your character off the server. So indeed it needs work, to be fixed before it gets worse.

Scot · February 2

samooryesord said:

People seem to forget this is a game still in early access. This is not the finished product. Complaining about bugs and glitches and poor ai pathing or lack of polished features is really showing everyone what a clown you are. Most, if not all, of these issues will be fixed in future patches. The first few weeks are usually rough and you should expect to run into all these issues in an early access release.

It's normal that at this stage these sorts of problems will occur, players can read too much into these problems. But equally we have no guarantee all the issues you mentioned will get fixed, though to my mind likely they will be. My own issue is not that these problems are occurring as you say its early access, it is that you can score a game when it has such issues.

Agentxk · February 6

Scot said:

Agentxk said:

Normally, I'd actually have leaned more into a 7-7.5. However, keeping in mind Palworld is early access and even the worst bugs are essentially just inconveniences, the actual entertainment and joy from playing pulled that extra point.

It's not impossible to reset a stuck Pal. It's just I want to explore, not babysit. Once we hit a full release, I'd be much harsher. In fact, there seems to be a stealth fix from the last patch and I was able to place in-ground stairs to let Pals into one of my bases.

Welcome to the forums!

Thanks for posting, not all the article writers do that!

Thanks! I literally had to remind myself to check swing by as I've been immersed in my next review!

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Palworld Early Access Review | MMORPG.com

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Palworld Early Access Review | MMORPG.com

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