Palworld, an ARK-like game described as Pokemon with guns, has seen concurrent player numbers swell into record-breaking territory this week. But according to execs behind the game the team is not celebrating, choosing rather to spend the time preparing for an attack from their most feared enemy: Hbomberguy.
Same, it kimd of feels like most have fell for the marketing and not actually played/done their own research. There's no mention of the multiplayer save disassociation bug, or any of the other few well known issues among palworld players right now - which are the main things I would expect to be highlighted in a negative thread about the game...
The main criticisms seem to be the game being "edgy" and "dark"... but it's honestly only as edgy and as dark as you make it. Admittedly this has put off a number of people who would otherwise have probably enjoyed the game just fine. It's not easy to come across the dark parts of the game, and even if you do, lets say for example you successfully catch a human, the game will warn you about it being forbidden, and you can't even teach them new skills. In other circumstances you will get a wanted level, and the in game "mercenaries" will hunt and kill you.
I personally have been playing for hours and its a ton of fun - a lot of the mechanics have been well thought through and there's a surprising level of depth - some of the playthroughs i've seen haven't even scratched the surface of what is possible. IMO pocketpair pretty much gave players exactly what was promised, and then a whole lot more. A few of us have been waiting on this game since 2021, and are very happy with what was delivered
The same way Maxis sat on SimCity for years, and got rugpulled by Paradox's CS, honestly seems inevitable for companies like Gamefreak/Pokemon who have sat on their franchise for years without trying/improving things at all. If you don't listen to your fans they will not wait forever for a real, open world alternative without sudden battle environment switching, actual animations and expressions, and complete freedom of movement during battles. The only thing Palworld has in common with Pokemon really is just the monsters and the process of catching them... everything else is completely different, and that's good.
Yeah if this game was "edgy" the pals would be punched full of bullet holes and lying in gorey pools of blood or exploding like fo3. Its not edgy, really, at all. Its just got guns in it??
Leaning into the forced labor and slavery part is what I think is edgy. It's an opinion, can't tell someone what's too edgy for them lol
Having played many hours, the game isn't like that at all just the marketing, I haven't really seen more emphasis on it being slavery or forced labor than any other game where you control creatures
Not trying to tell anyone what's too much for them, just mean to share my experience
Yeah they made the first trailer a bit dark and edgy but that was just to generate controversy to get people talking about it, which clearly worked extremely well
Every comment I read about the actual game being edgy just has me like
Dawg I just don't wanna play the game lol, not my vibe
That's cool, no one has to play any game
I just don't get the all the comments making assumptions about the game based on the vibes of a trailer from a year ago, I thought the trailer was stupid and was ready to hate the game but it turned out way different
The entire discourse comparing this to the actual Pokémon games and other monster collectors is also baseless, it's apples to oranges because this isn't turn based. If you prefer turn based games that's great but they're completely different and telling me to play a turn based game instead just shows that you don't know the first thing about what you're criticizing
None of this is directed at you or anyone personally but this may be the stupidest struggle session in the history of the site and everyone just needs to remember one thing, "no investigation, no right to speak"