Review - Palworld: Is it worth playing "Pokémon with Guns"?

The title brings exploration and adventure with little companion monsters (known as “Pals”) that we have seen a lot in other games, but with some peculiarities. Palworld is also considered a survival game: we can suffer from hunger, cold or aggressive hunters and Pals.

To stay alive, you need to set up a shelter and capture Pals to help with exploration or defense of the village. In fact, the mechanics for building your shelter are very reminiscent of the recent release of Lego Fortnite.

Starting Out

The first step is to create the playable character, and the game offers different body, face and hair styles. In addition to some voice options.

Like other titles of the same genre, we begin the Palworld journey in an open world, surrounded by nature, with the first objective of collecting branches on the ground (or destroying trees) to build your workbench.

The tutorial is well done, but doesn't challenge the player's intelligence, leaving them free to think about how to deal with the quests, but also provides an interesting guide to help during the beginning of the gameplay.

After building the bench, some other tasks arise, such as building some Pal Spheres and a Palbox.

Pal Spheres

Pal's Spheres are used to capture monsters. There are other styles of spheres, such as Mega, which increase the odds of capture. Yes, they look like a direct reference to Poké Balls.

The lower the Pal's health, the greater your chance of catching it, so don't try to capture a Pal with full health. Notice the difference:

The same creature had a 13% chance of capture, and, after receiving some damage, its rate went to 100%. Of course, there is a difference between this species and others, and not all Pals will have a 100% odds of capture.

Pals

Pals are the native creatures of this world.

A Pal, after being captured, can explore the world with the player, work in their village or just be stored in the Palbox. Each species has unique characteristics that will help in serving your base, for example, Lamballs can perform jobs that require “Handiwork”, “Transporting” or “Farming”.

You can check the abilities of each species by accessing the details and viewing this table:

All Pals of the same species have the same characteristics. However, there are some passives that offer benefits or downsides, and they are exclusive to each Pal.

A Lamball just offers an excellent passive. Another already grants one good and one bad passive. This makes each Pal unique, and makes you think about strategies to optimize your battles and jobs.

They also feel hungry, tired and sick, so provide the necessary comfort to improve the quality of work.

It is worth noting that the majority, including some bosses, aren't aggressive if they are not attacked, but there are some hostile Pals that attack without even thinking twice. This is the case of Rushoar, for example.

Breeding

When wandering around the map, we can find Eggs that can be hatched after building an incubator, creating a new Pal.

There is also the option to make Pals breed.

Palbox

Palbox is a computer that has information about your “Pals”, in addition to functioning as a manager.

It also sets your Base's level, so complete specific Palbox missions to level up. As you complete all the missions and evolve the village, more Pals will help with the work.

If you are defeated in a battle, your Pals will be inactive for a while, leaving them stored in a Palbox makes them recover.

Exploration

One of the game's main strengths is its vast map with beautiful scenery that provides hours of exploration. To help with movement, some orange towers are fast travel points, and you need to go to the point and interact with them to activate and turn them blue.

Exploration in Palword leads to different biomes, making it possible to capture new Pals to complete the Paldeck.

Bosses are also encountered this way and, like other Pals, can be captured but requires plenty of effort to do so.

There are also some villages with hostile NPCs and a caged Pal in the center. You can rescue it by eliminating enemies, and if you do, they will join you without the need to spend a Pal Sphere.

Progress

Game progress is based on a few factors: Status, Technology and Base Level.

When a character levels up, they release a status point, which can be used to increase one of the following characteristics: Life, Stamina, Attack, Defense, Work Speed, or Inventory Weight.

In addition, you will also earn technology points, which, similar to the Ark game, are points that unlock items and buildings. There are also ancestral technology points, we earn one by defeating a boss on the map.

This feature is limited to your character level. For example, to release level 15 technologies, your character must reach there.

Finally, your base also has levels, which are improved by completing Palbox missions. This mechanic depends a lot on your technology, as many Palbox tasks are related to creating a building.

Improving your village brings a new space for a Pal to work, and upon reaching specific levels, they also unlock the possibility of building a new shelter.

The game's graphics are excellent! I played Palword for this review with high settings and was pleasantly surprised, look:

It's worth remembering that the game still has the epic configuration, giving even more details and visual improvements!

Developed in Unreal Engine 5, Palworld pleased and met expectations. However, the brightness rate option is missing, as the night in the game seems to have much less brightness when compared to other games.

The game presented a few frame drops and crashes, around four in ten hours of gameplay. These crashes also returned to normal quickly. Overall, the title seemed very pleasant in this regard, but consider the settings of the PC used.

For streaming, I was also able to record and even broadcast the game live without experiencing any frustration.

For an early release, Palworld handled issues well, but there were some pretty annoying issues occasionally.

Multiplayer

Most players were unable to take advantage of the game's multiplayer feature. In my experience, most times I've tried to create a multiplayer world I've been met with an error message:

When I finally created it, I realized that Palworld on Steam is in another version and doesn't have cross play with Game Pass, that is, I didn't have the multiplayer experience with friends who were playing on Steam.

Visual Bug

In the character creation part, there is a visual bug that does not interfere with the gameplay. It occurs when we define a high number for the arm and body, the arm ends up entering the body, see:

Everything goes as expected when the character is moving, but we see the same error in the game if the character stays still.

Ceiling Bug

This bug is more annoying than the previous one since it changes gameplay, as the character "crosses" the roof of a house when climbing its walls. Watch:

Climbing Bug

The climbs also had some errors, and they were the most frequent ones I experienced during my review.

Pals Bug

Finally, I faced a problem where the Pals were being sent to my house or a tree, making it impossible for them to eat, rest or work.

This bug appears to be frequent, as it has occurred three or four times, and it interferes a lot with gameplay, so I hope for a quick fix.

Crashes

In ten hours, I only experienced one crash. Some network users reported suffering from more crashes, while others claim to have a smooth experience without this problem.

Palworld pleases, it has some errors that interfere with the gameplay and needs improvements in its multiplayer, but with a good job of updates, it has the potential to revolutionize the gaming market.

In its current version, a 9.0 is a fair grade. The graphics, exploration and progress are perfect, the battles and characteristics of each Pal are unique, the game worked with excellent performance.

I'm sure it will be worth playing if you like adventures in the style of ARK: Survival Evolved or setting up your village in the style of Lego Fortnite with some helpers and companions.

I hope this article helped you decide whether it's worth playing Palworld, the “Pokémon with guns”.

Furthermore, I'm available in the comments for any questions!