Palworld (PC) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing a bit more about the Game Preview of Palworld.

In part 1 I managed to sort out my food, clothing and shelter so now I'm ready to head out into the world and discover what it is you actually do in this game. Aside from catching Pokémon I mean. I'm aware of that bit.

It didn't take long for Nintendo to became aware of the Pokémon as well, and I'm not surprised that they sent their lawyers after the game. I get the impression the actual Pokémon games haven't had to work too hard to sell copies lately because there's been nothing to challenge them. The last thing they need is serious competition from something ambitious that hits all the modern trends and gives Pikachu a Gatling gun.

Alright, like I said last time, I played the game back in January so this is a slightly ancient build and for all I know they've reworked game mechanics and redesigned the interface since then. I played it for about 9 hours in total and it apparently takes 39 hours to beat, but don't expect to see a whole lot of progress here.

---

Now that I've got clothes on my back and food in my backpack I've been able to go exploring the map a bit, looking for new Pals to collect. I've only got 10 different types at the moment and collecting 30 Pals will give me a level up.

I started the game shipwrecked on the beach down on the bottom right and the blue castle icon shows the base I built nearby. The blue bird icons are Great Eagle Statue fast travel points, which get lit up when I hike over and activate them, and the circles show boss fights.

The yellow arrow at the top shows my location, so there's a boss right next to me: the Alpha Chillet.

"Capture or subdue Alpha Chillet" is right at the top of my to-do list and I'm not hyped about the idea. Ancient technology points sound cool, I could do with some of them, but so far the only enemies I've faced have been tiny and adorable, and I'm not equipped for a serious threat.

That second objective, unlocking the Foxparks' Harness, requires me to go harvesting fox organs, so that's a bit dark. I'm struggling enough with the idea of beating these innocent creatures until they're weak enough to be captured!

Whoa, is that an oil rig?

One thing I appreciate about the game is that I have absolutely no idea about what I'm going to find on this island. I expected the place to be a bit like Minecraft or Terraria, with procedurally generated biomes, but now it's starting to remind me more of Lost or Arrow. There are people on this island and they are up to something. Or maybe not, I have no idea!

Either way I'm not going to dive in and swim over to it. I already learned to stay out of the water.

Wait, what? Supply drop? I think this means something fell out of the sky somewhere.

Oh yeah, there's a new meteor symbol on my compass at the top of the screen! I was about to activate that bird statue so I could teleport home to empty out my backpack, but now I need to go investigate this mysterious treasure from above.

Well I found the supply drop I was looking for, but it's a long way down.

It's my own fault as I got a little bit distracted along the way and climbed up a cliff. I did a pretty good job of it too, as I was smart enough to climb around the ledges so I had something to drop onto whenever I ran out of stamina. Okay I did fall off one time, but I had enough health to survive it with my ankles intact.

The climb was all worth it as I found a green striped egg at the top. Presumably a Pal egg, but if it's a chocolate Easter egg I'll be fine with that too.

It's a bit hard to tell from way up here, but it seems like a pair of armed level 18 Syndicate Thugs have turned up to guard the package. And by that I mean they're armed with actual firearms, not just a homemade club like I've got.

I could do without getting shot and having to hike all the way back to collect my clothes and gear, but my curiosity just got me to climb a random cliff so there's no way it's letting me leave before I find out what's inside that box.

Trying to glide down there wouldn't end well as my stamina would run out long before I landed... but I could use my glider as a parachute to slow my descent! If I glide, drop, glide, drop etc. I should be able to make my stamina gauge last the entire fall and end up right on target! In theory.

Wow, the Syndicate Thugs really didn't see me come down huh? Okay guys, you just hang out there and look out for rogue Pals while I go through all your stuff.

A Metal Armor blueprint is exactly what I want, though I don't think I'll be getting the High Quality Workbench I need to make it any time soon. But that permanent stamina upgrade I'll be using right now. It's raised my stamina to 130, which should make my rock climbing even less disastrous. Maybe someday I'll have the energy to survive taking a swim.

There's also a barrel of oil in here, which should fit into my backpack nicely, along with some Giga Spheres. There's a thermal lining here too, which implies the existence of a colder region of the island, and presumably solves the problem of surviving there before I even find it.

I finally returned to base after my long expedition and now Man-eating Wild Pals are attacking!

Fortunately my base's Pals are far from helpless and together we were able to fight off the raid easily. My creatures look cute (especially when they run over to help me make stuff), but they spend all day chopping down regenerating trees so they've got lumberjack muscles.

In fact I should go over there and see how that's going.

Bloody hell guys, I respect the effort, but could you start putting the wood into a crate when you're done? Maybe I just need to build a box closer to the trees so they know where to put it, I'm not sure. Oh, and another box next to the farm for my Lamballs to put their wool in.

I can change the settings on the box to limit it to wood, but I don't really care what they put into it. I can build from any stored resources within my base limits or inventory, so it doesn't matter where it goes as long as it goes somewhere.

Hang on, why is no one mining that block of ore over there? Is it because the base perimeter line crosses through it, leaving half of it outside? The perimeter is a circle around my Palbox, so I guess I screwed up and built it a meter too far away to automatically mine ore. So that's a pain in the ass.

I found a bunch of glowing green Lifmunk Effigies lying around on my travels and it turns out I have enough to enhance my Pal Sphere Capture Power. More power, more chance of successfully getting Pals.

Okay, what do I have to do in my base before I can upgrade it to the next base level? I need to built a Hot Spring to soothe my stressed Pals, which needs Pal fluid, and I need to build a Primitive Furnace, which needs flame organs.

Man everything need flame organs lately. The next time I find some Foxparks in the wild I'm going to have to go on a rampage... the kind of rampage that ends with me capturing them all and giving them all a good home. I just need to get them down to the last few pixels of health without killing them.

Alright, I've wasted enough time. I've used my vast stacks of wood to craft a new Old Bow and ammo, and I'm going to use it to take down the Alpha Chillet!

The Alpha Chillet is absolutely huge and has 1,279 health, though I am wearing it down. My Cattiva Pal is so tiny by comparison that all he can do is punch its ankles, but he's helping too!

There's just one problem: I'm running out of arrows and I have a feeling that the boss is going to reset if I run off to make more.

One other problem: I'm doing a terrible job of evading attacks. I have been trying to sidestep his ice blasts, but I'm rarely fast enough.

Well I gave it my best shot (lots of best shots in fact, I'm pretty much out of ammo), but my dodging skill wasn't up to the task. In my defence this is the first time I've been in a serious fight, so I'm still working things out.

On the plus side, when I respawned I was able to come back and collect my gear without being pounced on. In fact, the Alpha Chillet seems to have gone missing entirely. I guess I'll go off and explore somewhere else while I'm waiting for them to respawn as well.

It doesn't matter where I go in this game, I always have to stop and take a photo because the scenery's just too damn pretty.

I'm also stopping to pick up a lot of these eggs. Unfortunately I have to defeat the Alpha Chillet before I can get the ancient tech points to unlock the Egg Incubator, so they're all just going into a box back at base for now.

There's plenty of stuff just lying around in the landscape, though it's mostly just loose bit of wood or stone. Sometimes I'll see a shiny blue thing in the distance and think that it's a Pal Sphere or a Lifmunk Effigy, but it's usually a chunk of paldium.

Man, they had fun writing these Pal descriptions. Every time I capture a new type I stop and read what it has to say about them.

I'm very close to capturing the 30 Pals I need to get a free level up, but I've done enough wandering for the time being. I've crafted a ton of arrows and a Three Shot Bow, and I'm going back to take on the Alpha Chillet right now! Assuming that it's respawned.

I did it, I defeated the Alpha Chillet! Well okay technically it was my Foxparks that finished it off (a fire fox having an advantage over an ice enemy is... elementary) but firing a bunch of arrows at it probably helped.

It's just a shame that I missed my chance to throw a Giga Sphere at it before it went down. I really wanted to see this guy helping out at at the base. He wouldn't have been hard to spot.

Now I can use my ancient technology point to unlock Egg Incubator tech and get these eggs cooking. It'll take a while and I can't just use my bed to skip the timer, but I'm sure I'll find something to keep me busy while I wait.

I could sort out all my loot chests, for instance, as they're a bit of a mess right now. It doesn't help that the game's missing an 'auto stack to all chests' button. I can auto stack to a chest I have open, but first I need to find the right chest for the type of gear I'm storing, and it makes it tempting to just dump everything into the first empty box and make it tomorrow's problem.

While I'm here I'll use my Palbox to optimise my workforce. Each Pal can do a certain number of jobs (indicated by the icons on the right), so I ideally want a balanced mix of workers that can cover all of the bases. A team of cats would be cute, but then no one would be chopping down trees.

Anyway, I've reached level 13 so I'm going to see what new technology I can unlock.

A Meat Cleaver? Bloody hell. It's bad enough that "Butchered Pals will be gone for good", but replacing the the 'Pet' command with a 'Butcher' command is just making it worse!

Fortunately you don't have to kill Pals to harvest organs and I don't see any need to kill them at all if I can help it. There's a ring a few tiers down called the Ring of Mercy which sounds perfect to me. It makes it so I can't actually defeat enemies, as they'll always have 1 HP remaining. Of course I'd have to remember to put my Pal sidekick away or else they'd leap in and make the killing blow for me.

I also want that Grappling Gun on the right, but the purple means that it's ancient technology and I'll have to kill a boss first. It's Penking next, apparently.

I went back out exploring and found an actual human who's trying to kill me! I'm not a Pal, buddy, you'll get nothing for attacking me except a whole bunch of arrows in your head and upper torso. Oh he's also on fire, thanks to my sidekick Foxparks.

Though now I have to wonder, can I actually capture humans in a Pal Sphere like I do with Pals? This is the first one I've ever fought so I've never had reason to think about it until now.

Oops, it turns out that capturing humans and enslaving them is considered inhumane on Palpagos Island, and also everywhere else on Earth. In my defence, it was either this or killing him in self defence, and I guess I assumed that he'd make up his own mind about whether he wanted to help me. Just like all those people I kidnapped in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

On the plus side, I can release this Pal they've got locked up in a cage. The creature's so grateful that it joined my team, no Pal Sphere required! I don't know if the Pal Spheres brainwash creatures so that they want to work for me, or what's going on there, but I can at least be sure this creature is a volunteer.

I headed into a mysterious cave and found a black market Pal salesman surrounded by guillotines. Someone must have brought all of these guillotines in here for a reason, this kind of thing doesn't happen by accident, and I'm not eager to stick around and find out why.

Plus I don't want to buy any black market Pals! Also I don't have any money.

Aww, Kingpaca is so cute when it's dozing and there is no damn way I'm going over there to wake it up. I'm not even ready to take on Penking yet.

My Foxparks looks pretty great in the dark as well, with her fiery limbs blazing. It's a very good Pal to have active if you're exploring at night. Incidentally, there's no reason to not go wandering across the island all night and day, provided you've got warm clothes and food rations. You don't need sleep and you can sneak up on wild Pals while they're napping to get an advantage.

But you do have to head back eventually to drop off all your loot, so I should go find an Eagle Statue.

Man, I need to be more careful around my campfire. It's fine though, I'm not going to let a bit of fire stop me from making a bed for my new Penking to sleep in. Hey, my captured Syndicate Goon is helping out too!

I didn't defeat the Penking boss and capture him, not yet anyway, this is the Pal that hatched from the egg! Somehow I get the feeling that everything hatches from eggs in this world, even mammals. Oh, I wonder what would happen if I added him to my team and had the Penkings fight each other. Probably better to stick with my fire fox.

I'd like to start building some more stuff here, but everything in the current tier seems to require ingots, which I don't have. Because no one wants to mine the bloody ore. Maybe I should demolish my base and move the Palbox a little closer to it. Maybe I should make a new base somewhere else entirely.

Actually I know what I'm going to do. I'm level 15, so it's time to take on another boss! I've already got a Penking though, so I'm going to go take on the boss at the Rayne Syndicate Tower!

Oh crap, this boss fight has an actual introduction cutscene?

I don't like this! I thought this was just going to be like fighting the Alpha Chillet, but things are suddenly getting very serious.

I should've gone after the Penking instead, I realise that now.

Well I haven't got their faintest idea who Zoe & Grizzbolt are, the game hasn't really had any story at all so far, but I do know that this is going to be painful. For me.

Holy shit, what is up with their health? I was expecting to be around 2,000 like the Chillet, not 30,000! Oh plus I have a time limit.

I lost a lot of health very quickly, so now I'm playing cautiously and letting my Pals do most of the work. Sometimes I pop out of cover to smack Grizzbolt in the back or use my Foxparks as a hand-held flamethrower, but it's not long before I'm running back to hide and let my health recharge. There are no health potions I'm aware of, so hiding's the best I can do.

My tactics are working better than I expected, but they're not working very well. I'm a mess and my Pals aren't doing great either.

Half the timer's gone, half their health is gone. The fight's definitely possible, but I need to keep this going and survive for five more minutes.

And I lost.

Damn, I was starting to believe I could win! Some of my pals had effective attacks and it was working. Well, at least all my gear was left outside the tower for me to pick up. Now I need to replace it with better gear, because what I brought with me this time just wasn't good enough.

I made better armour and a ton of arrows and went to take on the Penking boss... and it went even worse than the Zoe fight! He just kept icing me with ranged attacks and I couldn't dodge, especially with his little penguin buddies helping him out.

But I'm not ending this on a failure, so I'm going to hike back and I'm going to pick up my clothes and I'm going back in for a rematch. Only this time I'm going to try an ingenious two-part strategy:

1. First I'm going to focus on the minor penguins and Pal Sphere them to take them out of the fight entirely.

2. Then I'm going to look up what key I remapped 'roll' to. I have to be honest, I completely forgot I even had a roll move and that's probably why I keep taking so much damage instead of getting out of the way in time.

Oh, so that's why this Pal is called Rushoar. I like watching my Pals do their special moves, especially if I'm watching from behind a wall where I'm safe. Hey I've been busy too, as I was the one that captured all the Penking's Pengullets, so I've earned a break (to regenerate my health).

Yay, I defeated the Penking! I tried to recruit him but I wasn't expecting it to work and I've already got one anyway.

Then I used his ancient technology point to make my grappling gun! It does exactly what it says on the tin: I equip it as a weapon and then fire it at a wall to get pulled to it. Or the floor, it's not picky... except for when it comes to distance. It's a very short-range tool.

Check out my glider upgrade! I guess this is one Pal that isn't leaving my party any time soon.

That's my beautiful base down there. I'm just short of upgrading it to level 10, then I'll unlock the ability to start a second base somewhere next to lots and lots of ore. I'll finally be able to kick production off into high gear and build some proper furniture. I'm talking about bookshelves.


CONCLUSION

---

Mad scientist game developers are always sticking different genres together to see what happens. Point-and-click adventure spliced with space sim, platformer mixed with city builder, platformer with RPG combat etc. Sometimes it even works!

Pocketpair decided to try throwing Ark: Survival Evolved, Breath of the Wild and Pokémon into the pan together, and it turns out that this particular recipe works! Though honestly it doesn't come as huge shock to me that I ended up liking it, as I enjoyed their earlier game, Craftopia, as well, and that was a janky unfinished mess when I played it. This, on the other hand, already feels like an actual proper video game. It's slick, it's beautiful and it's actually fairly sane. Sure it wants to tempt me into putting my adorable indentured buddies onto an assembly line to manufacture bullets or whatever, I never accused of it being normal, but its ambitions seem to be within its reach this time. And I like its sense of humour.

Plus it's really pretty! The scenery is just cartoony enough to fit with the creatures, and the creatures are just realistic enough to work with the scenery. It's got a bright beautiful aesthetic and I ended up taking photos everywhere I went. Okay, I take photos everywhere I go in every game, that's why I have this site, but what I'm trying to say is that this is a world I wanted to spend time in. Whatever direction you point the camera there's something awesome to see and head over to.

The Pals look like Pokémon, I'm not going to claim this isn't a bit derivative, but they're big adorable 3D Pokémon and I want to give them all a home so they don't have to live rough in a cold world where complete strangers run over and club you over the head to stick you in a ball. I did struggle a bit to keep them all happy and stress-free, and I never did get the medicine for poor Cattiva, but that just gave me more incentive to level up and unlock more stuff.

I played the game on normal difficulty, and found it to be pretty easy out in the world, and a lot harder in boss fights. Then again I didn't know what I was doing, I was under equipped, and I forgot I had a roll button to get out of the way of attacks, so I wasn't exactly playing it optimally. Also playing it single-player probably didn't help, as these kinds of games are usually better with friends. What's the point of putting in the effort to get all your furniture in the right place if no one's around to see it?

Would I recommend Palworld? I'd say it's pretty much what it seems to be from the screenshots, I didn't hit any hidden frustrations or jank (or story), so if you want a third-person open world action game with crafting, boss fights, and collectable monsters, then go for it. If you want a game where you walk into town, chat to NPCs and get quests, this isn't going to work for you. Unless there's a town just a little further down the road and I never found it.

Anyway, game's good.

---

Next on Super Adventures, I'm doing one of those articles where I write about a subject rather than one specific game. Though you can still make a guess at what that subject is if you want. There's a bit of a clue on the left.

Thanks for dropping by, don't forget to leave a comment!