If you want the shortest version of this, I posted a thread on Twitter (or X if you’re that kind of person) that briefly went through the most important points I took notice of on Palworld.

If not, keep on reading. I’ve clocked in more than a hundred hours, which I think gives me the right to write a fair and critical Palworld review.

First Impression

My friends and I describe Palworld as a blend of Monster Hunter and Ark: Survival Evolved, with a touch of Pokémon on its visuals to maintain a casual, straightforward, and marketable appeal.

It also mixes game mechanics and level design from different titles like The Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring, and potentially more.

Monster Mounting

One game I fondly compare this to that not many do is Monster Hunter Stories 2.

The strongest resemblance between Palworld with Monster Hunter Stories 2 is the exhilarating experience of riding monsters and soaring through the skies. This aspect of riding monsters; especially flying ones, is crucial, as anything less would feel lacking and unexciting.

As someone who’s never played the first Monster Hunter Stories, mounting flying monsters was a mechanic I did not know if I could or could not do, yet was teased by the game from the very start. You first ride monsters that only run around the ground, and it takes hours in the main story before you get to mount Ratha, your main monster or Monstie as they call them in-game.

Riding a Monstie in Monster Hunter Stories 2 allowed you to explore more freely and quickly in its open world. This gave you a sense of freedom and bore new excitement about what else you could do in the game.

In Palworld, it does not take hours for you to mount a monster, or so-called Pals in this world. You can quickly catch and mount a Melpaca to run around faster on the ground.

Even better, you can also catch a Nitewing at Level 3 or less and then quickly raise your Level to 15 for the Nitewing Saddle to fly around. You eventually get more flying Pal mounts, such as the Ragnahawk and Vanwyrm in later levels.

Without the mounts; especially flying mounts, I don’t think I would love this game as much as I do.

Open-World Exploration

Mounts are very valuable in Palworld because it has an open-world environment that is fun and engaging to explore.

On the contrary, I remember wishing for an actual open world in Monster Hunter Stories 2, one where I could freely roam without loading in between locales or areas. Monster Hunter Stories 2 has a world separated into different parts which disrupted the pace of exploration a lot.

What makes Palworld even more impressive is its expansive map size. Below is a photo of its world map.

The entirety of Palworld is separated into different islands, with almost each of them having different biomes and sets of monsters. The best starting waypoint is the Plateau of the Beginnings which is located on a fairly large island containing large plains, mountains, forests, and deserts.

This island is perfect as you will have all the Pals you need to slowly build your level up and familiarize yourself with the game.

Soft Level-locks

If you look deeper into Palworld’s world design, it has soft level-locks. Areas are separated by levels and the Pals you will need to make use of higher-level base structures; or simply have more efficient work Pals, are found accordingly. The more you move away from the Plateau of the Beginnings, the higher the Pals’ levels and difficulty become.

For example, the earliest you can find an Electric-attribute Pal is in the northern sandy mountains near the Desolate Church. You will find at least Level 5 Sparkits roaming around that area. They are very important when facing Water-attribute Pals present on the shores of every island.

More importantly, you will need Electric-attribute Pals to power up your Power Generator once you reach Technology Level 26.

Building a Power Generator is important to let your Electric-Attribute Pals power up advanced structures in your base like the Sphere Assembly Line and Electric Kitchen. By this time, your Sparkit would have served its purpose to let you easily fight Water-attribute Pals and catch them for experience, or to catch stronger Electric-attribute Pals in other islands.

This is a neat and clever way of slowing you down, encouraging you to take your time, and get to know about Technology levels and Pal attributes.

Turn-based Combat

Heavily tied to open-world exploration and levels is the combat system. Depending on how the combat system works, a game can disrupt exploration or be more time-consuming. Combat systems that I hate the most are those that force you to engage in combat, have loading screens in between encounters, or do not use a game’s open-world environment effectively.

Monster Hunter Stories 2 has turn-based combat encounters, while Palworld allows for real-time combat similar to how Pokémon battles are shown in the anime. This makes it more dynamic, immersive, and less pace-breaking.

A more subtle aspect of real-time combat is that it allows you to escape more quickly than having to press buttons until you find the Flee Combat option.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike turn-based combat. Some of my favorite games have turn-based combat like Pokémon FireRed, Breath of Fire 2, Fire Emblem Sacred Stones, Darkest Dungeon, and XCOM. However, I believe separating exploration and combat into distinct sessions in an open-world game makes it less enjoyable.

Idle Enemies

Still, there are downsides to having real-time combat in an open-world environment.

One of them is that it can make enemies appear stale and lifeless, similar to MMOs. Enemies will often seem idle, lacking purpose and actual connection to the environment. Palworld suffers from these issues.

A good mechanic Palworld has that remedies this a bit is the fact that some merchants will roam its world and be able to interact with hostile NPCs. An example is the image below which has a merchant lying on the ground, defeated by poachers.

Still, this is not enough. Some improvements I want to see in Palworld are enhancing NPC AI and diversifying NPC interactions. Seeing Pals fetching water from a lake or returning to their nests would add more depth to both its characters and setting.

Other suggestions I have are Pal dens, nests, minor stealth mechanics, more environmental details, and more interactable objects.

I see these improvements as feasible, suitable with existing mechanics, and adding minimal strain on a player’s hardware; I could be wrong with the last one.

Points of Interest

Some of my suggestions are just adding more Points of Interest, or simply, POIs. POIs are important because they; should, organically interest players to go to areas and find out what they are about, instead of forcing them to.

Current POIs in Palworld involve Fast Travel Points, Field Bosses, Boss Towers, Dungeons, Settlements, and Bases.

If you count them, it’s a lot. There are even more structures or areas that could be considered POIs because of how striking they look.

These are some things I appreciate about Palworld’s exploration and world design. Palworld properly makes use of its semi-realistic backgrounds and stylistic characters, along with impressive set pieces.

Bases

An optional Point of Interest you can add is your own base; but only if it actually looks interesting. Otherwise, it’s just a home for you and your Pals.

Bases are important because you will need a place to store your items and Pals. They also serve as resting areas and additional Fast Travel points in Palworld. You absolutely should not ignore building a base.

I won’t go over the whole base-building mechanic, it’s pretty generic with a few special structures specific for your Pals.

What you should be most excited about, is seeing your Pals run around and help you build and maintain your base. Their AI is a bit clunky as of now, and it will probably stay that way because it is probably very hard to make it adapt to the flexibility of base-building Palworld has.

Borrowed Game Mechanics

You may have noticed that I skipped some things about Palworld.

I wanted to point out the best and most unique parts I found. It’s already pretty known that Palworld borrows and uses different familiar game mechanics from famous games such as gliders, stamina bars, its version of Poké Balls, and many more.

Instead, let’s just have a brief rundown of every one of these that I know.

• Climbing, Gliders, Stamina, Hunger, and Temperature

  • Much like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Palworld makes use of similar exploration and survival mechanics. You can use gliders in mid-air to slow down your descent, consume stamina when performing certain actions, lose hunger over time, and feel negative effects from extreme temperatures.

• Base-building

  

  • You can build bases like in The Forest, Valheim, and any other survival game.

• Pal Capturing, Breeding, and Design

  • The most obvious inspiration of Palworld is Pokémon. You can capture monsters using Poké Balls called Pal Spheres and breed them for stronger Pals. Some of its Pal designs also resemble Pokémons which people argue makes Pocket Pair suitable for a lawsuit from Nintendo.

• Dungeon, Tower, and Field Bosses

  

  • The way bosses can be found in Palworld is a blend of how Elden Ring, Pokémon, and generic MMOs do it.

    • You can find dungeon bosses in, well, dungeons which unlocks your exit route.

    • You can find field bosses out in the open, one of them is a Level 38 Mammorest in the starting area much like how Elden Ring did it with the Tree Sentinel.

    • You can find tower bosses in towers which are very similar to gym bosses in Pokémon.

The Bugs

Finally, I won’t brush over the most common problem an Early Access game has; Bugs. During my first few days of playing Palworld, all I experienced was the game freezing after long hours of playtime.

Now that I have more than a hundred hours played in Palworld, I have encountered a few more. Here they are:

• Pressing F while mining an ore deposit and the Pal is beside them during the mining process causes the player to “ride” their Pal, but instead, they disappear entirely.

  

  • All controls become unresponsive, forcing the player to close the game.

  • Upon logging back in, the player spawns with an unresponsive clone standing beside them.

• Occasionally, pressing F to dismount from your Pal does not function as intended.

• Building snapping lacks consistency.

• Pal Spheres disappear from the player’s hand and become unusable, despite still being present in their inventory.

• Japanese text appears in various UI elements.

  

• Dismounting or summoning your Pal in certain locations may cause either the player character or the Pal to clip below the ground level.

• Logging in a server sometimes spawns the Player underground.

The Bad

Aside from the bugs, there are only two things that are glaringly lacking: Messy AI and UI.

These are pretty much it. The minor shortcomings have already been stated in the other sections.

A Trend Rider, but a Good one.

Palworld is more than just a copy; it’s a game that I truly love. Clocking in over a hundred hours has given me the insight to provide a fair and critical review of its Early Access state. Initially, my friends and I likened it to a blend of Monster Hunter Stories, Ark: Survival Evolved, Pokémon, and more. However, it goes beyond mere imitation. It surprisingly and seamlessly integrates the various game mechanics, level designs, and visual style resulting in a cohesive and enjoyable experience.

Pocket Pair Inc. looked at what was fun, famous, and successful in popular games from recent years, took inspiration from them, and made them work.

Palworld is a trend rider, but a good one.

Want more than just Palworld reviews?

Check these ones out!

• Old And Simple, But A Masterpiece Nonetheless – Dragon’s Dogma Review
• Sekiro, Dynasty Warriors, And Chinese History – Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Review
• Huge Dreams And A Huge Studio Demo Reel – Bright Memory: Infinite Review
• A Compelling Dark-Fantasy Game – HellSlave Review
• A Not-So Magical Story – The Mageseeker Review
• Building Dreams, One Pixel At A Time – City Game Studio Review
• How Is This A Single-Player Game? – Kingdoms Of Amalur: Re-Reckoning Review