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first impressions of palworld
Signed-off-by: Xe Iaso <me@xeiaso.net>
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lume/src/notes/2024/palworld-first-impressions.md
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lume/src/notes/2024/palworld-first-impressions.md
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---
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title: My first impressions of Palworld
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date: 2024-01-21
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---
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I have no idea how to describe
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[Palworld](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1623730/?curator_clanid=4777282&utm_source=SteamDB)
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adequately other than it is a miracle of game design that it works as
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well as it does. On paper, this game should be bad. It shouldn't work
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at all. It should have a bunch of attempts at game design that don't
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work together and the game should fizzle out into irrelevance like all
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the others in the same category. This game should just be too damn
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ambitious to work.
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Somehow, everything works. It doesn't just work, it works VERY WELL.
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Everything flows together and all the mechanics feed into eachother.
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It's all the addictive qualities of Factorio, Ark, Fortnite, and more
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all in one. On the weekends I normally catch up on anime, but I am now
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very behind because of how much time this game has been sucking up.
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If you want to see how incredibly unlikely the success of Palworld
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was, check out [this post by my friend
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Mystes](https://cohost.org/mystes/post/4226698-i-m-in-love-with-pal)
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where it describes the series of fortunate events that lead to this
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game landing the way it did. It's nuts. This game is the best kind of
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anomaly.
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There's some controversy about the fact that you can catch Palapagos
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residents in Pal Spheres, with all of the normal effects in the
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process, but I think that this is really the game taking its lore
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seriously and presenting it to the player as it would be in the world.
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In the Pokémon games, most of the gorier Pokédex entries point to the
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realities that this game portrays.
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If you lived in a world where cows were moe blobs that make cute
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noises, you'd probably be fine with butchering them for dinner. Either
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that or you'd live in a system such that it would be very okay and
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easy to do so.
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It's really easy to compare this to Pokemon, but I think that it's a
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lot more fair to compare it to RimWorld and Ark: Survival. This makes
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the Pokemon games look like Monster Hunter. Looking back at Pokémon
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Legends Arceus, I think that the Pokémon games are probably going to
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become more like Monster Hunter in the long run. Monster Hunter is
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incredibly fun to play with friends and overall it's got really
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detailed mechanics. The main difference with this and Pokémon is that
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you can theoretically go for a very long time without engaging with
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the monster taming mechanic. You'll have challenges getting past Zoe,
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sure, but you'll be able to do it.
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For an "early access" title, this is a remarkably polished and stable
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experience. This is the best UE5 game I've ever seen run on handhelds
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like the Steam Deck and the ROG Ally. The only complaints I have are
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things that probably can be fixed with time and polish. The fact that
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they've sold so many units already means that this studio will have
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the resources to bring this to completion. I'm confident that the core
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of this game is good enough that all they need to do is fix lots of
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little issues with the implementation.
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When can you say that a new game this decade shipped with dedicated
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server software? That you could host yourself, and type in the direct
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IP of a server to connect to it, without having to do matchmaking or
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suffering through abortions of lobby systems? This game is amazing.
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It's seriously good. I don't know what else to say other than with
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friends it's an amazing way to manufacture brand new sentences that
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become memes.
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If this keeps getting better, I could easily see it being game of the
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year. I'd be amazed if it doesn't win something in The Game Awards
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this year. It sets the bar very high and I think they'll see it to
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fruition.