Context: Pocket Pair is spreading their devs thin on three unfinished early access games (Craftopia, Palworld, Never Grave) and capital G Gamers are crying
Palworld is $30 on steam. It’s a litttle expensive for an indie game but I’ve gotten my money’s worth already. It’s not perfect but I wasn’t expecting a AAA title. Honestly I’m just impressed multiplayer works as well as it does. I also appreciate that they didn’t shoehorn any awful cutscenes in. No story > bad story. It also runs pretty great, even though my computer is older and I’m using proton/linux.
Compare Pokémon scarlet, $70. Laggy. Unpolished. Missing features from previous games. Unskippable cutscenes with characters just standing around talking to each other. Boring basic story. Nothing to do at the end of the game (no battle tower). No new fun features (the open world feels empty and ugly, compare BotW/TotK). It’s too open, there is no Mt Moon to get lost in.
Even if the team makes no further improvements I’m still having fun with palworld. I don’t see myself ever replaying scarlet.
Right, and is OP saying buying another Pokemon game will make gamefreak actually put effort in? Like why would it work the 10th time when it failed the first 9 times.
Gamefreak doesn’t put effort in because they don’t have to. Fans will continue to buy them regardless of quality.
I’m 60 hours deep on Palworld less than two weeks in while maintaining a full-time job. I don’t buy games to make statements, I buy them because they’re fun to play. And this particular one really is a ton of fun to play. Yes, they’re clearly ripping off pokémon and breath of the wild and elden ring, and I’m sure a few other games. But it’s a lot of fun nonetheless.
Same, despite being in early access it’s already a lot of fun. Feels like the game that I wanted gamefreak to make but never did.