Palworld’s early-access release has been a widespread success with over six million downloads on Steam so far, but there’s still plenty to be fixed and added. The game is certainly deserving of praise, however there’s also work that should be done, so here are five things Palworld got right and five things that still need work.
5 Great Things About Palworld
You Can Sort the Inventory
When it comes down to games where you’re inevitably going to be inundated with loot, one of the most frustrating things to have to do is sort through your inventory and chests. While it’s nice to be able to manually set things where you want them to be be in your hotbar, having to do it manually can add such a drag to the feeling of the gameplay.
Luckily, Palworld lets you organize both your inventory and chests with just the push of a button, regardless of what you have in them. It makes it much easier to keep track of all the things you can find yourself dragging with you on or during an adventure. Not to mention the fact that the AI for the Pals at your base might often put the wrong things in the wrong chests, so being able to organize it makes it easier to fix their mistakes.
Efficient and Effective Farming
Even though the Pals aren’t necessarily perfect at what they do, Palworld does a great job of letting you passively farm resources while you’re actively farming Pals. You have to choose each Pal that’s out in your base, and having a limited number of Pal slots at each base means you’ll have to tailor your chosen Pals to the needs of your farm.
Being able to fine-tune your processes like this makes it really simple to progress and make new items. As you need a particular resource, you can find how to farm it, level up to that point, assign some Pals to do the job and you can head on your way knowing that the work is still being done without you.
Build Mechanics are Smooth
Maybe Minecraft just spoiled me, but many games where you’re building a base seem to miss the whole mark of actually building the thing. LEGO Fortnite felt like it missed the mark on building because you’re only assembling chunks at a time and it can feel rather clunky, while Palworld seems to be a bit smoother and more refined when it comes to the build mechanics.
Palworld just breaks the building down piece-by-piece, making it easy to set up the base that you want and how you want it. Not to mention, you’re able to disassemble things just as easily as you can put them together, which makes the process of destroying objects and rebuilding them almost as easy as if you could just move them in the first place.
The Leveling System Is Clear & Concise
Going into Palworld, it wasn’t super clear as to how the leveling was going to function and what it was going to be based on. Luckily, the progression feels smooth and deserved in Palworld, with catching Pals being the best way to level up while also bringing heavy incentive on leveling your base so you can farm better resources and craft better items.
It could have been easy for the game to lose track of the various progression features, but they all remain well intertwined at every step. To catch stronger Pals, you need to have better Pal Spheres, which you need to have a certain workbench to make, which you need to be a certain level to construct, which you can only reach by catching more Pals. The progression system of the game feels nicely well-thought out.
Fast Travel Works Great
I can be deterred by some open-world games with a large map because there can just be too much running through open space that gets a old after a while, but Palworld has a great system for fast traveling that takes away a lot of the grind. There are plenty of fast-travel points all around the map that make it easier to explore and find different locations without needing to invest tons of time into expanding only a short distance away.
The layout of the fast-travel points makes for a great leap-frog style of exploration. I can go to the farthest point on the map from my base and explore until I find another pillar which I can use to go back to base and restock my supplies. On top of that, being able to instantly travel from base to base makes it easy to bring supplies back and forth rather than taking hours just to walk the distance.
5 Things That Still Need Work
Audio Quality Needs Refinement
One of the first things that I noticed about Palworld was the quality of the sounds in the game, and it wasn’t in a good way. I was honestly concerned about my speakers having bugged out, but then I played the game with headphones on and found that the problem remained the exact same. Understandably, not every thing is going to be perfectly refined given that the game is in early access, but hearing quality audio is something that I didn’t realize I’d miss as much as I do.
Everything from the Pal sounds to the music sounds muddy, like there were issues compressing the files properly. Luckily this is being improved as patches roll out, but it’s still not perfect. There’s not any music playing in the background unless there’s a raid on your base or you’re in a boss fight, so it can feel a little empty as you explore in silence. It does make for a good opportunity to try out some new playlists as you grind for Pals, and that’ll probably sound better than anything in-game anyway.
Limited Character Creator
In a time where games are really leaning into how custom you can make your characters, Palworld’s character creator feels somewhat limited, although to be fair is isn’t the most limited that I’ve seen. You can alter the size of your torso, arms and legs and you can change your hair and overall facial structure, but that’s about the extent of it other than your skin tone. There comes to be a point where I need a little bit more than some funky hair colors.
Also being able to transfer your character to other people’s worlds feels like something that will be an exciting change to the game, although it’s not the case as of now. Luckily, Pocketpair tells you right up-front that you won’t be able to transfer your character, but they also managed to set expectations high by saying how they will be planning on adding it in the future.
No Cross Saving With Steam
For players using Game Pass, this aspect actually doesn’t apply, but if you had a copy of Palworld on Steam and also had the game on Xbox, the two modes would not be compatible for saving your progress across devices. This is due to the two platforms having different versions of the game, so the data would likely not be compatible unless the Xbox version is brought to the same level. That being said, there is good news on the horizon.
Pocketpair announced a bit more of their roadmap for the future of Palworld, in which they promised crossplay between Steam and Xbox. This will allow more and more players to enjoy the game as a group instead of only playing it solo, especially if they’ve been playing the Xbox version without large dedicated servers.
Buggy Animations & Traversal
As much as I love a good T-Pose every time I log into the game, I have to recognize that it is an unintentional glitch. That being said, the ceremonial T-Pose is the least of my concerns regarding the animations in the game. Traversing through the environment isn’t the worst thing that I’ve experienced, but some situations where I’m trying to climb up a mountain have left me under the map and under the weather.
As far as bugginess goes, Palworld isn’t an unplayable experience, but there are still the occasional early-access problems that arise. Clipping through the world is toward the top of my list, but struggling to climb up the top ledge of a cliff after the using the grappling hook is close behind. As the game gets more refined, these issues will surely be ironed out, but they’re definitely worth noting while they’re here.
Glitchy Combat
For a game that heavily features combat between both yourself and your Pals, it feels like a spot where the enemy AI needs some work. There have been numerous times where I’ve been told that there’s an incoming raid on my base, only to see the whole enemy group just standing still a few meters away from my base not moving. It’ll take me or my Pal starting a fight with them that’ll cause them to starting running towards my base, but even there the bugs don’t always end.
I’ve had moments where an enemy will get stuck in the wall of my base from having just clipped into it, which posed a few more problems than I would’ve anticipated. There was nothing showing of the enemy but the end of their assault rifle, so my team and I weren’t able to hit them even though they were able to shoot us. This meant that my team was all targeting something they couldn’t even attack, and none of them were able to go back to work because they knew there was an enemy there.
While there are certainly a few things that need to be ironed out, Palworld is so far proving to be a hit early on in 2024. The big question as of now is whether or not it’ll have time to get itself straightened out before the Pokemon Company comes to do just that.
