The game's idea is primitive and brilliant at the same time. Take a well-known franchise and mix it with a dozen other games and genres. Taking cute anime things and adding an AK-47 to them has always been "the height of fashion."
Palworld's success remains a mystery, although many explain it by the skillful combination of survival, strategy, and adventure mechanics. And all these aspects are not isolated – they are interconnected and complement each other.
Storyline at Release
One of the key innovations of the release version was a full-fledged storyline that guides you through exploring the island. Palworld doesn't spend much time introducing you to the world and immediately immerses you in the thick of things. At the very beginning, you find yourself on the shores of Palpagos, meet a lone explorer, who directs you to the nearest settlement. However, the plot develops at a monotonous pace. You meet an NPC, go to solve regional problems, report back, complete another task, report again, and then finish everything with a battle against the Tower boss of the region.
At first, everything works well. However, after a few regions, the structure starts to falter. The search for eight Key Spheres to eventually reach the World Tree certainly gives players a clear goal, but it turns the journey into a routine. The formula rarely changes, and in later regions, I often predicted the next step long before the game got there.
This predictability doesn't mean that individual stories are uninteresting. The Tower bosses' diaries add human motives to the characters you have to defeat. Zoe's entries, the first story boss, paint a picture of a person trying to live up to others' expectations, and the shipwrecked survivors' diaries gradually reconstruct the events on the islands. Thanks to them, the inhabitants no longer seem empty, despite their significance in moving the main plot.
In addition to the main storyline, you may stumble upon side quests. None of them are fundamentally new, but almost all of them are somehow related to Pals. One NPC needs medicine for a sick companion. Another asks for help saving a stolen Pal. And a third will simply offer to sit down and talk.
Still Playing a Survival Game
Despite its story focus, Palworld remains an open-world survival game. The key gameplay involves exploring locations, battling bosses, uncovering world secrets, and collecting local fauna called Pals, each with unique combat abilities, skills, and characteristics. They serve as combat companions, base workers, and even livestock.
The game features a full set of average survival mechanics: hunger, temperature, crafting, building, equipment durability, base management, and various progression trees – all competing for attention in the first few hours of the game. However, in practice, all these mechanics are simple and don't require much time to learn all the intricacies.
You need to eat, repair equipment, and dress for the weather – staying too long in extreme temperatures leads to health reduction. Hunger lowers damage and defense stats. However, the game offers a wide variety of food, each offering its own effects. Some provide quick satiety but accelerated hunger. Others, on the contrary, suppress hunger or give additional characteristics.
The combat system here is primitive. It consists of attacks and dodges. But despite the ability to fight both up close and from a distance, melee weapons don't feel as effective. In most skirmishes, players prefer ranged weapons – be it a simple bow and arrows or a laser gun at the highest levels of progression.
Preparation is much more important than the battle itself. In addition to crafting equipment, the player is allowed to carry five Pals, each with unique passive and active abilities. And Pals themselves can be divided by specialization: fighters, mounts, gliders, weapons, and support. Fighter Pals provide useful buffs and have powerful abilities. Mount Pals are useful for long journeys.
Glider Pals are directly related to the parachute mechanic and provide additional bonuses when gliding. Weapon Pals speak for themselves. Some can be used as flamethrowers, others are used as living shields, and the unluckiest are doomed to become projectiles for a grenade launcher. And support Pals are useful for their passive buffs: increased carrying capacity, reduced cargo weight, and other everyday bonuses.
Management with a Hint of Slavery
Pals are not just combat companions. They are the workforce at your base. There are 287 types in the game, and each has its own work skills that determine its role at the base. Some can work with their hands at a workbench, others in mines or logging, and the function of a third is to be livestock: Pals can provide wool, milk, and other products.
As a rule, the role of monsters at the base is determined by their physique and element. If the former affects work at the workbench, in the mine, or on the farm, the latter determines its role in more specialized positions. Fire Pals can cook food and smelt ore, grass Pals work with crops, and electric Pals supply the base with energy.
Among the less significant and subtle mechanics are character traits. When catching the same Pals, you may notice that each has random passive effects. Some may deal more elemental damage, while others get hungry faster. But on the one hand, they have a significant impact, and on the other, it is solved by catching another Pal or simply ignoring the shortcomings, which may not be related to combat or work.
But in Palworld, you can recruit not only Pals for your production. The open world is full of people representing various organizations. For example, poachers or the Pal Protection Society. And they can become full-fledged slaves in your production. However, if you overdo it and catch too many people, opponents of human slave labor may start hunting you, and you will have to regularly fight them off.
A less obvious way to attract workers is by breeding Pals. To do this, you need to build a special farm, and store eggs with offspring in an incubator until they hatch. However, this is where gambling begins: the Pal can turn out to be anyone, regardless of the parents' species. The only thing it will inherit is their passive character traits.
But no matter what method you use to replenish your workforce, you must observe one main rule in managing your farm – do not get attached to Pals. As your base grows and production tasks specialize, you will need characters with more developed work skills. Pals can be leveled up in terms of labor using a special facility, but it will require too many individuals of the same species, making it a common tactic to replace one Pal with a more efficient one.
Worth Looking Under Every Stone
Exploring the world of Palworld is not just about finding Pal habitats. The game does not have procedural world generation. You appear in the same temple in the southeast of the map. To the north, there will always be a frosty mountain, and to the west – a volcano with sulfur deposits. And along with this, settlements of peaceful inhabitants and camps of evil factions are located in the same places. Therefore, you can meticulously explore the Palpagos archipelago: find items for leveling up, convenient positions for building a base, and notice details that previously went unnoticed.
Each biome has its own characteristics. In the volcanic region, huge skeletons emerge from ancient rock layers. They hint that creatures much larger than modern Pals once lived on the islands. In other parts of Palpagos, abandoned cathedrals, ruined fortifications, large statues, and remnants of an advanced civilization are found. The game hardly explains the origin of these objects, so many past events remain a mystery.
During travels, there are constantly reasons to deviate from the route. Behind a rock, there might be a dungeon, nearby – a rare Alpha Pal or a wanted criminal. Sometimes the game reports a meteorite fall or a supply drop. And sometimes nearby you might stumble upon a random dungeon. Such events also distract from the main task but provide useful rewards: rare materials, blueprints for valuable equipment, or new Pals.
The local archipelago looks inhabited not only due to its natural landscapes. Each faction has its own stylistic design. The Rayne Syndicate poacher camps consist of rough metal structures and primitive stakes around the walls, indicating the organization's temporary presence. The Pal Protection Society creates tall wooden settlements integrated into the forest landscape. And PIDF bases immediately stand out with their prisoner cells. By the appearance of the camp, you can tell who it belongs to even before encountering the enemies.
Visual design is complemented by sound. During normal exploration, the music hardly interferes with the environment. Trees, waterfalls, Pals working at the base, and other background sounds are audible. The soundtrack becomes more noticeable during key events and dangerous battles. The game has a good soundtrack with pleasant and inspiring melodies: from the grandiose battle with a key tower boss to the mundane sound of catching a Pal.
From the Stone Age to the Future
Another key mechanic in Palworld is progression, which has remained unchanged since early access but has received new levels of development. The progression cap has been raised from level 65 to 80. And at each level, new technologies become available for study. You start with a stone pickaxe and end with special wings and tools from the distant future. However, the problems of progression remain the same: a lot of grinding is required.
Level progression is gradual if you move around the world and fight enemies equal to the player. But base development and the use of learned technologies require enormous resources. Each new unlocked upgrade immediately generates new interest. And along with this, it sets its price, which forces you to prioritize.
The location of the base will cause a separate problem. If you settled in the starting location, sooner or later you will have to move out. There are no necessary resources there, and independently teleporting to gather them is too routine for a game where you have a whole staff of workers at your disposal. And given the high ambitions of progression, you will constantly face a shortage of resources.
But progress is far from as linear as the technology tree suggests. By exploring the world, you can stumble upon blueprints. They offer the same equipment as in the technology tree, but with much higher defense, health, or damage stats. Thanks to such finds, you can save research points and invest them in other promising projects.
Another progression system is related to character stats. Each level you can invest a point in health, stamina, damage, crafting speed, or carrying capacity. The choice depends on your preferred playstyle: some parameters simplify battles, others make world exploration and base development more convenient. However, these stats can be improved with special potions.
Pals are also not deprived of progression. In addition to joint leveling up and upgrading work skills, Pals can develop using a special console that offers to improve a specific skill for all Pals. And in terms of combat, the game offers special fruits that can be fed to a Pal, and it will gain a new ability. However, they are only useful for weak Pals that do not have powerful abilities. For others, they will be useless.
More Fun Together
The third key feature of Palworld remains multiplayer – it allows you to play the game with friends. In a group, it's easier to distribute responsibilities and more fun to consume content: build a common base, explore regions, and fight bosses. Cooperative play makes base development faster and large battles significantly more dynamic.
However, Palworld does not offer separate cooperative mechanics. The mechanics remain the same as in single-player. Each participant has their own level, technologies, equipment, and personal progress. If one player spends more time on the server, they quickly overtake the others and begin to complete most of the available content independently.
Because of this, public servers often turn into a shared world for solo players. Participants can build separate bases, catch Pals, and explore islands independently, meeting only before bosses or raids. For multiplayer to truly work as a cooperative, players have to agree in advance or invite friends to play together. However, more often public servers become a place of constant anarchy. All profitable lands for base building are already occupied. Griefers and cheaters regularly inhabit them. And ping spikes can also occur on them.
Therefore, Palworld works best in a private company and on a dedicated server. This option allows participants to enter the game regardless of the world owner and preserves overall progress. However, the world continues to exist even without players: Pals consume food, lose mood, and may stop working. Therefore, it is advisable to change server settings according to the group's schedule.
Verdict
Palworld 1.0 is noticeably different from the game released in early access two years ago. During this time, the project has received new regions, Pals, bosses, equipment, quests, and mechanics. Some game elements have been reworked, and empty parts of the world have gradually been filled with content.
The developers kept their main promise and did not abandon the game after a successful launch. The current state shows that early access was used to develop the game, and not just to gain initial profit.
The release version of Palworld cannot be called perfect. Some interface elements remain overloaded and not always intuitive, the building system sometimes limits the freedom of object placement, and the behavior of Pals outside of their assigned roles seems inconsistent.
However, in two years, Palworld has transformed from a raw and unexpectedly popular survival game into a major game with a clear structure, a large amount of content, and prospects for further development. Therefore, you want to play it and spend time in it with friends.