Either way, I decided to commit: I bought the game.
I don't know what I'm getting into, so here's hoping it's a good time.
Self-professed Wild Card who thinks cynicism isn't so bad.@morenohijazo
I'll say I was confused a bit myself for that reason. Having said that, the Pals often do drop meat when they're killed (explicitly labelled as the meat of their species), and a tooltip does say they die.
Leviticus 19:34You get the meat and drops regardless even if you just catch them, so it’s not really a definitive indicator, but yeah, there’s a tutorial tooltip in the beginning when you kill your first Pal specifically stating that you can’t catch Pals if you’ve killed them.
Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.I found the Pal that might actually get Pocketpair in trouble. It only needs some minor changes to be fine but c'mon guys, you can do better than this.
Apologies for the direct link. I tried to find a way to image embed but I couldn't find the proper way to do it.
Edited by Silentedge89 on Feb 2nd 2024 at 9:45:58 AM
I'm unsure what Pokemon it resembles as well, though admittedly it does look familiar.
Leviticus 19:34Tbh actualky seeing these are kind of wild. Some are clearly based on actual pokemon with a few changes to get over any copyright issues.
Others look wildly different and creative.
It's a strange contrast
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."Ignoring the aspect of potential plagiarism and the Mon genre being established by now, the original Pokémon Red and Blue had wildly different Mon designs, probably because there were different people working on them. The look of the battle sprites got streamlined in Pokémon Yellow. Note that the Japanese Pokémon Blue was already the Updated Re-release of the original Red and Green versions, so it took them a second Updated Re-release to do that. Oh, and also going from a passion project by a small dev studio (albeit with Nintendo's endorsement) to a heckin' international media franchise.
Palworld is still an early access game. I don't think that inconsistent designs are surprising, or that we need a whole conspiracy theory to explain why some designs are good and original while others look more derivative or just not as good. Wether they aimed for only Pokémon clones and filled the rest of the cast with their own design ideas or the other way around, I don't know. But Occam's Razor suggests that the reasons for the inconsistencies are just inexperience combined with multiple people doing the job.
Now, looking which mons to feature prominently in trailers etc. and specifically choosing the ones that evoke the image of existing Pokémon, that is a choice. Which, at least for now, worked for them? At least as long as TCP cannot actually sue them over their designs. While Palworld's target audience is not exactly the same as that of the current Pokémon games, the core audience is probably still "people who are at least somewhat aware of Pokémon as a franchise". So it makes sense to show people, "look, you can have off-brand Mareep and totally-not-plagiarized Piplup here".
Edited by prinzessinnen-und-raben on Feb 3rd 2024 at 10:11:35 AM
"He betrayed the Staaarks" is not the only problem here.Pals are expies of Pokemon, vaguely similar to how Metro Man and Omni-Man are expies of Superman, or Mocky Mouse characters are to Mickey. Similarities are not only to be expected, but are outright desirable.
Pal designs vary in quality, but I don't think an explanation like "they're trying to drum up controversy" is especially necessary. I think an adequate explanation is that their attempts to emulate Pokemon's style is somewhat inconsistent, perhaps they're using multiple strategies to do so.
For example, the best Pal designs usually look like they're made with the same "kit" as Pokemon. IE, they look like creatures you'd see in a Pokemon game without being a specific Pokemon.
Leviticus 19:34I was thinking about this Pokemon comparison last week:
Game Freak allows anyone to come up with a Pokemon, but the Art Team modifies and cleans up the design to make it fit into a Pokemon.
Pocket Pair just throws it in without cohesion.
Some people may like one over the other.
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."Started playing this a few days ago and it's been super addictive for me. Game's actually really fun with different Pals and moveset combinations to go for. One thing that separates this from Pokemon is that Pals with seemingly useless stats or poor combat potential can be very good at the base, like Chikipi still being vital especially in the mid-late game due to producing eggs for cake.
Ride pal is currently a Vanwyrm but I'm 2 levels away from getting Faleris' saddle. Either way I can still fly around and shoot most stuff dead, it's great fun. Also loving the way Pals spawn. Sometimes you can even find Misplaced Wildlife Pals in areas you're not supposed to see them in, which allows you to get them early.
That said, one of my biggest gripes of the game is the really bad pathfinding. Human enemies tend to get stuck in walls/terrain, I even got trapped in terrain once. Large Pals at the base tend to get frequently stuck in objects (looking at you, Jormuntide/J.Ignis) or sometimes end up on top of ore spawns and can't get down. I'd fix this by making all Pals assigned to the base have tiny little Flambelle's collision detection in regards to objects, other base Pals, and pathfinding (they still have normal hitboxes with regards to attacks during raids). Yes, pals will seem to noclip through walls and ceilings, but it's a small price to pay for keeping your base operations functional.
The other gripe I have with the game is causing my laptop to overheat and damage my graphics card. I played on the second-lowest graphics setting and it still overheated. =/
Edited by ironcommando on Feb 6th 2024 at 2:12:56 AM
...eheh

The game calls it as you having killed them in a tooltip, so we can assume so, though the fact that some Pals like Lamball just get the swirly eyes does make it look like you just knocked them out.
Hitokiri in the streets, daishouri in the sheets.