The following is a slightly altered transcript of our Palworld preview on the Pure Xbox YouTube channel. You can watch the full video up above, complete with a bunch of gameplay footage that we captured during our early access hands-on!
This new 'gotcha' game has drawn comparisons to the likes of Pokémon which you can credit to its catching, training and battling of over a hundred collectible monsters, but to say this is simply a "clone" of that series would be to completely ignore much of what it's all about.
We'll be honest, we were somewhat wary of Palworld before picking up the controller to get hands-on with it earlier this week, mainly because everything we'd seen about the game had only raised more questions. On the one side, you've got these adorable monsters called "Pals" for catching, befriending, and battling. On the flip side, you’re given the freedom to catch or kill every Pal you encounter, which theoretically means you could serve a "Lamball" kebab to a… Lamball.
So, the question remains, is Palworld a family-friendly adventure or is it something a bit more…sinister? Whatever the case, Palworld is on its way to Xbox Game Pass this Friday, and let's just say our curiosity has definitely been piqued!
We spent 7-8 hours with Pocket Pair’s open-world survival game prior to sharing our impressions, fumbling through the initial tutorial, capturing over 30 Pals, exploring the diverse biomes, and even beating the game’s first big boss. The Pokémon-style focus of the gameplay loop is catching Pals, training them, levelling up with them, reaching several towers scattered around the world and then defeating each boss that resides within them.
What immediately stuck out to us were the game’s open-world elements though, combining the likes of base-building, crafting, farming and exploration. Because of these, Palworld doesn’t feel like your bog-standard Pokémon clone by any means. Yes, you catch Pals, train ‘em up and everything you’d expect from the 'gotcha' loop - there’s even a Paldex of sorts - but Palworld plays much more like your Valheim and Ark survival games, and there’s even a hint of Breath of the Wild’s gliding, climbing and stamina bar too.
In the early stages, a lot of your time is actually spent bashing sticks and stones together to craft tools, building basic structures and doing some light farming. Resource gathering, crafting and inventory management are central elements, making the initial gameplay a tad long-winded and fussy. However, once you recruit Pals to manage your base whilst you’re off on a grand adventure, Palworld evolves into a much more rewarding and satisfying gameplay loop.
Just like in Pokémon, Pals exist in this world to be caught and put to work in some way. Recruiting your ultimate hit-squad of Pals is a familiar process: stumble across a target, weaken it through battle, and then crack it over the head with a Pal Orb. If successful, great! You’ve enslaved an adorable monster to do your bidding. Pals can join you on your adventure to battle other wild pals, humanoid enemies with guns, and difficult bosses. Instead of leaving your remaining Pals in a box for eternity, you can instead put them to work on your base camp. Each Pal has its own capabilities - for example, Cattiva can work the stone mines, whereas Foxparks can forge iron ingots. You can craft saddles to mount your Pals too! Whilst the 'gotcha' method does feel familiar, you now have the freedom to craft weapons for personal combat instead of relying on Pals to do all the battling for you.
Personal combat as a whole feels good enough. It’s not groundbreaking by any means, and at times it can be a bit janky, but it’s decent and what you’d expect from these open-world survival games. Where Palworld does shine a little brighter is in the Pal combat. Each monster comes with its own skills, strengths and weaknesses, as well as elemental effectiveness too. It’s like Pokemon for the most part, only you can join in on the battle, peppering foes from afar with the bow (and later, guns) or getting up-close to club a Chikipi or two.
In our time with the game so far we've gone from a barebones club and bow, up to a cleaver, spear and triple-arrow bow - and when you decide it’s time to encounter the harder world bosses and tower battles, these improved weapons really are a necessity. But we guess it’s slightly disappointing having to go through the stone age of weaponry before we can bust out an assault rifle to riddle Pals with a barrage of bullets. We're keen to get there and we do actually want to keep playing, but it's just taking so long to unlock those guns!
So, if we were to summarise our hands-on time with the game so far, for the most part we've thoroughly enjoyed what Palworld offers. Having the 'gotcha' element added to an open-world survival experience keeps things entertaining. Adventuring further away from camp to spot new Pals captures the excitement of Pokémon in a fresh new way. We personally found the crafting to be somewhat awkward in areas, such as when it comes to house-building, but bare in mind Palworld is very much in early access at the moment.
We're sure there’s plenty more to get into, but as far as we're concerned, Palworld’s open-world survival and 'gotcha' goodness does a decent job blending the best of both genres together to make a great addition to Xbox and PC Game Pass this January.