It's like Pokemon but mask off.
I like monster catching games and like with most westerners my first taste of the genre was with Pokemon. But it didn't end with Pokemon. A lot of people who fell in love with Pokemon rarely extended their interest to other titles. As a result many other members in the genre languished in obscurity. The most notable ended up being Digimon but Digimon never got a big piece of the pie, but when rpgs were having a monster catcher craze I jumped in.
Monster Rancher, Dragon Quest Monster, Digimon, Azure Dreams, Robopon, and even something completely off the wall.
And after playing that and many more I had my illusion completely shattered on how good Pokemon actually was.
Every game had a little something that Pokemon either dragged their feet on having or never had.
Robopon gives you the ability to customize and change your abilities based on whatever load-out you gave your Robopon. On a surface level this looks like something that makes the identity of your Robopon irrelevant but that's far from the case as items have to be compatible and certain levels of compatibility make moves more or less effective. But the most important part is acknowledging is that when this game came out Pokemon still had sparse, single use TMs and HMs that were permanent. Robopon allowed you to access to basically every move in the game, you just had to discover which combination of items on which Robopon enables it.
Dragon Quest Monsters 1 has a breeding system and mandates that you use it. Not only are bred monsters stronger than wild ones but carefully bred monsters can have unique and very powerful offspring and even if you settle on a specific monster and want it to be your main, the monsters have level caps that are less than 100 meaning that you'll fall off if you insist on holding a monster indefinitely.
Dragon Quest Monsters 1 came out a full year before Pokemon Gold and Silver came out and when that came out and had breeding as well, the differences were brutal. You were expected to wait out the egg hatching (as if running around in a circle was ever going to be a fun game mechanic), then your egg would hatch and the Pokemon would either be the mother in its base form or a not Ditto. But wait, it's even worse. Pokemon have breed compatibility that is obfuscated with vague terms and now instead of mixing and matching at will you have to consult an insane flow chart to divine who can make babies with whom and you just end up using Ditto anyways.
But the worst part is that outside of shiny breeding (and learning a couple of moves from the parents that can't be acquired otherwise) and getting baby forms you don't get anything special from breeding Pokemon because any random Pokemon can have the stats you're looking for meaning that catching Pokemon is going to be better than breeding in almost every regard.
Azure Dreams allowed you to fight with your monsters and your monsters followed you around in the over world. Two years prior Pokemon Yellow came out with the trademark mechanic of having Pikachu following you in the over world. But this feature would not consistently stay in future titles and it took till Arceus for a trainer to be ever slightly more involved in the fight than just standing and giving commands.
Monster Rancher sacrifices a lot of commonly loved mechanics in monster games in order to have the most definitive monster training experience. Monsters have to train via mini games and non-combat related activities.
Monsters get tired, they get sick, they eat, they have favorite and least favorite foods, they can get hurt, they can get angry, they can run away from home, they can cheat their training, and they can fight with or without your guidance. When you play Monster Rancher you will miss out on the exploration and the range of creatures but when you let your Pokemon get one shot because you didn't know the match-up and basically nothing happens to you or them you'll miss how Monster Rancher makes you care about the well being of the Monster and when you're in a cave or a patch of grass or a large body of water, grinding out experience by fighting a small handle of Pokemon over and over again (back then! I know experience gain is really easy now but back then) you'll wish you can just go to a real gym and exercise the experience you want.
Digimon World changes from game to game but the very first one for the PSone is THE game that screwed up how I felt about Pokemon's basic mechanics.
Digimon World 1 gave you only one Digimon to train and raise at a time and a couple dozen transformations but you could feed the Digimon, it has moods and behaviors, you need to discipline it, you can train it in combat or at a gym, you can adjust its stats, it can learn dozens of moves on top of a super move and Digimon are programmable. Intelligence isn't just a magic damage stat. The smarter your Digimon is the better it can comprehend specific commands and complex maneuvers, meaning that with enough training your Digimon can be told to do everything from evade oncoming attacks, go whole hog and do max damage, Defend from all attacks, or even conserve mana spending.
Dragon Quest Monsters had this as well where depending on how they are trained they handle fights and understand commands based on your training or lack thereof.
Nothing like this really exists in Pokemon. When Reverend breaks Pokemon down to "press the button to receive dopamine." It's a joke but in reality, as a trainer you should be expected to actually train your Pokemon well enough to actually do things on their own. In real life every trainer for every sport expects the person they train to be self directing, when you do a coliseum match in Dragon Quest Monsters you can't give monsters specific commands so you have to rely on how you conditioned them to fight well beforehand.
A Pokemon Trainer should be able to be hands off, and have your Pokemon handle it on their own. If you have to tell your Pokemon what to do and when to do it, have you really even trained them anything?
And you might think this is a long diatribe on what is clearly a post about Palworld but my point is that I play the Monster Collector/trainer games and have been finding Pokemon lacking for maybe 15 years. So I look forward to and support the little differences that make other monster collection/training games better than Pokemon and Palworld offers a very unique experience when compared to Pokemon.
Pokemon slowly phased out regular real world animals in favor of more Pokemon but they often gloss over how because there are no normal animals and there's just Pokemon for everything, that Pokemon have to be the main product that's consumed and killed and that hundreds of Pokemon more than likely exist to just be butchered and consumed regardless of how sentient and sapient
many of them are. At the very least Pokemon have their own food cycle where they brutally murder each other to stay alive.
In Palworld you don't have that issue! It's a dog eat dog world, whatever you don't feel like capturing or keeping you thrash 'em and scrap 'em. The game has ragdoll physics so when you're done murdering the sheep and stripping it of its assets you can roll its dead body into a river.
Pokemon talks a big game about friendship and love and how you can't just treat Pokemon like emotionless weapons. However, that's exactly what players do. There's no consequence for letting your Pokemon get nuked so there's no particular care for their well being. Nine times out of ten you don't win because you love your Pokemon more. You win because your Pokemon out levels the opponent or they hard counter the opponent.
In Palworld they don't worry about that ethical dilemma. You know what? Your Pals are weapons and if you really want to up the ante, give them a gun! In the Pokemon world most conflicts are resolved with a Pokemon battle but in Palworld killing people is a team effort!
Gary may think he's smarter than you but is he smarter than bullet?
Throughout the games and the movies and the comics and even TV show what you'll notice is that actually Pokemon battles are a low priority for most Pokemon owners. A lot of people treat Pokemon as family members and pets but even more use Pokemon as a utility to solve everyday problems or participate in special contests.
Depending on the Pokemon game you are playing the side content can enable ways for you to treat the Pokemon like a friend and not like a living gun. There are even mini games that allow you to train your Pokemon towards a goal that doesn't involve just fighting the opponent but these things aren't added on top of each other with each title, they're swapped out. Never the same mini games, never the same friendship mechanics and in each game they are very shallow.
In Palworld you are expected to fight with your Pals but the main feature is putting your Pals to work at your base. Building and turning your complex into a well oiled machine. Not every Pal does the same job so you're invited to get many pals for many different tasks.
So in Palworld they are a pet, they are also a gun, and a hammer. But it's all a core feature and not side content and there's no pretense where you pretend that the creatures you control is not just tools to serve you and do what you desire.
Speaking of desire! Pokemon has Winked and nudged at the idea that Pokemon are occasionally more than friends and pets. There are an odd amount of Pokemon that are more human than monster and there's a redacted text log that says Pokemon and humans were mates and got married. It's hard to know just how close Pokemon are to humans without it being kid friendly or just extremely strange.
Palworld doesn't have that issue! In fact.
Here's Lovander! A Pal whose text entry more or less says that it's fucking everything that moves! It has only recently set its sights on humans, but that's not a big deal. After all, humans can be captured in Pal spheres like any other Pal. That's right game theorists! in Palworld humans are just Pals and are subject to the exact same mechanics.
It takes courage to say the quiet part out loud.
Now is Palworld the Monster Catcher game I've been waiting for? Kind of. It's in early access and if it adds more tasks and locations and objectives it could be quite good.
Being completely unhinged and unethical is what makes Rimworld great. If this game can be modded easily, for 30 dollars. It's worth your time. Let's just hope that Craftworld was just a stepping stone for this and not an indication of the devs being more idea dogs than developers.
