Heres the difference between Pokémon haters and Palworld haters.
Palworld haters never played the game, so their opinion has no weight. They saw 1 trailer, and only see it as "Pokémon with guns". They look at it on a surface level, refuse to look any further, and just write it off as a knock-off, like what they do with every other monster taming game that is not Pokémon.
Palworld fans who hate Pokémon at least played Pokémon before, so their opinion actually matters. They're not just talking shit to talk shit, everything they dunk on Pokémon for is something they actually experienced while playing, and they saw that Nintendo was not fixing these issues as the franchise went forward. In fact, Palworld fans who hate Pokémon grew up with Pokémon, used to like it, but don't like the new direction Nintendo is taking the series in terms of game design.
Palworld literally exists BECAUSE Pokémon started sucking, and longtime Pokémon fans needed SOMEthing actually fun to play. And modern Pokémon simply was not, and still is not, delivering.
Pokémon fans often use the "it's a kids game" excuse to defend any bit of criticism thrown at the game, as if a multi-billion dollar corporation really needs some unwashed dork online to protect them or something.
Well, we can use the same logic.
Pokémon is for kids. We are not kids. So we stopped playing it.
Palworld is for everyone, not only kids. We're an "everyone". So we started playing it.
We're not kids anymore, so we wanted a game that doesn't treat us like kids. That's really the long and short of it. Other kid's franchises like Digimon were able to grow up with it's audience (while still making stuff for the kids, since it's still a kid's franchise at heart), yet Pokémon refused to do so. And since Pokémon refused to do so, Palworld stepped up to fill that role.
