Palworld

dupin

pals >:)

[i]First off, the game is pleasant to play and looks fantastic. However, beneath that surface lies a mountain of glaring flaws and poor design choices, which is why I cannot give it a positive recommendation, even in its 1.0 release.[/i] [h1]TL;DR:[/h1] [list] [*] [b]Massive Info Deficit:[/b] Crucial stats, passive stacking, and buffs are completely hidden or poorly explained. [*] [b]Zero Strategic Depth:[/b] Fights boil down to quick-swapping pals to abuse cooldowns or spamming the recall sphere to force-dodge. [*] [b]Absurd Powercreep:[/b] Both Pals and technology render themselves obsolete in no time. [*] [b]Severe Balancing Issues:[/b] Shifts drastically from a brainless "Animal Crossing" clone to a stat-bloated artificial difficulty wall in hard mode boss towers. [/list] [hr][/hr] [h2]Character Statistics & RNG Leveling[/h2] Every level up gives a stat point for Health, Attack, Defense, Stamina, Crafting, or Weight. It's poorly thought out: [b]Attack is basically useless[/b], giving a measly 2% damage increase. Because you start with only 100 Stamina—making gliding, mining, and climbing agonizingly slow—I initially dumped points there. The issue is the 50-point hard cap per stat. Exploration drops random stat potions. Due to pure RNG, the game kept throwing Stamina potions at me until I hit over 500 Stamina. It became entirely useless, forcing a costly stat reset just because the loot tables messed up my build. [i]Why not remove these potions and give more stat points per level so players can freely specialize?[/i] [hr][/hr] [h2]The Tedium of Hidden Statues[/h2] To power up, you must collect hidden Pal statues. Finding them naturally is a chore because many are only visible from highly specific angles, and there are far too many. But because the boosts are [b]huge[/b], you are practically forced to get them. This doesn't encourage organic exploration; it just forces you to use an interactive map on a second monitor, making the mechanic feel entirely pointless. [hr][/hr] [h2]The Illusion of Depth (Combat & Raids)[/h2] The game pushes a "dark, gritty" survival aesthetic, but the loop feels balanced for a toddler. There is no tactical positioning or synergy. [b]Open World:[/b] Two AI monsters stand face-to-face, slowly trading moves. To win, you just exploit the system: ride a mount for a separate set of cooldowns, or rapidly quick-swap your team to pump out constant damage. [b]The "E" Exploit:[/b] Pals can’t dodge on their own. The only defense is repeatedly tapping 'E' to pull your Pal into its sphere to avoid an incoming attack, then immediately throwing it back out. It’s tedious, not strategic. [b]Raids:[/b] These are completely hands-off. You just dump your Pal Box onto the field and watch the chaos unfold. You have zero control, no tactical agency, and the frame rate absolutely chugs. [b]Artificial Level Scaling:[/b] Damage scaling is broken. Fighting a Level 78 boss with a Level 74 Pal is a brutal slog. Level that same Pal to 76 (taking 10 minutes by cheesing the same boss), and you can suddenly delete the boss in three hits. [hr][/hr] [h2]The Breeding & Powercreep Problem[/h2] Once you unlock breeding, IVs, and Star upgrading, open-world balance completely vanishes. Around level 50, I bred an optimized Fire team and proceeded to utterly trivialize the rest of the game, vaporizing everything in late-game zones even while under-leveled. The tech tree suffers from the same issue. You level so fast in multiplayer that you constantly outpace your own unlocks. You build a machine just to craft components for the next tier you already unlocked. It always feels smarter to just skip the current tier, gain a level or two, and build the version that is twice as efficient. Furthermore, [b]Schematics completely break progression.[/b] If you find a schematic (which is always better than the tech tree version), you can craft high-quality armor without ever spending tech points to unlock the base version, making the Tech Tree feel like a disorganized afterthought. [hr][/hr] [h2]Flying Mounts: From Invalids to Rockets[/h2] This is where powercreep peaks and breaks the world. Early flying mounts are slower than walking, with the stamina of a 90-year-old heavy smoker. By the end game, you fly a literal missile. Top-tier mounts move so fast that [b]the game engine cannot keep up[/b]. If you sprint, the pals won't spawn fast enough. I routinely had to fly to an arena and sit waiting for seconds just for the boss to actually spawn. Flying mounts completely trivialize ground exploration. While optional early on, the late-game terrain is unnavigable without one. You are also forced to use them to abuse the split-cooldown mechanic and dodge certain endgame boss moves that are literally impossible to avoid on foot (like Panthalus). [hr][/hr] [h2]A Nightmare for Min-Maxers[/h2] If you like optimization, this game will infuriate you. Almost nothing is explained accurately: [list] [*] [b]Vague Descriptions:[/b] Passives say they "don't stack," but fail to specify if that means with the exact same passive or similar ones. Another passive grants a chance to find wild pals with the same traits "except for some passives"—without ever listing the exclusions. [*] [b]Broken UI & Hidden Math:[/b] An "+80% Attack" buff doesn't apply to your current or base attack; it uses some hidden, middle-ground metric. Critical hit stats don't exist on the UI, yet crits happen. [*] [b]Inconsistent Buff Trackers:[/b] Some buffs appear as auras, some above your health bar, and some don't show up at all. A crucial 5-second buff from Orserk sometimes lacks an animation entirely, leaving you guessing when to refresh it. Rings and necklaces give zero indication if their stats stack. [/list] [hr][/hr] [h2]Late Zones Performance Issues[/h2] The early game takes place in flat, empty zones where the game runs beautifully. However, the final two zones suffer from [b]severe optimization issues[/b]. While they look great, they are packed with so many assets that the game constantly stutters trying to stream them in. [hr][/hr] [h2]The End Game: From Animal Crossing to Bad Dark Souls[/h2] After a laughably easy story mode, the Hard Mode Boss Towers slap you with artificial difficulty. It’s not hard because of clever mechanics; it’s hard because the boss suddenly has 600k+ HP and a strict 5-minute time limit. If your Pal takes a single hit, it dies. You are forced to spam the "E" recall exploit constantly while cycling your entire team just to beat the clock. To make matters worse, the AI pathfinding is terrible; your Pals will regularly unload their strongest attacks directly into solid walls because they don't recognize geometry. [h2]Conclusion[/h2] The foundation has unlimited potential, but right now it is a balancing nightmare. It swaps between being boringly easy and frustratingly cheap, all while hiding basic mechanical information. It needs a massive structural overhaul if this game wants to pretend to be something more than just a "catch 'em all" game.

Great game!

the game might look a little childish but it is not it is a very good game there are many types of pals and the map is huge money well spent

eVERYTHIGN HAS BEEN ERASED