- Hey, and we're back with another episode of Before You Buy. That show will give you
some straight up gameplay and our first impressions of the latest games releasing. Today, we're talking about "Palworld". This is the game the
internet has been calling Pokemon with Guns. It's also the game the internet
has kind of crowned king over the course of last weekend as this game launched in early access, it like broke records, it flew
to the top of Steam charts. So I've been playing
this for a few days now, both solo and a bit of
it cooperatively on PC where this footage has been captured and it's also available
on Xbox through Game Pass. So now I know the running
tagline joke is, like I said, Pokemon with Guns, but it's really Pokemon but a survival game like "Ark". "Pokemon" with some elements that some Poke fans have
been wanting for a long time. "Pokemon" with a dash
of "Breath of the Wild" and a few more popular games. Look, people don't like these comparisons. They get very defensive. I've seen the arguments online, but it's often pretty blatant here. Now what matters is that
it clearly derives a lot from things that a lot
of other games do well, sometimes shamelessly, for some, a little too close to comfort. Some character models are
alarmingly close to "Pokemon". So there's some potentially
questionable stuff here worth acknowledging. Regardless, the game is doing
something for some people, clearly it's scratching an
itch, it's filling a void. Me personally, I don't love
a lot of survival games. I'm pretty picky, but I found
myself hooked on this one. This game gives you a lot
considering its early access. Yeah, it's a little jacked up. Some animations look weird or unfinished. Menus and some whole mechanics could use some complete tweaking and there's more features I'd love to see. But even with the roughness,
the early accessness, it's a really fun time already. There's a lot against it though. It feels a bit cheap, almost
like thrown together at times. And it can be devoid of any
cohesive feel or personality with the world at times too. Sometimes almost like soulless, but hey, let's just get into it, explain the mechanics and
talk about everything. So if you don't like survival games, it's still very much the thing here. It's not the most intensive one, it's actually pretty casual, but like you're chopping down trees, you're cooking and eating to
keep your character healthy, and you're building primitive log cabins. But from there, the game
very quickly gets you hooked onto its loop. Catching creatures with
balls you throw at them. You can run up and
whack them, weaken them, and then toss a ball at them to hopefully catch and contain them. From there, you can have the
little creatures populate the home base you build, get to work, and also accompany you out in the field. You can throw out a ball and have a little ripoff Pikachu come out and follow you around wherever
you want, whenever you want. You can ride some of these things, you can use them as mounts,
you can fly on them, you can have them fight with
you and adventure with you, and that is just a cool thing. Like to have that fully
like uncompromised here, like just having that creature with you doing whatever is cool. Yeah, they can only do so much, but you can teach them different attacks. You can command them to do those attacks. It's simple, it's
accessible, and it's casual, but it gives you that good
sense of Poke freedom. You're catching these creatures for XP. So catch a bunch of the same
one and get a big XP boost. Catch a new one you haven't seen yet, also, you get a big XP boost. As you level up, you can dump points into basic
stats like health, stamina, attack. Along with that though, you level up and you earn
points that you can spend in a technology skill tree, a skill tree that looks
almost exactly like "ARK: Survival Evolved". Here, you unlock new
things for you to craft, and work on, and improve everything. So go from cooking food over a campfire to using a real stove. Make more things to store
your items, new weapons, fences to defend your
homestead, stuff like that. Only in this game you have Pokemon or whatever as your little workers, all of them have their own characteristics and specializations and this is what makes the game
feel a bit more interesting. Having a bunch of little
creatures graze in a pen so you can harvest them
for wool while creatures with hands can plant seeds
in your farms to grow food. And then like the water
creatures can come over and use their water powers to
blast water onto the crops, or maybe power a mill to
generate more material for building even better stuff. It's really fun when it all gets going. You need to keep the
creatures fed, rested, and happy for all of this to happen. And sometimes your areas
will get attacked too and you'll need to kind
of rally the troops. So you can go from a
little hut with a farm to a fortified house with
sandbags, and walls, and towers, and even turrets and weapons
the creatures can use. Along with that, you're
adventuring out in the world. Your main task seems to be finding these massive boss towers. These contain like a big boss battle that you need to really
gear up and kind of prepare and grind for. They seem challenging, but the other thing is
that the game world itself is absolutely huge. Getting to these towers
might take a while. The map is massive and I feel like I've barely
even scratched the surface yet. There are cave dungeons
with special creatures and loot to find inside,
rare creatures hiding around, big boss creatures out in the open, and I've even found some hidden bosses in some pretty weird
unexpected places too. There are even towns with NPCs. This is where the game really
feels the early access. It's pretty lifeless
with a couple of vendors and boring NPCs who barely
have anything to say with some weird writing and dialogue. Still there's potential here for a lot. You can just buy new pals or
visit a shop and buy items, but that really seems to be it for now. There are also kind of
bandit camps out in the world with enemy bad guys to fight against too. This feels pretty weak with
not a ton of excitement to them and really not a lot of reward. It's nowhere near as
good as the boss stuff. It seems like this is still
very much an early access work in progress thing, so be warned. It's that depth though that
I've really found the most fun, getting better and better, leveling up and fighting
with my creatures, finally unlocking like a
grappling hook, or a gun, or building a harness to ride my creature. That stuff is really satisfying and it's pretty briskly paste for a while with you satisfyingly grinding just enough to progress at a pretty even rate. I don't know how long that'll last, like how far down the tree that will feel. This is only first impressions of course, but I've actually been impressed here. Once you start really getting
a production line going with creatures making you ammo or crafting you new Poke
balls and everybody has a job and things are moving and
everybody's fed, it's fun to see. You can throw your creatures
around, you can pet them, you can feed them and it's
cool to see them help you out. Like a little fire type volpex looking guy will breathe his fire
breath into the ironsmith as you forge ingots or blast
your fire as you're cooking. Little things like that
made "Palworld" feel like a creative spin on the
many genres it's combining. Now, there's a lot of freedom
here and a lot of complexity. It seems like you can find
shinies out in the world and there's a breeding system too, so the game throws a lot at you. It's a full meal, even if
it's a real unfinished one. But I think it comes down
to that amount of stuff that people are really enjoying,
that kitchen sink approach. It's a casual survival
game with monster hunting, collecting elements, and a
massive amount of exploration. Now my only other complaint is that because some of these elements
feel so just thrown together and some gameplay concepts
so close to other games, that it really leaves
open this glaring hole where the games, I don't know the word, like it with soul should be,
it feels pretty lifeless, like devoid of character. Other than some of the
creatures being totally awesome like Depresso, besides that, hanging out with them on the farm, it doesn't really feel
like it has any sense of cohesive lore, or
story, or world building, or even visual style to it. It's all just kind of like
I said, tossed together. You can find little collectibles
to read out in the world, and they attempt to describe
some of the bosses or faction or what's going on. And I've seen some people
think this is enough, but to me everything here
feels like an afterthought. It just kind of feels
like this random game. You're like a little "Fortnite" guy with a furry outfit fighting
against weird Pokemon and bad guys that sometimes
look like the hell gas from "Kill Zone". I don't know. One boss encounter feels
completely unlike anything else in the entire game. It's bizarre sometimes. It's like a bunch of puzzle
pieces next to each other, just not actually connecting. Nothing is really very interesting here because there just isn't anything yet. This is definitely like
a matter of preference. You might not care about that. You just wanna have fun in this world. I can only speak to how I feel, so I hope "Palworld" can
take the millions of dollars that's clearly making already and build out a more
interesting world and characters and everything that you can
really fall in love with 'cause that will be the
layup in my opinion. Maybe carve out even better takes and just newer stuff that isn't just evaluating on other games. That's just me. Now the developers do claim that this game is 60% done and PVP and new content is in the works. And I'm curious to see where that goes. So again, I've had some
harsh words for it, but like I said at the
start, I was hooked. I've been having fun. It's accessible. It's easy to get into with some
nice satisfying progression and a bunch of early access mess. If you're the type of player
who can tolerate that, buying into something
unfinished and even a bit buggy and you like a dash of survival
game stuff in their games, then yeah, maybe keep an eye on it. And while I did play a lot of it solo, I did have a surprisingly good time. I did have even more fun
when I brought a friend in. We hopped in a little server and just started doing our thing, battling, and catching,
and doing everything. I would say it's fine on your own, but the experience definitely
improves with others. All this being said and done,
like with games like this, we tend to revisit them in a year or so. We've done it with "No Man Sky". We've done it with a lot of games that release either early
access or in a rough state. So I'm looking forward to
talking about "Palworld" in a year, see where it is, and see if Nintendo
sued them into the dirt. We'll see where this goes, but of course, this is a before you buy, you know how this works by now. We give you some pros, some cons, and some personal opinion. And now I wanna hear yours
down in the comments. What do you think about "Palworld"? It seems like everybody's
made their mind up already on this thing. It's either something
you're into or you're not. Do you feel like the stuff is just blatantly ripping off unfairly? Are you not really fazed by that? What do you think the
future of this game is? Are you surprised by its success? Are you a "Pokemon" fan that
felt like you've been abused for years and now you're coming to this? I'd love to hear your perspective
down it in the comments. Let us know anything you
think about "Palworld" and if this video helped you out, seeing some gameplay,
getting some opinions, clicking the like button does help us out. Thank you. But if you're new, consider subscribing because we put out
videos every single day. But as always, thanks for watching and we'll see you guys next time. (dramatic music) (object clattering) (character moaning)
