Recent reviews by Smugsy

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By the way, check their Twitter, they're implementing stuff on their servers, so nothing has gone live yet.

What's with the Epic Games dependency forced into our games recently? Game installed that crap before I even accepted the optional linking after reaching the main menu.
Game has a really cool aesthetic. Watching a war going on around you as a survivor, just trying to find scraps, is really sweet. Game can be proper spooky too, night time missions are great, especially when some horror comes sliding around a corner while you're in a trench, and can barely see anything but the malice in its red glowing eyes. Sound design is okay, but I wish it had more terror inducing stuff when being chased by nightmare fuel.

Animations and character control is janky, but I've dealt with worse in overall good games before, and this game certainly could become one of the good ones. Combat and stealth certainly is harder because of the jank.
Enemies act... strange. At times, at least. Expected, but frustrating still.
Optimization is lacking, but it runs well enough for being fresh early access. I can see why some people who may have 6-or-more year old hardware would struggle to run it, though.

Come and explore the Bunny Cave.

Pocketpair made Palworld as an assetflip from their previous Early Access title, Craftopia, which at the time of writing, is still unfinished. In Craftopia, you do the same as in this game, however instead of throwing your spheres at animals, you instead throw them at Pals. Replace Pals with animals, and you have Craftopia.

My biggest problem with this game is that Palworld stops introducing new things extremely early in, and most of the mechanics surrounding industry/automation is shallow, and horrendously clunky. The game is in Early Access, so there's obviously room to develop, but...

I expect this game to be abandoned, like Craftopia (The "Seamless" update is still not released on console, which came out Jun, 2023 only on STEAM so far). I could be wrong, but even so, be aware that the devs of this game currently doesn't see their previous early access title as something they should finish first. All in all, this current state of Palworld is not a very interesting experience to me, and the company has a shady background. And if by chance you like Pokemon gameplay, and you're looking to scratch the itch, look elsewhere. It is Craftopia, but reskined.

Also, an update: the amount of hate I received from making this review is incredibly funny to me.
Goes to show that this game has already garnered a very unhealthy fanbase.
Disabled the comments for the betterment of all involved :)

This is the version of the game we deserved on release day.

Top quality RPG that AAA studios can only dream of achieving.
A piece of art that has been immortalized in history because of Larians desire for making the best game that they could, regardless of the risks. Nominate for Game of the Year!

To those on the fence when considering buying this game: Don't.
When I finished the game I felt nothing, just a sigh of relief that it was finally over.
I did the quest-lines for 3 out of the 5 available factions. It was a bad experience all the way through, with only a tiny amount of highlights.

Overall; An L for Bethesda.
It's awfully boring. Combat hasn't evolved past Fallout 4 and exploration sucks.
Also runs very poorly on the highest settings, all on a PC that uses a 4090 and 13th gen intel CPU.

Only positive has been ship customization, and even that has annoying restrictions.
Combat sucks despite getting powers. The writing is terrible, and has only gotten worse with each game Bethesda has been releasing. The dialogue choices forces you to say some dumb "quirky" garbage that I never want my character to say.

I feel like giving my 2 cents; so in short, it's not a bad game. A bit pricey, but that's the only money you'll spend.
You play with 5 players. Together you fight dinos, bosses and complete objectives.
There's 10 unique Exosuits divided between 3 classes. They can be customized with upgrades and cosmetics.

It's 60 dollars, 70 if you want the battlepass which gives cosmetics, and unlock the exosuits early. Other than that, there's no in game store. The lootboxes are only unlocked as you level up, in order to give you random unlocks on cosmetics.
In-game currency is earned by playing, which is used to buy cosmetics or upgrades.

The "one gamemode" evolves as you play, introducing new mechanics and enemies.
The game is primarily PvE, with the final stretch of a mission including some fairly intense PvP to decide the victor, which I've been enjoying. And before you start a mission, you have the choice to opt out of PvP play for when the final stretch happens.

Overall downgrade of the known CoD experience.
MP & SP maps feel awful, except for a select few. Campaign was generally not enjoyable; the AI feels awful to fight against... bullet sponges, seriously? And they can headshot you while not even having their weapons aimed at you? C'mon. Not to mention: $70(!!!) for the base game. Feels like I was scammed.

It has one saving grace which is gunplay, which was clearly a strong focus. Too bad the rest of the gameplay stains the fun that could be had with that.

Cool combat, decent story, fun leveling journey.
Endgame is a joke, so don't expect it to be a long term scratch for the MMO itch.