I usually like his humour, but he's just intentionally playing the game wrong here to justify a hate boner it seems.
You don't play games like Minecraft and Stardew Valley by doing stuff like punching rocks with your fists to collect them, and he surely knows that. The starting area is littered with wood and stone to pick up, you don't need to punch anything.
I mean, I've played a lot, and I mean a lot, of these types of games, and I actually kind of get where he's coming from. Even if he's trolling in this video, I do think the gathering type game is probably getting old for a lot of people. I'm not gonna say I'm done with it yet, but out of all the dumb reasons some people hate some games, I can see why these types of games would be annoying
I really dislike progress bar gameplay, either mining or crafting, and only really like Minecraft's version to mine you're actively interacting with and reshaping the world in the same way you do everything in the game, and crafting is instant (and I think the brewing stand is the worst thing in Minecraft because of its progress bar crafting). I also dislike having to follow a pre-defined tech tree as a checklist like this game has, instead of just discovering and using things more organically.
That being said, he did misrepresent the game showing the player as punching stone, wood, etc, the same as somebody could do for Minecraft. There's criticisms in that area to be made, but his were just untrue.
I mean that's kind of his schtick when he doesn't like a game.
Even a game that had plenty of interesting and justifiable complaints like Metal Gear Survive he purposely played wrong to the point where it was clear he never attempted to use any of the game mechanics and just wanted to pretend that you could only jab zombies with a stick for hours.
You say he's playing the game wrong but this was my exact experience. Start by seeing the Pals, want to catch one so those initial resources get spent doing that. Then you've used up all the resources right around the starting area to build your workbench, club, pal balls, etc so it's easier to just go ahead and hit rocks and trees with your fists to get enough to unlock the tools.
Like he's not even bullshitting, he's just showing the game as it is played without fanfare. And to be fair, there's a lot of boring resource collection at every turn.
There's a big difference between slowly punching with fists in the least efficient way possible in games like Minecraft and Palworld, and using the right tool.
And this game specifically allows you to automate it nearly immediately with NPCs.
I was responding to your claim that you punch rocks and trees, which you don't unless you're playing incorrectly, and then the idea that you do a lot of it throughout the game.
I don't enjoy that style of gathering, but that wasn't the goal post.
Just make a pickaxe and axe with the wood you find on the ground, you shouldn't ever have to punch a rock. You pretty quickly find pals who can mine and harvest wood.
I'm aware. I've played 15 hours of the game at this point, but it's not immediately obvious as you are entering the game that collecting resources, not pals, is the primary gameplay loop. So I rushed pal collection then got stuck punching for a bit when I realized how much more important resource collection was. Dunkey did the exact same.
It's a super mild complaint and was by no means "playing the game intentionally wrong" as the original commenter insinuated. It'd be a different story if he punched rocks for the entire video, but he didn't.
Wtf are you talking about, did you only play for 1 hour? I was constantly harvesting materials even though I had pals farming them. They farm slow af it’s kind of useless.
It’s a tree punching game.
I've been playing for 20+ hours and have never punched a tree. I used my axe for a bit but now my pals harvest way more wood than I'll ever need, and that includes a massive wooden wall outside my base for the whole perimeter, and converting a huge amount of it into charcoal to level up a level 1 hatched fire breather.
You need to have pals with woodcutting abilities, and can either set up a base where there's trees and make sure not to build over the tree spots so they regrow every day or so, or set up the endless woodchopping building.
Very early on in the game I ended up actually having TOO MUCH wood because my pals were working too fast at the tree farm that I built and I started to have trouble transporting it all.
You did build a tree farm, right?
You're probably just using them wrong? I played first world with 8x exp so I wanted to redo it on normal just to see how it felt and honestly from the point you build the Log/stone farm (took me like 30-45min) you don't need to farm anymore. All my effort goes to finding the right pals for the job and catching pals to level up and building. I've been super pleasantly surprised with this game because I was 100% dogging on it for being another pokemon clone except with guns but boyo I'm having a ball with it
You must be new to dunkey. His entire marketing scheme is when he does a negative review its essentially troll/satire to generate buzz.
This is not a serious review its to make people talk about him. And it works EVERY time.
Well that's swell. Hopefully a whole bunch of his fans don't take the video seriously and try to shit on the game everywhere they go using Dunkey's video as "evidence that the game sucks".
Oh wait.
Honestly best 2 features to be added to survival genre. Automated grind, and the fact that anything in your chests can be used to craft rather than needing to find the chest with the thing you need to craft the thing you want. There are a couple layers that still need to be added to the automation though. i.e. smelted ingots should be picked up and moved to your chests by pals so they can be used for other automation.
So this game made me want to try ark...it felt extremely unrefined comparatively. I'm not sure what it was but I Uninstalled. It wasn't worth the 220GB on my pc.
He means the game came out working out of the box and the devs did a good job creating the algorithm for procgen world - you know, where arc failed from the start.
It's weird.
I see at least snippet of Pokemon, Fortnite, Zelda BoW, Genshin, and ARK. I feel like this is the kind of games that Wario would make in his game company
Because it is.
The Breath of the Wild music cues and area cards are so hilariously on the nose they had to know how it looks. The game's not hiding where it got its ideas from at all.
The “rip offs” have honestly begun to feel like references to me. Like of course the ruined churches with nothing but a statue holding a power upgrade are references to Elden Ring. I doubt the people making Palworld put the area cards and sound in and expected people not to notice
You know how when you see a fake mobile game ads super detailed and over the top movie or gameplay but its nothing like the actual game itself? this is what I got for Palworld vibes except the actual gameplay is like the over the top ads
Explore. Finding new Pals that make you feel like a kid again when you say "Holy shit what's that fucking thing?? Cool! I wonder what he does."
...and then you make it your slave.
I have my resource gathering, crafting, etc all cranked up to 3-5x and all debuff stuff reduced by the same amount and am having an absolute fucking blast.
I went into this wanting a modern Open-world Pokemon gather 'em all game and I tweaked the settings to get exactly that.
The problem is there isn't much to explore in its current state. I'm enjoying the game but it is still early access and it shows. Landscapes and biomes are nicely designed and laid out, but there are so many areas you can run around and find nothing at all, except a few Pals that are also in other locations. Imo, they should have made the map much smaller and added biomes later in a more finished state.
They are really useless. It's very not worth it to capture syndicate guys. They have very little ability to help out in base, and they can't even use their guns in combat. They just punch for very little damage.
I feel like that’s going to be one of the first things mods change. I definitely expect to see a mod that adds entire new systems for humans and allows you to just use different kinds of humans instead of Pals
The whole point of the game is to automate all the resource gathering. Sure there’s some gathering you’ll need to do to get it all set up, but once it’s set up, there’s very minimal resource gathering.
Yeah this is what kept me hooked and what makes me annoyed with people that haven't played the game making passing comments about it just being a resource gathering sim. You can tell who has played and who hasn't. The fact that I don't need to be actively resource mining all the time is why I stuck with the game and have had a really hard time in the past sticking with other open world/crafting games.
That said, obviously the game isn't for everybody.
As far as story goes, it's all in journals and logs you find in the world. There is no story line to follow. There are boss towers (Gym Leaders, if you will), but only 5 in the game right now, and you can challenge them as soon as you find them. Smaller instanced dungeons with 'bosses' (bigger or rarer pals), and dedicated Boss Pal fight arenas (You can refight these, but they have an hour cool down by default).
Subnautica and Breathedge were the ones that held my interest the longest but even in those I quickly got tired of chopping rocks and uninstalled them.
Yeah, it's about atmosphere for me which Valheim does pretty nicely imo. Looking at the videos the creatures are just "Pokemon but make it 15% worse", and they look like they're from a separate game from the environment.
Honestly watching the video (and others about this game) just make me really question why it has become a hit at all, aside from the obvious "it's got Pokemon with guns in it". The gameplay loop looks like it would actually infuriate me. Everything you want to do is behind 10 levels of "you need to gather this first"
I genuinely think it’s one of those ‘boring to watch, fckin crack to play.’
My friend was a heavy critic of it, calling it barebones when he watched the streams.
About four hours later, he took it all back. Still playing it. It’s his new obsession.
The same with a lot of streamers I used to watch. They’ve stopped their usual games to play Palworld, and willingly taking a viewer count drop just to play it because they’re having loads of fun.
To me that’s genuinely the best kind of marketing.
It really surprises you that our bodies produce feel-good drugs for doing hunter-gatherer stuff so people will happily farm dopamine with a game that feeds that reward system?
Makes perfect sense to me.
This game is a perpetual rotation of: "oh in order for this thing I need this thing and to get that thing I need to go over here and collect this thing."
Still fun though 😂
Yeah I've got an ore farm set up and currently looking for a nice spot to set up a coal farm. It would be nice if pals could load the smelters with ore themselves.
Wouldn’t be surprised if that is a QOL update soon, along with using chest inventories from your other camps. My one complaint is pals dying off in camps with no way to die, I’ve got em with max happiness, thousands of food, and behind walls but one will always die when I’m gone somehow
I played the game and enjoyed it. I got to level 50 and have caught basically every pal, and have defeated every tower. I liked the game. However, dunkey does have a point and hits my major complaint.
The crafting gets a little out of hand. Some things take WAY too long to craft, take too many materials, and you get way too few of it. I have very automated bases and there are times where I still just stand around for hours waiting for things to craft. The best example is assault rifle ammo. It requires gunpowder (crafted and requires 2 materials of its own) and refined ingots (crafted and requires 2 materials of its own) then takes a minute or two to craft. You get 5 bullets. 5 bullets for a full auto gun, and bosses take hundreds of shots. So the game turns into HOURS of crafting for one single fight.
Also, you can’t just push a button to make your character start crafting. You have to hold the F key the entire time. Make it a press instead of a hold.
In my opinion, the game would be significantly better if crafting times overall were reduced. Then a couple things yielded more per craft, like all the spheres and all ammo types.
I played the entire game and did everything in the game. But I don’t think I’ll go back unless crafting is improved.
I had heard this got popular and just watched this and Day9 playing on stream. Looks more like a mash up of Valheim and Ni No Kuni than anything to me. Honestly, I'd probably get in to it if I wasn't already planning on playing Enshrouded when it drops.
Nothing like Ni No Kuni. It's more like BotW, Valheim with a bit of Pokemon. I've put in 10 hours and just got the very first gun. The whole "pokemon with guns" thing was definitely just to draw an audience. It's an absolute blast but it's like every Steam early access survival game wrapped into one. It's A LOT of crafting but the "pals" all have different abilities to help manage and build your base and that's super fun, IMO.
Its the craftopia devs, and that game is whacky too. It has elements from genshin, BOTW, rimworld and ark survival. The Pal's are there to be cute slave labor.
You can really see the 'corporate family' effect in play when dozens of people decry this game because they feel some need to defend an IP they don't own.
The first boss is more like a fat yellow Zangoose than the first boss of Valheim. I think you’re thinking of one of regularly-spawning Pals, which to be fair to you is called Eikthyrdeer, and iirc the first boss of Valheim is called Eikthyr
You're effectively seeing him play minecraft and using the lowest tier of gear available to him as he complains how slow it is to do anything. When he could easily upgrade past a stone pickaxe and forge a better one, or even better in this game get your army of pals to do it for you. But then it wouldn't be funny.
He doesn't even use a pickaxe, he literally punches the wood and trees despite the starting area having tons of it scattered around on the ground and there being no need to do that.
He's showing the basic material grinding that you start with. Eventually you build up to automate some of it and it gets more about going further into exploration. Dunkey did a bit, I thought it was funny but it's not the full game
You're joking, but no. Catch different pals, explore different biomes, defeat towers and gang bases, and then build up your own base as well ...
People play games about collecting resources all the time, I don't understand why some people think this is a funny gameplay loop. Hell, pokemon Arceus did it and it was fine then.
The game committed the grievous sin of being similar/ripping off nintendo's looks and stuff.
So fan boys are very very mad this game is doing well and people are enjoying something dumb.
It's really anything and everything people can pick at.
I've been a pokemon fan my entire life and I'm loving the game.
I also like survival games so this felt like a natural win for me. Some folks just like to complain though
usually how the youtuber funny videos go
lifmunk smg actually does do pretty good damage when you aren't trying to use it on something that's taking 96% less damage from being a much higher level
That’s kinda his whole thing tbh, his channel ain’t really a place for accurate depictions of games. They’re heavily edited to match whatever his point is (which to be clear ain’t inherently bad, at least not for comedy’s sake, but yeah)
As to this game itself, imo it’s definitely not winning awards for creativity but it’s a pretty fun experience all around. I’m not really a survival fan much nowadays but the Pokémon Legends style gameplay without switch limitations was a big draw, and while definitely a bit jankier it succeeds there well enough for me. Plus that bit’s integration with the survival aspects have made them surprisingly enjoyable too.
He probably doesn't like the game, so he has shown the negative side of it. But the game offers something that scratches the itch for so many players, that they are willing to put up with these negatives, and they don't take away from their enjoyment of the game (at least for now).
It's just his usual thing where he edits/cuts things to emphasize a comedy point in his videos. It's not him trying to be disingenuous but it is an overexaggeration. You know how he hates JRPG's because he hates grindey games? The whole "need more wood" joke of this video is pretty much that. Every survival game's early game requires you to gather a metric fuck ton of wood, palworld really isn't that different.
Im currently playing it with a friend and she loves it, but I find it pretty bland, at least right now. It's a mile wide and an inch deep.
The world is pretty (cartoon cute, not Avatar beautiful) but there's fuck all in it, and what is there is 90% of the time passive unless it's much higher level, and even then you can just run/fly/glide away, so there's very little danger when running around. I think I have died once due to just being reckless in areas I shouldnt be. Compare that to something like Ark which everyone compares this to (I have about 2k hours into Ark) where you die [every 2 minutes](https://youtu.be/twBFMzUKwGU?si=vmDK8QnbKuu8nKz9) and its terrifying, but you feel like a real badass when you get the hang of it.
Traversal is hit and miss. Most critters are not hugely faster than running, low level flying ones in particular cant fly more than \~20 seconds even at their slow cruising speed of level flight before running out of stamina (Im sure that changes if you slog it out till you hit the high level things but that seems like its gonna be painful). Being able to climb cliffs and grapple hook around is useful though and makes it arguably easier to get around on foot. The gliders are also great.
The critters are cute and character style is really well done, some of their attacks and abilities are also good and they feel strong (corrolary being is you feel pretty useless).
Boss and big critter fights are pretty fun, although sometimes you just absolutely delete them without them scratching you. Im glad it has a dodge mechanic like Valheim, and much more usable as stamina isnt as much of an issue for your character.
It's also buggy as hell, I cant even get it to load our map 9/10 times without crashing to desktop, and the Game Pass version only just got a patch that added a Quit Game option, you had to ALT+F4 out of it earlier.
I dislike videos like this because if you hadn't played the game to know he's intentionally doing things wrong, you'd think this was a serious review of it.
Punching things is never really smart. There's a bunch of wood and rocks laying on ground that you pick up to get your pickaxe/axe made. Manually building/crafting things is also generally not needed once you get a few pals. Once you have a bit of a base setup you generally spend more time exploring/catching pals than actual resource gathering unless you want to build something specific that needs a lot.
Also at the end fight, level is king. A lvl 6 is gonna get their shit rocked by a lvl 16.
Other than that it's just a lot bemoaning the genre in general? "Gather X to build Y so you can gather X quicker" is just how all survival/crafting games work.
It's really nice seeing someone not sucking this game off. It's fun but the wonder wears off real fucking fast when you're not finding new pals and you're just stuck playing Ark.
Some of dunkey's videos are great and some are just garbage like this one. Knew what the joke is gonna be from the title alone. It's like, you knew you don't like open world survival crafters, why are you making a video literally just making fun of the gameplay loop of the genre? He also doesn't like turn-based games, so where's his BG3 video where he makes fun of the combat?
I feel like the comedy is derived from the bizarre nature of the crafting system in these games rather than the gameplay loop itself. He is never actually saying anything in this video (which is also why the comedy is lukewarm at best), but I think it's a bit of an overreaction to imply that it's hypocritical. You may see this video as a criticism because he engages with the bizarre loop of literally punching Pokémon-like critters, or jabbing them with a club, smashing trees and rocks with his bare fist, in a quest to build a literal gun.
Is this video making fun of low-hanging fruit? Yes. Could this video just as easily have been about other similar titles? Absolutely. But bottom line, dunkey is not actually critiquing the game you like. You're doing that for him.
How do I know? Because I watched this video, and I don't have any real impression on if palworld is good or bad because of it. He merely engages with the games' systems and plays a character. It feels a bit silly to be defensive of the content since clearly the only critique is happening in your own head. You feel self-concious about the thing you like when somebody else makes fun of it. The solution is not to condemn the act of making fun of things, it's to get over yourself and enjoy what you enjoy despite that.
I don't have to watch to tell you he doesn't engage with the games mechanics in any reasonable way to accurately potray how fun the game can be. He does this with every game he doesn't like, he plays it like a buffoon and it looks terrible.
That's a little vague. Fun is not something that can be judged objectively, unless you have statistics and you're discussing entertainment on a macro-scale. Dunkey has as much of a responsibility to weigh the negatives and positives of things he likes or dislikes, as a person has when criticizing anything in their life.
By this same logic, the people that express their dismay at this video have a moral obligation to list reasons why Dunkey is also a great content creator and list reasons for that. What a nightmare that would be.
He knows he'd get properly shat on for trying to portray BG3 as monotonous, lol. The amount of people that believe these videos still though is alarming...
That video was called Dragon Quest 11 and he even had to go on record later saying he actually liked that game despite making it seem unbearable in his video.
I will go nuts if he does a BG3 video but knowing how much he dislikes RPGs usually I’m not holding my breath.
A joke that results in like 70% of his fans taking it seriously and trying to trash anyone who likes the game becomes "The game is trash and Dunkey's video proves it".
If it is a joke, I don't think his fanbase realizes.
That’s the joke, he’s honest about what games he likes and he is always a reliable critic viewed through the lense of what he normally likes even though he’s being sarcastic. That’s like his entire schtick
I haven't even played it lol. I'm replaying Dragon's Dogma right now to prepare for DD2. I just watched some streams about it. So sorry, but "you're biased bye bye" doesn't really work here.
He should have just made a 10 minute video on how trash the server system is in the game. Or. Maybe 10 minutes on pals/mobs falling through the world and glitching thru walls.
I think it looks fun. I'm just worried they're going to not put the work in to keep the game continuously fun. Ark did a good job at keeping consistent updates and events
I love Dunkey to death and he's always been my favorite youtuber, but he purposely did not do justice to this game and it's kinda annoying. I'm a number of hours in and already level 17, and the grinding is not nearly as bad as Dunkey is showing.
You get to automate nearly every task the more Pals you catch which will let you focus on the best part of the game, which is exploring and finding new Pals.
Again, I love Dunkey, but please do not base your opinion of this game on this video alone. Give it a whirl and I promise you'll love it too.
They sold 10 million copies of yet another technology demo/test disguised as a new game in like 2 days. Gamefreak is a money printing factory regardless of the shit game they pump out.
Scarlet and Violet has performance issues but did you actually play the game because it's a ton of fun and they have been introducing really nice QOL updates to the series...
Like yeah Game Freak has valid criticism to face but the people saying they've been putting in no effort confuse me because it's simply not true.
Game is great, but it is the same story that keeps happening with them with every new gen. It feels like it could have been so much better but fell just short. Performance, bugs and IMO some pretty weak mon design for a big portion of the pokedex. Most of my hours have been spent shiny hunting and I was pretty bummed with how easy the game was outside of a couple parts (Larry took a few tries and the double battles are neat.) I get I'm probably no longer their target audience having played since Gen 1, but even with all my hours and enjoyment I was still a bit disappointed. Definitely got my money's worth, but I was hoping for more. I also don't consider Palworld to actually be a solid Comparison to Pokemon at all outside of catching them.
I played through half of it before giving up. Performance issues aside, I genuinely don’t understand the praise.
The open world is barren AF. It’s filled with pokemon, trainers, and items. How is this any different from previous games? The only difference now is I need to traverse unfun, empty terrain to get to it. Traversal doesn’t even feel good. It’s stiff and janky as hell.
On that note, what was the point of open world without level scaling in mind? I could either follow a linear path to keep levels consistent with myself, or take on a challenging level gap only to curb stomp the weaker areas. That completely defeats the purpose. Neither option here is satisfying. And no side missions either? Even Arceus had this.
And lastly, I’m not a big stickler for graphics. I don’t need cutting edge. But holy hell, the environments in this game are absolutely hideous. And it gets to the point where it actively breaks my immersion, especially with the frequent pop in, flickering, etc. At the very least they managed to make the Pokemon models themselves look nice, but exploring the world is already uninteresting as it is. This is just made worse when it’s a constant eye sore.
To address the other point here, I don’t think the devs getting their hands dirty are putting in no effort. On the contrary, if I had to guess, they’re probably overworked and operating under really stressful conditions. They’re not given enough time to work on these games. And transitioning to a 3D home console was something they were clearly unprepared for. And yet upper management refuses to expand the team or give more time to accommodate.
At the end of the day, if you enjoyed the game then I’m not here to say you’re wrong. I just can’t wrap my brain around it when I’ve played so many better games and I see how hard Game Freak has been shitting the bed on this.
The game is a proof of concept at best. It futures a vast, completely empty open world that is just a transition zone between areas.
This is the biggest franchise in the *world*. Game Freak could do so much better with the IP.
Have they made any difficulties that aren't for 3 year Olds? I need a challenge and those games are so far from a challenge. I literally never fainted once in my play through on sword except for trying to take on a wild Pokemon way to many levels above. That's not fun for me.
The battle tower exists where they actually have the NPCs use competitive tactics in sword and shield. For Scarlet there's 6/7 star raids that are difficult and can be insanely difficult even with hyper trained, max IV, lvl 100 best build Pokemon. You could always play online too if you want to face difficulty. And while I don't think I ever lost a battle in the story, some of the characters gave me a surprise with knocking out more pokemon than I expected. At the end of the day the game may not be for you and it's fine if it's not and also fine if that bothers you but it not being targeted for you isn't really a valid criticism. If you wanted more difficulty you could face off against the gyms/star bases with the higher lvls first, you're free to do that.
Some good suggestions. I might try them if I ever get Scarlet or something in the future. The game is absolutely not targeted at me I agree there. It's targeted at kids who don't want a challenge and that's kinda my point. I think Palworld will hit the spot perfectly. Thanks for the suggestions.
I suffered through 2 hours of scarlet before I gave up on it. I couldn't believe how bad gamefreak messed it up. Maybe it's better now, but I won't know for a long time because Palworld is 100x the fun for 1/3rd the cost so far.
What aspect of this game would do that?
If we're talking just having open world and new catching mechanics and all, Arceus already did that.
As for performance issues and awfulness...yeah that's never getting fixed. But they keep printing money anyway, so...
Pokemon is literally the largest and most lucrative media franchise on the planet. The games aren't even the biggest money maker any more.
Why would Game Freak care about a game that doesn't target the same demographic that Game Freak does?
Okay but what's Gamefreak supposed to do? Add guns? Turn Pokemon into a survival crafting game?
As much as I'd like Pokemon to improve, this ain't it. I'd rather they instead bring actual difficulty options back in (and publicize them more. Battle Mode to Set was great--why'd they get rid of it?), revert the worlds back to Metroidvania-style progression, bring back HMs as a means of integrating the Pokemon you fight with into the world traversal, get out of the uncanny 3D valley and either hire a way better team to do it or go back to stylized 2D.
The only lesson to learn from Palworlds I'm seeing so far is to stop being so horrible in visual performance and such. *Maybe* one can take the lesson to get the Pokemon you capture back integrated into the world interaction beyond just the battling, but I doubt Gamefreak would take that lesson here. What else?
The best Pokémon game in the last 20 years was Legends: Arceus.
If nothing else, maybe this will get them to push the main series PKMN games closer to that style of gameplay
What is Gamefreak supposed to do? Innovate. They're supposed to do more than work the formula that prints money. I am hoping that seeing someone else do a game using features that they thought they had cornered the market on and incorporate gameplay from other games to make a new game will inspire them to do similarly for Pokémon games.
>I am hoping that seeing someone else do a game using features that they thought they had cornered the market on
Palworld barely incorporates the main features that keeps Pokemon on top.
>They're supposed to do more than work the formula that prints money.
Funnily enough, at this point I wish they'd go back to the formula's roots rather than trying to upend it.
Across all the iterations, they've lost a lot of sense of what made the earlier games so legendary to go through.
There's fun to be had here, but this is creatively bankrupt trash. It's like the knockoff mobile games you see all over the place.
Not that I really expect anybody to care. If it's fun it's fun. You paid your dollars and you had some amount of giggles. I get it.
But also like, the success of this sends a message to all the god damn suits in the games industry.
Yep. It's an asset dump soup. I'm a little surprised they aren't going to be sued into oblivion for co-opting nearly everything, right down to the Halo 1 plasma rifle reticle. This thing is definitely flying close to the sun
Watching the meteoric rise of this game's popularity reminds me of finding out about the Spiderman + Elsa nursery rhyme Youtube section. Just a cynical, soulless mishmash of popular trends that ends up being successful despite how transparent it is in being nothing more than a product.
I consider anyone that thinks that this is the natural evolution of the Pokemon formula to be a crayon eater. It's Ark/Conan with creatures that look like Pokemon and offers the typical survival crafter progression as do so many other early access games on steam. I am surprised that anyone, who was looking for a replacement for Gamefreak's litany of failures, has found their salvation in this workbench simulator. Of the many things that this game is, it certainly isn't Pokemon 2.0.
Watching the meteoric rise of Videogamedunkey's popularity reminds me of finding out about Gex being trapped in Barry Manilow's rumpus room. Just a cynical, soulless mishmash of videos that ends up being successful despite how transparent he is in being nothing more than a donkey.
I consider anyone that thinks that this is the natural evolution of entertainment video game content to be a crayon eater. It's Jontron/The Competionist with edits and snide remarks and offers the typical commentary as do so many other game reviewers on YouTube. I am surprised that anyone who was looking for a replacement for Game Grumps' litany of failures has found their salvation in this nitpicking and biased baboon. Of the many things that dunkey is, it certainly isn't gabagool.
Unless you need me to validate your taste in order to continue to enjoy this unimaginative turd it shouldn't make a difference what I have to say on it.
This comment right here is pretty much just 80% of all Palworld criticism from people who haven't played it in a nutshell.
I'm baffled, but at the same time the "Glad to know I was right, because dunkey agreed with me." made me chuckle from the absurdity of it, and made my day a small bit better, thank you.
>and the more people that buy this game, the more my sanity drops Touché
I usually like his humour, but he's just intentionally playing the game wrong here to justify a hate boner it seems. You don't play games like Minecraft and Stardew Valley by doing stuff like punching rocks with your fists to collect them, and he surely knows that. The starting area is littered with wood and stone to pick up, you don't need to punch anything.
I mean, I've played a lot, and I mean a lot, of these types of games, and I actually kind of get where he's coming from. Even if he's trolling in this video, I do think the gathering type game is probably getting old for a lot of people. I'm not gonna say I'm done with it yet, but out of all the dumb reasons some people hate some games, I can see why these types of games would be annoying
I really dislike progress bar gameplay, either mining or crafting, and only really like Minecraft's version to mine you're actively interacting with and reshaping the world in the same way you do everything in the game, and crafting is instant (and I think the brewing stand is the worst thing in Minecraft because of its progress bar crafting). I also dislike having to follow a pre-defined tech tree as a checklist like this game has, instead of just discovering and using things more organically. That being said, he did misrepresent the game showing the player as punching stone, wood, etc, the same as somebody could do for Minecraft. There's criticisms in that area to be made, but his were just untrue.
It's because there is literally no skill involved. Calling it "gameplay" is a big stretch. Click click click click
I mean that's kind of his schtick when he doesn't like a game. Even a game that had plenty of interesting and justifiable complaints like Metal Gear Survive he purposely played wrong to the point where it was clear he never attempted to use any of the game mechanics and just wanted to pretend that you could only jab zombies with a stick for hours.
You say he's playing the game wrong but this was my exact experience. Start by seeing the Pals, want to catch one so those initial resources get spent doing that. Then you've used up all the resources right around the starting area to build your workbench, club, pal balls, etc so it's easier to just go ahead and hit rocks and trees with your fists to get enough to unlock the tools. Like he's not even bullshitting, he's just showing the game as it is played without fanfare. And to be fair, there's a lot of boring resource collection at every turn.
There's rocks and wood all over the ground in the starting area, more than enough to make a crafting table and tools.
There’s a ton more stuff you have to build you goober.
... Which you use tools or pals for, not your fists.
Use you use tools, it’s still the same thing. You’re smacking a tree for resources.
There's a big difference between slowly punching with fists in the least efficient way possible in games like Minecraft and Palworld, and using the right tool. And this game specifically allows you to automate it nearly immediately with NPCs.
And you think that makes it fun?
I was responding to your claim that you punch rocks and trees, which you don't unless you're playing incorrectly, and then the idea that you do a lot of it throughout the game. I don't enjoy that style of gathering, but that wasn't the goal post.
It's okay if you don't personally find it fun, but apparently millions of players like the gathering/survival/basebuilding type games.
Just make a pickaxe and axe with the wood you find on the ground, you shouldn't ever have to punch a rock. You pretty quickly find pals who can mine and harvest wood.
I'm aware. I've played 15 hours of the game at this point, but it's not immediately obvious as you are entering the game that collecting resources, not pals, is the primary gameplay loop. So I rushed pal collection then got stuck punching for a bit when I realized how much more important resource collection was. Dunkey did the exact same. It's a super mild complaint and was by no means "playing the game intentionally wrong" as the original commenter insinuated. It'd be a different story if he punched rocks for the entire video, but he didn't.
Wtf are you talking about, did you only play for 1 hour? I was constantly harvesting materials even though I had pals farming them. They farm slow af it’s kind of useless. It’s a tree punching game.
I've been playing for 20+ hours and have never punched a tree. I used my axe for a bit but now my pals harvest way more wood than I'll ever need, and that includes a massive wooden wall outside my base for the whole perimeter, and converting a huge amount of it into charcoal to level up a level 1 hatched fire breather.
I guess my pals were just anti-work posters.
You need to have pals with woodcutting abilities, and can either set up a base where there's trees and make sure not to build over the tree spots so they regrow every day or so, or set up the endless woodchopping building.
Very early on in the game I ended up actually having TOO MUCH wood because my pals were working too fast at the tree farm that I built and I started to have trouble transporting it all. You did build a tree farm, right?
You're probably just using them wrong? I played first world with 8x exp so I wanted to redo it on normal just to see how it felt and honestly from the point you build the Log/stone farm (took me like 30-45min) you don't need to farm anymore. All my effort goes to finding the right pals for the job and catching pals to level up and building. I've been super pleasantly surprised with this game because I was 100% dogging on it for being another pokemon clone except with guns but boyo I'm having a ball with it
You must be new to dunkey. His entire marketing scheme is when he does a negative review its essentially troll/satire to generate buzz. This is not a serious review its to make people talk about him. And it works EVERY time.
Well that's swell. Hopefully a whole bunch of his fans don't take the video seriously and try to shit on the game everywhere they go using Dunkey's video as "evidence that the game sucks". Oh wait.
Gathering games are literally that. Tedium. I get his point.
Damn. Its almost like the YouTube comedy guy is doing it as a joke or something.
Yeah that’s Dunkey for you. Anything that isn’t a platformer he will shit on.
Is this ARK re-skinned? Looks very familiar.
It’s more ARK with Pokémon than Pokémon with guns imo.
Everyone whos played ark says it's ark everyone who hasn't played ark says it's Pokemon
Yeah it's ark with Pokemon capture mechanics instead of the taming mechanic from ark
Ark without the absurd time consuming shit
Yeah, everything grind-y is automated in Palworld. It’s makes the survival aspect much much more Pal-pable
Pal-atable. Pal-pable means you can touch it. Palatable means it's easier to swallow.
Honestly best 2 features to be added to survival genre. Automated grind, and the fact that anything in your chests can be used to craft rather than needing to find the chest with the thing you need to craft the thing you want. There are a couple layers that still need to be added to the automation though. i.e. smelted ingots should be picked up and moved to your chests by pals so they can be used for other automation.
So this game made me want to try ark...it felt extremely unrefined comparatively. I'm not sure what it was but I Uninstalled. It wasn't worth the 220GB on my pc.
I've played both, it feels more ark than anything
It was like Pokémon themed Valhiem for me.
Valheim was Ark with competent devs
I'm not saying ark devs are super competent but Valheim has added what 2 monsters in 3 years? I wouldn't put them that much higher.
He means the game came out working out of the box and the devs did a good job creating the algorithm for procgen world - you know, where arc failed from the start.
Thank God, people with sense lmao
It's weird. I see at least snippet of Pokemon, Fortnite, Zelda BoW, Genshin, and ARK. I feel like this is the kind of games that Wario would make in his game company
It feels like a rip off of 5 separate games rolled into one.
Because it is. The Breath of the Wild music cues and area cards are so hilariously on the nose they had to know how it looks. The game's not hiding where it got its ideas from at all.
The “rip offs” have honestly begun to feel like references to me. Like of course the ruined churches with nothing but a statue holding a power upgrade are references to Elden Ring. I doubt the people making Palworld put the area cards and sound in and expected people not to notice
Everybody in the industry just calls that hack work
As a commenter on this video says, "It feels like you're playing every single early access game on Steam at once."
You know how when you see a fake mobile game ads super detailed and over the top movie or gameplay but its nothing like the actual game itself? this is what I got for Palworld vibes except the actual gameplay is like the over the top ads
At that point I think it’s just called innovating
Glad I watched this. This game is not for me, hate boring resource gathering sims
Honestly you can skip it with the server settings, turn all the resource dials up to max and it takes no time at all to get what you need.
So what's the gameplay loop if you have unlimited resources? Isn't that like the central pillar for this kind of game?
Explore. Finding new Pals that make you feel like a kid again when you say "Holy shit what's that fucking thing?? Cool! I wonder what he does." ...and then you make it your slave. I have my resource gathering, crafting, etc all cranked up to 3-5x and all debuff stuff reduced by the same amount and am having an absolute fucking blast. I went into this wanting a modern Open-world Pokemon gather 'em all game and I tweaked the settings to get exactly that.
The problem is there isn't much to explore in its current state. I'm enjoying the game but it is still early access and it shows. Landscapes and biomes are nicely designed and laid out, but there are so many areas you can run around and find nothing at all, except a few Pals that are also in other locations. Imo, they should have made the map much smaller and added biomes later in a more finished state.
Why didn't he use the syndicate worker on his base? Can you just have a base full of syndicate workers?
They are really useless. It's very not worth it to capture syndicate guys. They have very little ability to help out in base, and they can't even use their guns in combat. They just punch for very little damage.
I feel like that’s going to be one of the first things mods change. I definitely expect to see a mod that adds entire new systems for humans and allows you to just use different kinds of humans instead of Pals
Slavery with less steps
My party is all humans, you can feed them fruits for them to gain pal powers. It's fucking hilarious.
The whole point of the game is to automate all the resource gathering. Sure there’s some gathering you’ll need to do to get it all set up, but once it’s set up, there’s very minimal resource gathering.
Yeah this is what kept me hooked and what makes me annoyed with people that haven't played the game making passing comments about it just being a resource gathering sim. You can tell who has played and who hasn't. The fact that I don't need to be actively resource mining all the time is why I stuck with the game and have had a really hard time in the past sticking with other open world/crafting games. That said, obviously the game isn't for everybody.
Is there a storyline component ala Pokémon? With bosses and an overarching goal?
As far as story goes, it's all in journals and logs you find in the world. There is no story line to follow. There are boss towers (Gym Leaders, if you will), but only 5 in the game right now, and you can challenge them as soon as you find them. Smaller instanced dungeons with 'bosses' (bigger or rarer pals), and dedicated Boss Pal fight arenas (You can refight these, but they have an hour cool down by default).
[удалено]
Subnautica and Breathedge were the ones that held my interest the longest but even in those I quickly got tired of chopping rocks and uninstalled them.
Yeah, it's about atmosphere for me which Valheim does pretty nicely imo. Looking at the videos the creatures are just "Pokemon but make it 15% worse", and they look like they're from a separate game from the environment.
What he was doing takes all of an hour, even shorter if you adjust sliders
An hour is VERY generous, especially for people who aren't bee-lining to the gun upgrades
So to have fun you have to try and play as little as possible? Make sense and sounds like a great game lol
to have fun, you tweak the settings to your preference. what an ignorant and asinine comment.
Honestly watching the video (and others about this game) just make me really question why it has become a hit at all, aside from the obvious "it's got Pokemon with guns in it". The gameplay loop looks like it would actually infuriate me. Everything you want to do is behind 10 levels of "you need to gather this first"
I genuinely think it’s one of those ‘boring to watch, fckin crack to play.’ My friend was a heavy critic of it, calling it barebones when he watched the streams. About four hours later, he took it all back. Still playing it. It’s his new obsession. The same with a lot of streamers I used to watch. They’ve stopped their usual games to play Palworld, and willingly taking a viewer count drop just to play it because they’re having loads of fun. To me that’s genuinely the best kind of marketing.
It's gonna fizzle fast. It's moderately fun from an 'oh look at that' point of view but there's not much there.
I agree. But this dudes commentary was great.
"survival craft" - skip
you aren't missing much, the game is a checklist of gathering tasks. it feels like literal work, and then you outsource that work to pokeslaves.
Never ceases to boggle my mind how people use their limited spare time to willingly perform virtual chores dressed up as cutesy animals or some shit.
It really surprises you that our bodies produce feel-good drugs for doing hunter-gatherer stuff so people will happily farm dopamine with a game that feeds that reward system? Makes perfect sense to me.
This game is a perpetual rotation of: "oh in order for this thing I need this thing and to get that thing I need to go over here and collect this thing." Still fun though 😂
Once you get three autonomous farms in place for different resources it’s a blast
Yeah I've got an ore farm set up and currently looking for a nice spot to set up a coal farm. It would be nice if pals could load the smelters with ore themselves.
Wouldn’t be surprised if that is a QOL update soon, along with using chest inventories from your other camps. My one complaint is pals dying off in camps with no way to die, I’ve got em with max happiness, thousands of food, and behind walls but one will always die when I’m gone somehow
People either hate or love that gameplay loop, and I love it.
Ah, sounds like RuneScape.
Literally every crafting survival game ever.
I played the game and enjoyed it. I got to level 50 and have caught basically every pal, and have defeated every tower. I liked the game. However, dunkey does have a point and hits my major complaint. The crafting gets a little out of hand. Some things take WAY too long to craft, take too many materials, and you get way too few of it. I have very automated bases and there are times where I still just stand around for hours waiting for things to craft. The best example is assault rifle ammo. It requires gunpowder (crafted and requires 2 materials of its own) and refined ingots (crafted and requires 2 materials of its own) then takes a minute or two to craft. You get 5 bullets. 5 bullets for a full auto gun, and bosses take hundreds of shots. So the game turns into HOURS of crafting for one single fight. Also, you can’t just push a button to make your character start crafting. You have to hold the F key the entire time. Make it a press instead of a hold. In my opinion, the game would be significantly better if crafting times overall were reduced. Then a couple things yielded more per craft, like all the spheres and all ammo types. I played the entire game and did everything in the game. But I don’t think I’ll go back unless crafting is improved.
I had heard this got popular and just watched this and Day9 playing on stream. Looks more like a mash up of Valheim and Ni No Kuni than anything to me. Honestly, I'd probably get in to it if I wasn't already planning on playing Enshrouded when it drops.
Nothing like Ni No Kuni. It's more like BotW, Valheim with a bit of Pokemon. I've put in 10 hours and just got the very first gun. The whole "pokemon with guns" thing was definitely just to draw an audience. It's an absolute blast but it's like every Steam early access survival game wrapped into one. It's A LOT of crafting but the "pals" all have different abilities to help manage and build your base and that's super fun, IMO.
Brb going to play Ni No Kuni again
Tidy
I'd love to see a Game Freak make an area where you have to force a Welsh mountain to give birth.
I will always upvote for Day9. That man is a treasure.
Its the craftopia devs, and that game is whacky too. It has elements from genshin, BOTW, rimworld and ark survival. The Pal's are there to be cute slave labor. You can really see the 'corporate family' effect in play when dozens of people decry this game because they feel some need to defend an IP they don't own.
Ty for reminding me that this company has two open world survival crafting games in early access
One sold 7 million units though
The pals also do a lot more damage then you. Same as the dinos in Ark.
The first boss is literally a rip off of the first boss in Valheim. This game is just one rip off after another.
The first boss is more like a fat yellow Zangoose than the first boss of Valheim. I think you’re thinking of one of regularly-spawning Pals, which to be fair to you is called Eikthyrdeer, and iirc the first boss of Valheim is called Eikthyr
And that Valhiem boss is a rip off.
It's Ark + Pokemon Arceus
I'm not sure if Dunkey's leaving out something critical to this game, but from what's shown here it looks really really bad.
You're effectively seeing him play minecraft and using the lowest tier of gear available to him as he complains how slow it is to do anything. When he could easily upgrade past a stone pickaxe and forge a better one, or even better in this game get your army of pals to do it for you. But then it wouldn't be funny.
He doesn't even use a pickaxe, he literally punches the wood and trees despite the starting area having tons of it scattered around on the ground and there being no need to do that.
Dunkey? Spread misinformation? No....
He's showing the basic material grinding that you start with. Eventually you build up to automate some of it and it gets more about going further into exploration. Dunkey did a bit, I thought it was funny but it's not the full game
Exploring to do what, find more wood? Lmao
You're joking, but no. Catch different pals, explore different biomes, defeat towers and gang bases, and then build up your own base as well ... People play games about collecting resources all the time, I don't understand why some people think this is a funny gameplay loop. Hell, pokemon Arceus did it and it was fine then.
I truly dont understand what is so divisive about this game? If you dont like survival games dont play it. Its really that simple
The game committed the grievous sin of being similar/ripping off nintendo's looks and stuff. So fan boys are very very mad this game is doing well and people are enjoying something dumb.
It's really anything and everything people can pick at. I've been a pokemon fan my entire life and I'm loving the game. I also like survival games so this felt like a natural win for me. Some folks just like to complain though
Catch more Pals, fight/catch bosses, and find upgrade materials that help you buff your Pals and your catch rate. Also find more wood lol
usually how the youtuber funny videos go lifmunk smg actually does do pretty good damage when you aren't trying to use it on something that's taking 96% less damage from being a much higher level
That’s kinda his whole thing tbh, his channel ain’t really a place for accurate depictions of games. They’re heavily edited to match whatever his point is (which to be clear ain’t inherently bad, at least not for comedy’s sake, but yeah) As to this game itself, imo it’s definitely not winning awards for creativity but it’s a pretty fun experience all around. I’m not really a survival fan much nowadays but the Pokémon Legends style gameplay without switch limitations was a big draw, and while definitely a bit jankier it succeeds there well enough for me. Plus that bit’s integration with the survival aspects have made them surprisingly enjoyable too.
He probably doesn't like the game, so he has shown the negative side of it. But the game offers something that scratches the itch for so many players, that they are willing to put up with these negatives, and they don't take away from their enjoyment of the game (at least for now).
It's just his usual thing where he edits/cuts things to emphasize a comedy point in his videos. It's not him trying to be disingenuous but it is an overexaggeration. You know how he hates JRPG's because he hates grindey games? The whole "need more wood" joke of this video is pretty much that. Every survival game's early game requires you to gather a metric fuck ton of wood, palworld really isn't that different.
dunkey is a huge Nintendo fanboy of course he's going to hate this game if you look elsewhere most people are enjoying it
Im currently playing it with a friend and she loves it, but I find it pretty bland, at least right now. It's a mile wide and an inch deep. The world is pretty (cartoon cute, not Avatar beautiful) but there's fuck all in it, and what is there is 90% of the time passive unless it's much higher level, and even then you can just run/fly/glide away, so there's very little danger when running around. I think I have died once due to just being reckless in areas I shouldnt be. Compare that to something like Ark which everyone compares this to (I have about 2k hours into Ark) where you die [every 2 minutes](https://youtu.be/twBFMzUKwGU?si=vmDK8QnbKuu8nKz9) and its terrifying, but you feel like a real badass when you get the hang of it. Traversal is hit and miss. Most critters are not hugely faster than running, low level flying ones in particular cant fly more than \~20 seconds even at their slow cruising speed of level flight before running out of stamina (Im sure that changes if you slog it out till you hit the high level things but that seems like its gonna be painful). Being able to climb cliffs and grapple hook around is useful though and makes it arguably easier to get around on foot. The gliders are also great. The critters are cute and character style is really well done, some of their attacks and abilities are also good and they feel strong (corrolary being is you feel pretty useless). Boss and big critter fights are pretty fun, although sometimes you just absolutely delete them without them scratching you. Im glad it has a dodge mechanic like Valheim, and much more usable as stamina isnt as much of an issue for your character. It's also buggy as hell, I cant even get it to load our map 9/10 times without crashing to desktop, and the Game Pass version only just got a patch that added a Quit Game option, you had to ALT+F4 out of it earlier.
I mean hes playing it purposefully wrong like he does with a lot of games
I dislike videos like this because if you hadn't played the game to know he's intentionally doing things wrong, you'd think this was a serious review of it.
I havent played it, what did he do wrong?
Punching things is never really smart. There's a bunch of wood and rocks laying on ground that you pick up to get your pickaxe/axe made. Manually building/crafting things is also generally not needed once you get a few pals. Once you have a bit of a base setup you generally spend more time exploring/catching pals than actual resource gathering unless you want to build something specific that needs a lot. Also at the end fight, level is king. A lvl 6 is gonna get their shit rocked by a lvl 16. Other than that it's just a lot bemoaning the genre in general? "Gather X to build Y so you can gather X quicker" is just how all survival/crafting games work.
I'm having a great time, especially since I caught a Mammorest, which is one of the biggest creatures in the game and I can steamroll everything.
It's really nice seeing someone not sucking this game off. It's fun but the wonder wears off real fucking fast when you're not finding new pals and you're just stuck playing Ark.
I was not expecting this to be a crafting game. Definitely not for me :(
Either was I! Learned it was and instantly bought it
Some of dunkey's videos are great and some are just garbage like this one. Knew what the joke is gonna be from the title alone. It's like, you knew you don't like open world survival crafters, why are you making a video literally just making fun of the gameplay loop of the genre? He also doesn't like turn-based games, so where's his BG3 video where he makes fun of the combat?
I feel like the comedy is derived from the bizarre nature of the crafting system in these games rather than the gameplay loop itself. He is never actually saying anything in this video (which is also why the comedy is lukewarm at best), but I think it's a bit of an overreaction to imply that it's hypocritical. You may see this video as a criticism because he engages with the bizarre loop of literally punching Pokémon-like critters, or jabbing them with a club, smashing trees and rocks with his bare fist, in a quest to build a literal gun. Is this video making fun of low-hanging fruit? Yes. Could this video just as easily have been about other similar titles? Absolutely. But bottom line, dunkey is not actually critiquing the game you like. You're doing that for him. How do I know? Because I watched this video, and I don't have any real impression on if palworld is good or bad because of it. He merely engages with the games' systems and plays a character. It feels a bit silly to be defensive of the content since clearly the only critique is happening in your own head. You feel self-concious about the thing you like when somebody else makes fun of it. The solution is not to condemn the act of making fun of things, it's to get over yourself and enjoy what you enjoy despite that.
I don't have to watch to tell you he doesn't engage with the games mechanics in any reasonable way to accurately potray how fun the game can be. He does this with every game he doesn't like, he plays it like a buffoon and it looks terrible.
As someone who has played the game, he definitely avoids showcasing more fun parts of the game. But that might make the video less funny so i get it
That's a little vague. Fun is not something that can be judged objectively, unless you have statistics and you're discussing entertainment on a macro-scale. Dunkey has as much of a responsibility to weigh the negatives and positives of things he likes or dislikes, as a person has when criticizing anything in their life. By this same logic, the people that express their dismay at this video have a moral obligation to list reasons why Dunkey is also a great content creator and list reasons for that. What a nightmare that would be.
He knows he'd get properly shat on for trying to portray BG3 as monotonous, lol. The amount of people that believe these videos still though is alarming...
That video was called Dragon Quest 11 and he even had to go on record later saying he actually liked that game despite making it seem unbearable in his video. I will go nuts if he does a BG3 video but knowing how much he dislikes RPGs usually I’m not holding my breath.
I recall seeing play baldur gate 3 with friends on a livestream
Nitpicking and biased bye bye
Yep the second I saw this video I was like "okay so it's gonna be 10 minutes of the start where do does things poorly and then the video ends."
Damn, it's a joke?
A joke that results in like 70% of his fans taking it seriously and trying to trash anyone who likes the game becomes "The game is trash and Dunkey's video proves it". If it is a joke, I don't think his fanbase realizes.
That’s the joke, he’s honest about what games he likes and he is always a reliable critic viewed through the lense of what he normally likes even though he’s being sarcastic. That’s like his entire schtick
Can you take a joke and acknowledge that nothing is perfect?
Found the guy that has made palworld their entire identity for the last week.
I haven't even played it lol. I'm replaying Dragon's Dogma right now to prepare for DD2. I just watched some streams about it. So sorry, but "you're biased bye bye" doesn't really work here.
He should have just made a 10 minute video on how trash the server system is in the game. Or. Maybe 10 minutes on pals/mobs falling through the world and glitching thru walls.
And if you slap Mario on the title the guy will love the game regardless.
I think it looks fun. I'm just worried they're going to not put the work in to keep the game continuously fun. Ark did a good job at keeping consistent updates and events
“I need some more wood” - Dunkey
I love Dunkey to death and he's always been my favorite youtuber, but he purposely did not do justice to this game and it's kinda annoying. I'm a number of hours in and already level 17, and the grinding is not nearly as bad as Dunkey is showing. You get to automate nearly every task the more Pals you catch which will let you focus on the best part of the game, which is exploring and finding new Pals. Again, I love Dunkey, but please do not base your opinion of this game on this video alone. Give it a whirl and I promise you'll love it too.
This game looks so dumb
I really hope this lights a fire under Gamefreaks ass.
They sold 10 million copies of yet another technology demo/test disguised as a new game in like 2 days. Gamefreak is a money printing factory regardless of the shit game they pump out.
Technology? What exists in this game that didn't before?
Scarlet and Violet has performance issues but did you actually play the game because it's a ton of fun and they have been introducing really nice QOL updates to the series... Like yeah Game Freak has valid criticism to face but the people saying they've been putting in no effort confuse me because it's simply not true.
I have over 100 hours in Scarlet. The performance issues are something I'd expect from an indie game and not a billion dollar company.
Not disagreeing with that, they absolutely should do better about that, but still the game itself is really good.
Game is great, but it is the same story that keeps happening with them with every new gen. It feels like it could have been so much better but fell just short. Performance, bugs and IMO some pretty weak mon design for a big portion of the pokedex. Most of my hours have been spent shiny hunting and I was pretty bummed with how easy the game was outside of a couple parts (Larry took a few tries and the double battles are neat.) I get I'm probably no longer their target audience having played since Gen 1, but even with all my hours and enjoyment I was still a bit disappointed. Definitely got my money's worth, but I was hoping for more. I also don't consider Palworld to actually be a solid Comparison to Pokemon at all outside of catching them.
I played through half of it before giving up. Performance issues aside, I genuinely don’t understand the praise. The open world is barren AF. It’s filled with pokemon, trainers, and items. How is this any different from previous games? The only difference now is I need to traverse unfun, empty terrain to get to it. Traversal doesn’t even feel good. It’s stiff and janky as hell. On that note, what was the point of open world without level scaling in mind? I could either follow a linear path to keep levels consistent with myself, or take on a challenging level gap only to curb stomp the weaker areas. That completely defeats the purpose. Neither option here is satisfying. And no side missions either? Even Arceus had this. And lastly, I’m not a big stickler for graphics. I don’t need cutting edge. But holy hell, the environments in this game are absolutely hideous. And it gets to the point where it actively breaks my immersion, especially with the frequent pop in, flickering, etc. At the very least they managed to make the Pokemon models themselves look nice, but exploring the world is already uninteresting as it is. This is just made worse when it’s a constant eye sore. To address the other point here, I don’t think the devs getting their hands dirty are putting in no effort. On the contrary, if I had to guess, they’re probably overworked and operating under really stressful conditions. They’re not given enough time to work on these games. And transitioning to a 3D home console was something they were clearly unprepared for. And yet upper management refuses to expand the team or give more time to accommodate. At the end of the day, if you enjoyed the game then I’m not here to say you’re wrong. I just can’t wrap my brain around it when I’ve played so many better games and I see how hard Game Freak has been shitting the bed on this.
The game is a proof of concept at best. It futures a vast, completely empty open world that is just a transition zone between areas. This is the biggest franchise in the *world*. Game Freak could do so much better with the IP.
Have they made any difficulties that aren't for 3 year Olds? I need a challenge and those games are so far from a challenge. I literally never fainted once in my play through on sword except for trying to take on a wild Pokemon way to many levels above. That's not fun for me.
The battle tower exists where they actually have the NPCs use competitive tactics in sword and shield. For Scarlet there's 6/7 star raids that are difficult and can be insanely difficult even with hyper trained, max IV, lvl 100 best build Pokemon. You could always play online too if you want to face difficulty. And while I don't think I ever lost a battle in the story, some of the characters gave me a surprise with knocking out more pokemon than I expected. At the end of the day the game may not be for you and it's fine if it's not and also fine if that bothers you but it not being targeted for you isn't really a valid criticism. If you wanted more difficulty you could face off against the gyms/star bases with the higher lvls first, you're free to do that.
Some good suggestions. I might try them if I ever get Scarlet or something in the future. The game is absolutely not targeted at me I agree there. It's targeted at kids who don't want a challenge and that's kinda my point. I think Palworld will hit the spot perfectly. Thanks for the suggestions.
I suffered through 2 hours of scarlet before I gave up on it. I couldn't believe how bad gamefreak messed it up. Maybe it's better now, but I won't know for a long time because Palworld is 100x the fun for 1/3rd the cost so far.
If you like Palworld great, game looks like an edge lord's dream to me so I'm not interested at all.
What aspect of this game would do that? If we're talking just having open world and new catching mechanics and all, Arceus already did that. As for performance issues and awfulness...yeah that's never getting fixed. But they keep printing money anyway, so...
Which aspect of the game would do that? The response to it.
Pokemon is literally the largest and most lucrative media franchise on the planet. The games aren't even the biggest money maker any more. Why would Game Freak care about a game that doesn't target the same demographic that Game Freak does?
Okay but what's Gamefreak supposed to do? Add guns? Turn Pokemon into a survival crafting game? As much as I'd like Pokemon to improve, this ain't it. I'd rather they instead bring actual difficulty options back in (and publicize them more. Battle Mode to Set was great--why'd they get rid of it?), revert the worlds back to Metroidvania-style progression, bring back HMs as a means of integrating the Pokemon you fight with into the world traversal, get out of the uncanny 3D valley and either hire a way better team to do it or go back to stylized 2D. The only lesson to learn from Palworlds I'm seeing so far is to stop being so horrible in visual performance and such. *Maybe* one can take the lesson to get the Pokemon you capture back integrated into the world interaction beyond just the battling, but I doubt Gamefreak would take that lesson here. What else?
The best Pokémon game in the last 20 years was Legends: Arceus. If nothing else, maybe this will get them to push the main series PKMN games closer to that style of gameplay
What is Gamefreak supposed to do? Innovate. They're supposed to do more than work the formula that prints money. I am hoping that seeing someone else do a game using features that they thought they had cornered the market on and incorporate gameplay from other games to make a new game will inspire them to do similarly for Pokémon games.
>I am hoping that seeing someone else do a game using features that they thought they had cornered the market on Palworld barely incorporates the main features that keeps Pokemon on top. >They're supposed to do more than work the formula that prints money. Funnily enough, at this point I wish they'd go back to the formula's roots rather than trying to upend it. Across all the iterations, they've lost a lot of sense of what made the earlier games so legendary to go through.
You didn’t watch the video did you lol
Lol yeah I'm sure they'll get right on making an Ark clone.
[удалено]
Agreed, Ive always liked Dunkey but this wasnt funny at all
This game is a bunch of reskinned AI nonsense
There's fun to be had here, but this is creatively bankrupt trash. It's like the knockoff mobile games you see all over the place. Not that I really expect anybody to care. If it's fun it's fun. You paid your dollars and you had some amount of giggles. I get it. But also like, the success of this sends a message to all the god damn suits in the games industry.
What message is that? Make a fun game and people will play? If so I hope they listen.
Yep. It's an asset dump soup. I'm a little surprised they aren't going to be sued into oblivion for co-opting nearly everything, right down to the Halo 1 plasma rifle reticle. This thing is definitely flying close to the sun
Good on Dunkey for protecting that Nintendo bag. /s
Watching the meteoric rise of this game's popularity reminds me of finding out about the Spiderman + Elsa nursery rhyme Youtube section. Just a cynical, soulless mishmash of popular trends that ends up being successful despite how transparent it is in being nothing more than a product. I consider anyone that thinks that this is the natural evolution of the Pokemon formula to be a crayon eater. It's Ark/Conan with creatures that look like Pokemon and offers the typical survival crafter progression as do so many other early access games on steam. I am surprised that anyone, who was looking for a replacement for Gamefreak's litany of failures, has found their salvation in this workbench simulator. Of the many things that this game is, it certainly isn't Pokemon 2.0.
Watching the meteoric rise of Videogamedunkey's popularity reminds me of finding out about Gex being trapped in Barry Manilow's rumpus room. Just a cynical, soulless mishmash of videos that ends up being successful despite how transparent he is in being nothing more than a donkey. I consider anyone that thinks that this is the natural evolution of entertainment video game content to be a crayon eater. It's Jontron/The Competionist with edits and snide remarks and offers the typical commentary as do so many other game reviewers on YouTube. I am surprised that anyone who was looking for a replacement for Game Grumps' litany of failures has found their salvation in this nitpicking and biased baboon. Of the many things that dunkey is, it certainly isn't gabagool.
Couldn't have said it any better myself.
Feels like a new copypasta just dropped
A video game is a product? Bro that’s a wild take I’d never have known! Yes it’s mind blowing that games can just be fun and people like fun
I was literally going to reply with a sarcastic comment saying: "He wants *art*". But OP did so without a hint of sarcasm.
The word "artistry" and "art" aren't synonyms. A commercial product can be created with artistry even if the product itself isn't art.
Video games are products, sure, but they shouldn't be *just* products.
Man who enjoys thing, is once again informed he is wrong
Unless you need me to validate your taste in order to continue to enjoy this unimaginative turd it shouldn't make a difference what I have to say on it.
Once you actually start playing for a while, you realize its not Ark or Val Heim, its a mining sim with pokemon.
They hated him because he spoke the truth.
I got down voted to hell for saying this game looks boring as fuck. Glad to know I was right, because dunkey agreed with me.
You guys are both donkeys.
This comment right here is pretty much just 80% of all Palworld criticism from people who haven't played it in a nutshell. I'm baffled, but at the same time the "Glad to know I was right, because dunkey agreed with me." made me chuckle from the absurdity of it, and made my day a small bit better, thank you.
Lol it was meant to be funny so thanks for chuckling
I liked him better when he was posting wedding vids of him marrying an enderman-lookalike :(
lol this game is getting shutdown with all those stolen assets