Palworld Early Access Review

I’ve spent the last ten days fully immersed in Palworld. If you are blissfully unaware, Palworld is a survival game that borrows elements from popular survival games like Rust, a little “Souls-like” inspiration, some Breath of the Wild, and, of course, Pokemon. Is the whole more significant than the sum of its parts? Is Palworld worthy of the hype? Well, fortunately, we are here to let you know!

It’s hard not to see Palworld and immediately go down the road of “Pokemon with guns!” as many have referred to the game as such. After 40 hours of gameplay, I can happily tell you it is much more than that. At its core, Palworld is a survival game through and through. As is with many survival games (or so I’ve been told), preparation is the name of the game. The world of Palworld is enormous and unforgiving. Pals want to kill you, poachers wish to kill you, PETA-style cultists want to kill you, and the elements want to kill you. You will have a bad time if you venture too far without the right gear, Pals, and food.

At the same time, most of the preparation and advancement will happen at your base(s). You must rely on the right Pals to keep up with food production, crafting items, and resource upkeep. While all this happens, you also want to ensure your Pals are healthy and happy. This means return trips to bases are indeed important. Quickly, you learn that while your character in Palworld is fragile and slow, the right tools are integral to survival, and you just so happen to catch them in the wild. 

Palworld Offers a Unique Spin On Old Ideas

Palworld starts you off with a brief and not super-great tutorial. You learn to craft your first tool, Pal Sphere, and how to farm materials and catch Pals. From there, you are directed to build a Palboard and set up a base. Building in Palworld is much like Fortnite, except worse in almost every way imaginable. I’ll get to it in a bit, but less is more in base-building. 

After you build out your base, the tutorial missions will have