Review of the game Palworld, which in 2 days became the most popular in the world. These are Pokemon with guns

2 days ago a new game Palworld was released on Steam.

This project is available in early access and is constantly being improved. But now he is playing in it at the same time over millions of players worldwide. In terms of peak online activity within 24 hours, the game was able to overtake even Counter-Strike 2.

And this is not the limit, there will be new records.

Within 40 hours of its release, the news reached more than 3 million people. It costs only 990 rubles and is available for Russian accounts. The game can also be downloaded for free on Game Pass.

Let’s take a look at why Palworld has become so popular and why millions of gamers love it (93% reviewed on Steam). In fact, there are a lot of advantages here.

What is Palworld

This is a new game in the Survival genre from the small studio Pocketpair.

In fact, several genres are used here at once. This is an action-RPG, and survival, and even, to some extent, a strategy with Tamagotchi elements. In terms of mechanics, the new product is reminiscent of the estate of Rust, Genshin Impact and Pokemon.

There is no such thing as a plot in the game at the moment. Your job is to protect yourself Palov (Friends) from evil monsters, each of whom is hiding in his own villainous tower. Here the story is told more through notes scattered throughout the world. Sometimes you can also meet wanderers, but they don’t show you anything of business.

Who you are and how you ended up in this world is completely unimportant. You woke up among some ruins and came out into a colorful world, that’s all.

Here you can do almost whatever your heart desires

The game begins with traditional character creation. There are ready-made presets to choose from, or you can choose your character individually: face, eyes, hair, skin color, etc. The constructor in this case is quite simple; there are no separate stops on it. But even for its structure it is quite extensive.

The extensive tutorial teaches you the basic mechanics, of which there are many. Let’s talk about everything in order.

To get started here you can build. The choice of what and how you want to do it is huge. Place a workbench and a container for burning fires, and define your territory around them. In fact, you can build because of your attitude, but not everything, and the Pals you have tamed will not leave it, trying to stay only in the permitted zone.

The base can and should be upgraded, because it depends on what exactly you can build. With each new level, a real set of furniture, production machines, agglomerations, and so on opens up.

Created level up items in several categories:

• production
• fires
• storage
• food
• infrastructure
• lighting
• construction
• defense
• furniture
• other

Each of them has its own sets of items. Most are closed from the very beginning; you need to level up your character to unlock technology points. It is with their help that you discover new items.

The pilaf container contains a small mini-hub to manage Buddies and the base. It contains tasks to increase the level of the base.

Houses here can be created in different shapes and from different materials. The choice is wide, it all depends only on your imagination.

The division with defense is one of the powers. Why? Your premises will periodically receive raids from Wild Fires. They will try to destroy everyone and everyone.

Pala. These are the “residents” of the local world. They inhabit the entire map and develop many different subtypes. Each of them has its own character traits, skills and characteristics. They can literally scare every sound or attack at the first convenient opportunity. They have their own mood, they need to be monitored and looked after.

Each Pal must be caught using a preliminary sphere similar to pokeball. You bring their health to almost zero and throw the sphere. Depending on your skills and level of leveling, there is a current chance (in percentage) of catching a fancy beast. Once you have caught it, it becomes tame and can be carried around in this area. It is a temporary storage container that can be carried with up to five animals at a time.

At the same time, there are also human poachers in the game. they come with firearms, and you can catch them too. They can also be sold as a slave to other players or traveling merchants.

So, returning to the Pals… They fully justify their name, since everything rests on them, and so does your production.

Buddies can provide the collection of resources such as stones, wood, berries, etc. And they can also participate in the construction and crafting of items. Here you can launch full-fledged production (factory, if any) where your Pals will work. Each of them will perform its own task, it depends on the type of animal and its capabilities. For example, penguins spit water and ice so they can operate mills, and mushrooms help with planting crops.

As I said above, they have their own mood. It depends on a bunch of factors, the weather outside, the location of cribs, hunger and disease. Yes, they can get sick and even die, some food can cause bloating, due to which Pal will temporarily be unable to work or will do it extremely ineffectively. And sometimes they are just lazy. Just like that.

But the last point is resolved quite easily. Build Hot springand the animals go to rest and recover after a hard day.

Among the Pals there are not only land animals. The local fauna also includes swimming, flying and racing animals. They can be controlled, they can be ridden, you just need to create a special saddle.

And these guys are far from stupid. They can even be trusted with firearms up to a minigun. They will attack your enemies and stand on defensive bases. For this, there are also special switchable zones, like a pile of sandbags.

In general, these friends will be the most useful on the farm. Someone will cut down trees, someone will plow in a quarry, and someone will pick fruit.

Survival. This aspect is implemented at a fairly basic level. You have three stats:

• health
• energy
• hungry

There is no thirst, it is included in hunger. Any food is replenished quite quickly and consumed slowly, so it’s not annoying at all.

But you may have problems with your behavior. It is spent on everything: from running and climbing rocks to cutting down trees and fighting. And there will always be little of it, which makes it necessary to think through some steps forward due to the pandemic.

Large open world, full of events

In fact, the events here are approximately similar to each other. But thanks to your Palam and your tactics, you create unique situations, because there will never be a dull moment.

And that’s enough volumetric map Scattered are notes from wanderers containing bits of history, resources, fires, and chests. Some chests can be opened easily, while others will require special keys. They can be found during your travels, both in open locations and in dungeons. Recently, people have traditionally gone on raids for rare solutions, drawings and much more.

Fires are worth more in the game, they have their own biomes in which they live. The map is divided into them and the islands: from tropical jungles and deserts to snow-capped mountains and swamps. Your character reacts to temperature and can freeze to death or, on the contrary, overheat. Clothes must be carefully looked after.

Overall, there’s a lot to think about here. And quite a lot. It will take you dozens of hours to study the entire game. I’ve only played seven so far and haven’t opened or closed a card, let alone studied it thoroughly.

Looks good, but this schedule takes some getting used to.

Visually, the game resembles either Fortnite or Valheim. No, it’s not pixelated, but it’s very specific. This style may scare someone away, but I assure you that once your eyes get used to it, you will no longer complain about this schedule. Overall she is pretty, in my opinion, but this is purely a matter of taste.

Therefore, it is immediately clear that the game was created for all more or less relevant (and somewhat arbitrary) concepts of hardware. Excellent optimization even for early access. FPS rarely drops, and only for a couple of frames. Among the bugs, I saw a T-pose once for a split second and that’s it. The developers clearly took a responsible approach to creating their project, and for this they have great respect.

The game generally runs well even on an old GTX 1070 Ti. On ultra source it produces 30 FPS at 2.5K resolution. You can slightly reduce the quality of the texture, and the picture will become noticeably smoother.

But the musical accompaniment and voice acting are generally a shame. There is no voice acting here even at the level of inaudible cackling, the characters are simply silent during dialogue, sometimes you only allow sighs and strained sobs. There is also little music in the game. They obviously decided not to work on this point now. It feels like there was almost no effort to develop the “kovikov”.

I hope it will be fixed in subsequent updates and closer to the full release.

There is multiplayer here

There is only one card. She didn’t go through the procedure. And this is good. It is clear that they did a good job on it (with rare flaws).

And I just I recommend playing Palworld with friends. There is cooperative play here. Each player creates his own world on a separate continent, connecting to it by name from the list, using a password.

And if playing Palworld alone is simply fun, then with friends this fun is multiplied. Supported up to 32 players in the territory.

Result: 8/10

I knocked off a couple of points on the final cost only for the lack of intelligible voice acting, as well as for the very simple (albeit extensive) construction.

Otherwise, this is an excellent game that is addictive from the first minutes. It’s simply impossible to tear yourself away from it, once you get a little involved in the gameplay. Multiplayer only adds to the danger in the room, especially in cases where you decide to raid someone else’s territory.

Palworld is a beautiful game with its own features. And I am sure that you will spend at least hours in it.

For now, Palworld is only available on Windows PC.